"Money is a mechanism for control"
About this Quote
Korten’s line lands like a stripped-down diagnostic: money isn’t just a neutral tool for exchange, it’s infrastructure for obedience. Coming from an activist who has spent decades criticizing corporate power and “growth” economics, the intent is to yank the reader out of the comforting idea that markets are natural and apolitical. If money can be created, allocated, and withheld, then it functions less like a measuring tape and more like a set of levers.
The subtext is about design. Who gets liquidity, credit, and forgiveness - and who gets penalties, fees, and precarity - isn’t an accident of human nature. It’s policy, law, and institutional habit wearing the costume of inevitability. When wages stagnate, debts balloon, and basic needs (housing, healthcare, education) are priced as luxury goods, “choice” starts to look like choreography. You can technically say no, but the cost of refusal is engineered to be punishing.
The phrase “mechanism for control” also implies a feedback system: money shapes behavior by rewarding compliance (jobs, loans, status) and punishing dissent (unemployment, exclusion, insolvency). It’s a reminder that power today often travels through spreadsheets rather than batons. That’s why Korten’s critique targets not only corporations but the financial architecture behind them: banking, shareholder primacy, lobbying, and the quiet ability of capital to dictate what gets built and what gets abandoned.
It works rhetorically because it’s blunt, almost chillingly simple - an activist slogan that doubles as a framework for reading everyday life.
The subtext is about design. Who gets liquidity, credit, and forgiveness - and who gets penalties, fees, and precarity - isn’t an accident of human nature. It’s policy, law, and institutional habit wearing the costume of inevitability. When wages stagnate, debts balloon, and basic needs (housing, healthcare, education) are priced as luxury goods, “choice” starts to look like choreography. You can technically say no, but the cost of refusal is engineered to be punishing.
The phrase “mechanism for control” also implies a feedback system: money shapes behavior by rewarding compliance (jobs, loans, status) and punishing dissent (unemployment, exclusion, insolvency). It’s a reminder that power today often travels through spreadsheets rather than batons. That’s why Korten’s critique targets not only corporations but the financial architecture behind them: banking, shareholder primacy, lobbying, and the quiet ability of capital to dictate what gets built and what gets abandoned.
It works rhetorically because it’s blunt, almost chillingly simple - an activist slogan that doubles as a framework for reading everyday life.
Quote Details
| Topic | Money |
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