David Korten is the founder and president of the Living Economies Forum, co-founder and board chair emeritus of YES! Magazine; a full member of the Club of Rome; and a member of the Earth4All Transformational Economics Commission. Following his recent blogs on inequality and billionaires, we spoke with him about what we can learn from this moment in history, the power of community, and how we might transition to an ecological society.
The fundamental call of Earth4All is for an upgrade of our economic system to one that serves both people and the planet – what you would call a true ‘eco-nomics’. What role should the economic system play in society?
The role of a properly functioning economic system is to provide Earth’s people with a healthy satisfying means of living adequate to our needs, while securing the ability of the living Earth to fulfill that purpose. This requires securing the diversity and wellbeing of all of living Earth’s essential living beings. The purpose of a proper eco-nomics is to guide us in making decisions relating to our exchanges with other people and the many other species and organisms of the finite-living Earth that have essential roles in securing the wellbeing of life, a sharp contrast to the current goal of maximising the growth of ultimately worthless phantom wealth financial assets.
What do you believe are the most powerful policies available to us today to move us towards an economy that secures wellbeing for all life?
We need a deep transformation of all our institutions—but especially our institutions of business—to root power in local communities and distribute it equitably. To my mind there are three defining public policy priorities to achieve these goals.
- No billionaires. Redistribute all fortunes greater than a billion dollars.
- No profit maximising corporations. To qualify for a business license, a corporation’s ownership must be rooted in the community in which it does business and it must demonstrate commitment to a true public purpose.
- No private monopolies. Private monopolies must be broken up to restore market competition. Natural monopolies like companies that deliver power and water services must be organised as local cooperatively owned and managed public utilities.
As you discuss in your recent writings, billionaires have taken control of the US government. Wealth inequality is vast and growing. We are transgressing planetary boundaries, one after the other. The solutions on the table – for example, shifting away from GDP and transforming tax policies to redistribute wealth more fairly – may seem distant or intangible to individuals, many of whom feel increasingly disempowered, or distrustful of government. What role do you believe individuals have to play in the shift from ‘ego-nomics’ to ‘eco-nomics’?
Our failing institutions are not going to fix themselves. Only the people can create a world of the people, for the people and by the people.
Here is where we need to recognise and embrace the insight that our ancient African ancestors called ubuntu, which translates to “I am because you are.” The whole cannot exist without individuals. Nor can individuals exist without the whole. No living being can exist on its own. From the smallest bacterium to the largest blue whale, life survives through relationships—whether cooperative, competitive, parasitic, or symbiotic.
It is an inherent characteristic of life that complex life forms emerge from the coming together of the less complex. For example, each human body is comprised of tems of trillions of individual living cells—half of them micro-organisms. This diverse collection of cells has learned to organize from the bottom up join in creating the vessel of our personal consciousness and the instrument of our personal agency with no centralised top-down command structure. It is an act of extraordinary love and mutual care on the part of the tiny beings involved. We humans must learn to do the same as a now interdependent global society.
So would your advice to individuals trying to find their way in this time of complexity be to build community, both locally and globally?
Western cultures generally celebrate the individual and subordinate family and community. Eastern cultures generally celebrate family and community and subordinate the individual. Both cultures have long favoured top-down power structures.
Life, by contrast, favors the interplay of diverse individuals interacting as a community to achieve outcomes beyond the capacity of any individual. Humanity’s step to a true civilisation—an Ecological Civilisation aligned with the principles of the Earth Charter requires that we learn to honour the interdependence of self and community as we celebrate our diversity and extraordinary distinctive human capacity for service to one another and Earth. In that process we must learn to organise both locally and globally from the bottom up.
Conventional modernisation, especially in higher income countries, has reduced us to social isolation epitomised by single person households, isolating jobs, shopping on the internet, and using personal cars for local travel. Studies are linking our growing sense of loneliness and social isolation with heightened risk of disease, depression, and premature mortality. This isolation feeds the sense of exclusion and anger that led to the election of Donald Trump.
I sense a growing desire among people everywhere to break out of this isolation and rebuild a sense of community at both global and local levels. It begins with simple conversations by which we get to know one another and reconnect with life in ways that our ancestors took for granted such as caring for community gardens, engaging in interfaith spiritual explorations, and caring for one another.
You talk about the “Great Turning” from an empire-based system to a life-centred society. Where do you see the most promising signs of this shift happening today? Are there any examples of movements, initiatives, or other signs of transformation that are inspiring you?
The primary driving force behind the current failure of human institutions comes from profit maximising transnational corporations controlled and managed by self-centric billionaires like Donald Trump and Elon Musk. By their blatant disregard for nature and anyone who is not ready to bow down in service to them, they are building awareness of the profound and tragic failure of our existing institutions to secure the wellbeing of one another and the Earth. It is an essential part of the transformation. The failures run deep. And their correction depends on a profound restructuring of our foundational institutions.
The institutions of business are foundational. The best alternative model for how to organise business on a consequential scale is the Mondragon worker-owned cooperative in Spain. It is a highly successful business of significant sise that works in a mutually supportive relationship with local government in service to the people of the Basque region. It’s one worker, one vote, ownership structure secures an equitable distribution of power and connection to secure local community wellbeing.
In terms of hope for the deep transition to an Ecological Civilisation, I find hope in the dynamic interconnections springing up all around the world in response to countless local leaders reaching out to one another to link their many local initiatives. Local initiatives are surely not new. They have been a timeless presence.
That said, I sense that something new is emerging. I see growing threads of connection between local groups coming together in ways that transcend the differences of color, culture, religion, language, and class that have fed the divisions of our past as we divided into competing clans and tribes. Together, the emerging threads of interconnection are bringing us together to build the foundation of an emerging global, bottom-up social movement beyond control by authoritarian billionaire oligarchs.
Further reading
We must reject ego-nomics to prevent human extinction
Equality: An essential requirement for democracy, peace, and Earth health
When billionaires rule the world: a global threat to a viable human future
