David Korten: The Story of a New Economy

[marmar]

from YES! Magazine:



The Story of a New Economy
David Korten: We're in the midst of a contest of competing stories—one fabricated to serve the interests of Empire; the other an authentic story born of the experience and aspirations of ordinary people.

by David Korten
posted Jul 11, 2011


Some years ago the Filipino activist-philosopher Nicanor Perlas shared an insight with me that has since been a foundation of my work. Each of the three institutional sectors—business, government, and civil society—has its distinctive power competence. Business commands the power of money. Government commands the coercive power of the police and military. Civil society commands the power of authentic moral values communicated through authentic cultural stories. Moral authority ultimately trumps the power of money and guns. Therefore, civil society holds the ultimate power advantage.

This simple frame helped me see the extent to which the global citizen resistance against the corporate misuse of multilateral trade agreements was a contest between competing stories—one fabricated to serve the interests of Empire; the other an authentic story born of the experience and aspirations of ordinary people. According to the story fabricated and promoted by Wall Street’s PR machine:

The use of multilateral trade agreements to eliminate national borders as barriers to the free flow of trade and investment is bringing universal peace, prosperity, and democracy to all the world’s peoples and nations.

Wow, that sounds wonderful. But even in the early 1990’s it was becoming evident that the reality was quite different.

A group of some 50 citizen activist-leaders from around the world began meeting in 1994 to share their actual experience with these agreements. They found a consistent pattern of results wholly contrary to the corporate story, broke the silence, and spread the real story:

Multilateral trade agreements are freeing global corporations from restrictions on their ability to exploit workers, ignore community interests, circumvent democracy, pollute the environment, and expropriate the resources of poor countries, with devastating consequences for people, community, democracy, and nature.

...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.yesmagazine.org/blogs/david-korten/the-story-of-a-new-economy