The Missing Vision (David Korten begins blog series outlining Agenda for a New Economy)

[OneGrassRoot]

I HIGHLY recommend David Korten's "Agenda for a New Economy" (Amazon link; I'd love to have a DU book club discussion about this book. I also highly recommend Yes! Magazine; see link below to this original article/blog. :))

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This is the first of a series of blogs based on excerpts adapted from the 2nd edition of Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth. I wrote Agenda to spur a national conversation on economic policy issues and options that are otherwise largely ignored. This blog series is intended to contribute to that conversation. —DK


Few and fortunate are those whose lives have not been directly touched by the 2008 Wall Street meltdown and its consequences. People want to understand what went wrong and how we can set it right. Yet the public commentary continues to center primarily on finger-pointing. Who knew what when? Which regulators were asleep at the switch, and why?

Most calls for action seek only to limit the excesses and deceptions of greedy bankers and complicit regulators. We have yet to engage in a much-needed national conversation that addresses essential, yet unasked, questions. For example:

* Do Wall Street institutions do anything so vital for the national interest as to justify opening the national purse strings and showering them with trillions of dollars in order to save them from the consequences of their own excess?
* Is it possible that the whole Wall Street edifice is built on an illusion that has no substance yet carries deadly economic, social, and environmental consequences for the larger society?
* Might there be other ways to provide necessary and beneficial financial services with greater effectiveness and at less cost?
Ultimately, it comes down to a question of the values we believe the economy should serve. Should it give priority to money, or to life? To the fortunes of the few, or the well-being of all?

The existing Wall Street-led economy is highly effective and efficient at converting real living wealth to phantom financial wealth to make rich people richer. It is a path to collective suicide.

Our future and that of our children depend on replacing the values and institutions of the Wall Street economy with the culture and institutions of a New Economy designed to provide an adequate and satisfying livelihood for all people in balanced relationship to Earth’s biosphere.
I believe that an honest public examination of these questions will lead to a unifying national political consensus that Wall Street institutions produce nothing of value to the society and fulfill no need not better served in other ways. They can and should be replaced with institutions that act like mature, caring adults and serve real needs in ways appropriate to the realities of the twenty-first century.

http://www.yesmagazine.org/blogs/david-korten/the-missing-vision?utm_source=fb&utm_medium=socmed&utm_content=KortenD_TheMissingVision&utm_campaign=110104_Agenda2