Korten, David C. When Corporations Rule the World. Copublishers: Kumarian Press (West Hartford CT) and Berrett-Koehler Publishers (San Francisco), 1996. 376 pages. www.davidkorten.org

This book has sold over 120,000 copies in 15 languages, because its description of the problem is excellent. Korten has a Ph.D. in economics and business, and spent five years teaching at Harvard. During the 1980s he worked in Southeast Asia as an aid expert, first with USAID and then with NGOs. He moved to New York City in 1992 after concluding that for the world to survive, U.S. policies must change.

Korten's basic point is that the mode and rate of economic growth, spurred by transnational corporations and exacerbated by institutional systems failure, is ultimately suicidal. This is revealed by "a rise in poverty, unemployment, inequality, violent crime, failing families, and environmental degradation. These problems stem in part from a fivefold increase in economic output since 1950 that has pushed human demands on the ecosystem beyond what the planet is capable of sustaining." What's the solution? At the end of the book Korten is bravely optimistic. He makes the case that reform is possible, and that while "issues of class and political power figure prominently in its agenda, the Ecological Revolution is less a class struggle than a struggle of people against an economic system running out of control."
ISBN 1-887208-01-1

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