David Korten: Free Yourself From Wall Street

[marmar]

from YES! Magazine:



.....(snip).....

Doug: What about the stock market? That’s widely accepted by Americans as an index of economic health.

David: Well, the fact that the total value of stock market assets can go up and down by trillions of dollars day by day is a pretty powerful indicator that it has no relationship to any underlying real value. It’s purely a matter of speculation.

So we’ve really got two competing systems. One is a system of essentially pure money that is highly biased towards the wealthiest and most predatory members of society. The other is the real economy of Main Street where people are trying to figure out things to do with their resources to provide for their livelihoods and to create community wealth and maybe develop a little resilience against upcoming shocks.

Doug: What is your response to people who say that capitalism, freedom, and democracy are inseparable? That it’s all part and parcel?

David: It’s a total lie. In terms of human liberty, capitalism works really well for the liberty of the very, very rich. If your concern is the liberty of billionaires, it’s quite an adequate system. But more broadly, it is the absolute enemy of the free market, because the whole dynamic of capitalism and the goal of the larger corporations is to establish monopoly control of whatever sector they’re in. Whether it’s monopolizing seeds, water, air, whatever it is—that’s the game, so that you can extract monopoly profits.

Capitalism is also the enemy of democracy because the goal is for the financial interests to dominate the political system and manipulate the rules in ways that benefit the very rich and are totally contrary to the interests of ordinary people. That ultimately strips ordinary people of meaningful participation in the political process.

Doug: According to standard American analysis, if you say that about capitalism it must make you a Marxist.

David: Part of the mental trap that we’re in is this idea that our only choices is between the repression of rapacious capitalism and the repression of communism.

I grew up very conservative, even fairly right-wing. The reason I pursued a career in international development was my concern about a communist takeover of the world, and how that threatened our American way of life. I am most definitely not a Marxist.

Actually I see myself as being an advocate of democracy and real markets. In some ways, I see Adam Smith as my patron saint, if you really understand Adam Smith’s framework. His Wealth of Nations was a tirade against corporate monopoly, and essentially against the dynamics that we now celebrate as capitalism.

It’s pretty clear to me that Smith’s market ideal was an economy comprised of locally rooted enterprises owned and operated by people who live in the community and function within a framework of community moral values. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/a-resilient-community/get-free-from-wall-street

[raccoon]

1. Thanks for the post. Rec'd. David Korten is one smart dude. nt