Table of Contents

A Choice for Life
Prologue: A Personal Journey
Introduction: Capitalism and the Suicide Economy
PART I: COWBOYS IN A SPACESHIP
1. From Hope to Crisis
2. End of the Open Frontier
3. The Growth Illusion
PART II: CONTEST FOR SOVEREIGNTY
4. Rise of Corporate Power in America
5. Assault of the Corporate Libertarians
6. The Decline of Democratic Pluralism
7. Illusions of the Cloud Minders
PART III: CORPORATE COLONIALISM
8. Dreaming of Global Empires
9. Building Elite Consensus
10. Buying Out Democracy
11. Marketing the World
12. Adjusting the Poor
13. Guaranteeing Corporate Rights
PART IV: A ROGUE FINANCIAL SYSTEM
14. The Money Game
15. Predatory Finance
16. Corporate Cannibalism
17. Managed Competition
PART V: NO PLACE FOR PEOPLE
18. Race to the Bottom
19. The End of Inefficiency
20. People with No Place
PART VI: TO RECLAIM OUR POWER
21. The Ecological Revolution
22. Economies Are for Living
23. An Awakened Civil Society
24. Agenda for Democracy
Conclusion: A Living Economy for Living Earth
Epilogue: Our Need for Meaning
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index
About the Author

About the Author

David C. Korten is a co-founder and board chair of YES! Magazine, a co-chair of the New Economy Working Group, the founder and president of the Living Economies Forum, a member of the Club of Rome, a founding board member emeritus of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, a former associate of the International Forum on Globalization, and a former Harvard Business School professor.

Reviews

“This is a ‘must-read’ book—a searing indictment of an unjust international economic order, not by a wild-eyed idealistic left-winger, but by a sober scion of the establishment with impeccable credentials. It left me devastated but also very hopeful. Something can be done to create a more just economic order.”
—Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu, Nobel Peace Laureate

“Anyone serious about the systemic crisis we now face ought to read this updated version today. Korten captures the devastating and increasingly threatening dynamics of the corporate-dominated global system and has offered a vibrant, well-written, and important strategy for moving us beyond its destructive economic, social, and ecological logic.”
—Gar Alperovitz, author of What Then Must We Do?

“If every corporate leader who believes implicitly that consumerism is the path to happiness (and that rampant development is the road to global prosperity) were to read When Corporations Rule the World with an open mind, that world just might have a chance of becoming a better place for us all.”
—Toronto Globe and Mail