August 31, 2010. “We need to get free of Wall Street,” David Korten’s eyes blazed, “not try to fix it by tinkering at the margins… It can’t be fixed. It has essentially become a legal crime syndicate” (my paraphrase).
With a David-meets-Goliath fervor, our passionate conversation drew from David’s Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth, just out in an expanded second edition.
We were sitting in the verdant back yard of David and Fran Korten’s home on Bainbridge Island west of Seattle, following a sunny ferry ride from the mainland.
David minced no words about de-throning a corrupt Wall Street, whose phantom wealth is created by doing nothing of value. His solution? Change the cultural story from seeing money as wealth (“money is just accounting numbers”) to seeing that real wealth is in the likes of food, shelter, education, and mutual support.
Where to start? “Walk away from the king.” Create the new reality: rebuild local economies for healthy families, communities and the earth. Change the rules to reduce the power of corporations, the politicians in their pocket, and a destructive money system.
In 2006 we produced a DVD of David presenting The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community, and a conversation about the book “A Defining Moment in History” (episode 48). Today’s conversation is a lively sequel!
Watch Taking Back Our Lives from the Wall Street Mafia (episode 180).
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All very well and good for him to say what is needed, but howcan it be done and by whom? Bucky Fuller said the same thing in the 80s but nobody acted on it, and now things are a million times worse than Bucky’s “final examination for humanity.” Now at 60 years old I do not expect things to have changed before I die, either. I must have deep compassion for future generations, and hope that they have livable conditions on Planet Earth!
By the way, I cannot fnd your surname on this website – are or were you Janaia Donaldson? I wish you would put a bio on yur site so we could know who you are! Nice work regardless…
Lou