Agenda for a New Economy

"If we look upstream for the ultimate cause of the economic crisis that is tearing so many lives apart, we find an illusion: the belied that money-a mere number created with a simple accounting entry that has no reality outside the human mind- is wealth. Because money represents a claim on so many things essential to our survival and well-being, we easily slip into evaluating economic performance in terms of the rate of financial return to money, essentially the rate at which money is growing, rather than by the economy's contribution to the long-term well-being of people and nature(1)."

As it were, one of my moms friends is out of town fo thanksgiving and she's having me take care of her house and her dogs. And as I was feeding the dogs I noticed a book she had about the economy. And since I really know nothing about the economy and our economic crisis I descided to pick it up and give a quick look over. So, I had just finished woking on my reasearch paper and was having a little bit of trouble thinking up an intoduction, then I took a short break and picked up this book. I probably wouldn't have ever expected the intoduction to have this sort of Dr. Phil sounding tone to it. And in some ways it didn't really relate to the rest of the chapter. Of course, there were the obvious key points made; this illusion that we create about money amounting to our wealth, I get that part, but then when they talk about how this illusion effects the well-being of not only people but of nature as well... I didn't really see were that part was coming from. But this sort of got me think, an introduction doesn't only talk about the key points of the rest of the paper or book, it also has to draw in an adience, convince said person to keep reading rather than put the book down. It didn't bother me that David C. Korten (the author) was talking about nature and it didn't even really bother me that he sounded like Dr. Phil.