Daily Inspiration Quote by David Korten

Korten’s line is less a technical proposal than a moral diagnosis: big money has become too big to govern. By calling for “local currencies,” he’s reaching for a lever that feels almost quaint, but that’s the point. Local money is a stand-in for local accountability, a way to shrink the distance between who benefits from an economy and who pays for its side effects. The phrasing sets up a blunt opposition - “local” versus “global or European” - that frames supranational currency as not just impractical but culturally suspect: remote, bureaucratic, and insulated from lived consequences.

The subtext is a critique of scale. Global currencies don’t merely facilitate trade; they standardize priorities. They reward liquidity, mobility, and investor confidence, often at the expense of place-bound needs like wages, small businesses, and ecological limits. “European currencies” is a tell: it’s a nod to the euro era’s austerity politics, where monetary policy can feel like weather - something that happens to you, not something you shape. In that context, local currency becomes a democratic fantasy of control, a promise that communities can set terms rather than absorb them.

There’s also a strategic activist move here. Local currency talk functions as a wedge issue against corporate globalization: it makes the debate concrete and legible. You don’t need a PhD in monetary policy to understand the emotional appeal of money that circulates where you live. Whether it’s fully scalable is secondary; its real intent is to re-politicize economics by re-anchoring it in place.