When Corporations Rule the World

When Corporations Rule the World

David Korten 1995 ( revised 2001) Summary Outline by Bruce Weston Author's Text My Paraphrase Underline means important term

Prologue Korten opens by giving his background, which included fourteen years with the Ford Foundation in Southeast Asia and eight years as a senior advisor on development at the U.S. Agency for International Development. What he observed of the poverty of the people, the degradation of the environment and the greed of the corporations awakened him to the problems that are the subject of this book. These problems are primarily due to a 500 percent increase in economic output since 1950. To reestablish a sustainable relationship to the living earth, we must break free of the illusions of the world of money, rediscover spiritual meaning in our lives, and root our economic institutions in place and community. . . . Consequently, we concluded that the task of people-centered development in its fullest sense must be the creation of life-centered societies in which economy is but one of the instruments of good living. . . . Because our leaders are trapped in the myths and the reward systems of the institutions they head, the leadership in this creative process of institutional and values re-creation must come from within the civil society. (16) From our vantage point in Asia we have watched in horror as the same policies the United States has been advocating for the world have created a Third World within its own border as revealed in its growing gap between rich and poor, dependence on foreign debt, deteriorating educational systems, rising infant mortality, economic dependence on the export of primary commodities . . indiscriminate dumping of toxic wastes, and the breakdown of families and communities. (18) Those who bear the costs of the system's dysfunctions have been stripped of decision-making power and remain confused about the cause of their distress because the corporate-dominated media incessantly...