Based on excerpts from When Corporations Rule the World by David C. Korten
Kumarian Press and Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1995

Earth's three socio-ecological classes
OVERCONSUMERS
1.1 billion
> US$ 7,500 per capita
(Cars-meat-disposables)
 SUSTAINERS
3.3 billion
US$ 700 - 7,500 per capita
(Living lightly)
 MARGINALS
1.1 billion
< US$ 700 per capita
(Absolute deprivation)
Travel by car and air

Eat high fat, high calory meat-based diets

Drink bottled water and soft drinks

Use throw-away products and discard substantial wastes

Live in spacious, climate controlled, single family residences

Maintain image conscious wardrobe

Travel by bicycle and public surface transport

Eat healthy diets of grains vegetables and some meat

Drink clean water plus some tea and coffee

Use unpackaged goods and durables and recycle wastes

Live in modest naturally ventilated residences, with extended/multiple families

Wear functional clothing

Travel by foot, maybe donkey

Eat nutritionally inadequate diets

Drink contaminated water

Use local biomass and produce negligible wastes

Live in rudimentary shelters or in the open. Usually lack secure tenure

Wear second hand clothing or scraps

Based on Alan Durning's How Much Is Enough, Worldwatch Institute.

In the quest for economic growth, free market ideology has been embraced around the world with the fervor of a fundamentalist religious faith.

Assault of the Corporate Libertarians

Proponents of corporate libertarianism regularly pay homage to Adam Smith as their intellectual patron saint... Ironically, Smith's epic work The Wealth of Nations, which was first published in 1776, presents a radical condemnation of business monopolies sustained and protected by the state.

The Betrayal Of Adam Smith

We should be more than skeptical of an economic model that calls on us to give up all loyalty to place and community, says we must give free reign to securities fraud and corporate monopolies and deny workers the right to organize, and tells the poor to run faster and faster after a train they have no chance of catching—so that a few hundred thousand people can become multi-millionaires by destroying nature and depriving others of a decent means of livelihood.

Economic Myths

Communism called for all power to the state. Market capitalism calls for all power to the market—which in a globalized economy means rule by global corporations and financial markets. Both ideologies lead to the concentration of power in distant and unaccountable institutions.

Markets are for People

So sacred have growth and free trade become in our modern culture that only rarely do we find the courage to ask why they should be given precedence over the needs of people and nature?

An Economic System Out Of Control

Needless to say, it hasn't been easy to create an economic system able to produce 358 billionaires while keeping another 1.3 billion people living in absolute deprivation. It took long and dedicated effort by legions of economists, lawyers, and politicians on the payrolls of monied interests to design and implement such a system. It required a radical altering of the dominant culture and the restructuring of many important institutions. It will take a similarly committed effort on the part of civil society to design and put in place an economic system supportive of economic justice and environmental sustainability.

A Citizen Agenda to Tame Corporate Power, Reclaim Citizen Sovereignty, and Restore Economic Sanity

Based on documents from http://treesandpeople.lbutv.slu.se/welcome.html