Fwd: Re: COG and Furturnet from David Korten

[Deborah Groban Olson <dgo@esoplaw.com>]

>>From pcdf@econet.org  Fri Jan  7 00:59:35 2000
>Date: Thu, 06 Jan 2000 21:49:23 -0800
>From: "David C. Korten" <pcdf@econet.org>
>Organization: PCDForum
>X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en] (Win98; U)
>X-Accept-Language: en
>To: Deborah Groban Olson <dgo@esoplaw.com>
>CC: "\"David C. Korten\" <pcdf@econet.org>" <postcorporate@futurenet.org>,
>        Homestead <Homestead@cog.kent.edu>
>Subject: Re: COG and Furturnet
>
>Deborah: I appreciate your work and your effort to draw me into your
>discussions. You had a keen and inquiring mind with many good questions.
>I dearly wish that I had the time to respond in kind. Unfortunately, I
>find myself pressed into rushing through my e-mails and correspondence
>trying to identify the things to which I must respond. Responding to
>requests from long time colleagues. And trying to do justice to my own
>organizations. Most of what I can say in response to your questions is
>covered in The Post-Corporate World. I continue to believe it is the key
>to transforming the corporation, but I have not found time to take my
>thoughts beyond what is spelled out in that book.
>
>I do hope in due course to spend some time on your web site. It sounds
>as though you have some very interesting and useful materials there.
>
>With best regards.
>
>David Korten
>
>Deborah Groban Olson wrote:
>> 
>> Dear David:
>> 
>>         I have read When Corporations Rule the World and am now
>> reading The Post-Corporate World. I am intrigued by, and generally
>> agree with, your proposed agenda. I see that you include employee
>> ownership as one mechanism of bringing control to a more local level.
>> At COG we are practitioners and academics, discussing theories,
>> methods and means of expanding the use of employee ownership to meet
>> many of the same goals you espouse. I am interested in your views on
>> how employee ownership fits into your proposed agenda, and even more
>> interested in your thoughts on a practical strategy to accomplish the
>> political and social goals you espouse.
>> 
>> 
>>         I also would like to broaden our discussions at COG by
>> including people from your network, and would be interested in
>> participating in the discussions on your network. We would like to
>> have mutual hot links between your website and ours.
>> 
>>         We would be very pleased to have you visit our website,
>> http://cog.kent.edu, to see if any of the discussions interest you.
>> The most intense one is the ownership discussion, in which the
>> economic and political theories of Kelsonian binary economics and
>> being discussed with conventionally trained economists. We also have a
>> partially finished matrix of the worlds's employee ownership laws and
>> policies, and a variety of discussions on existing and proposed
>> ownership policies.
>> 
>>         Do you see any way to couple a strategy towards the attainment
>> of your vision with the human tendency toward greed? Is the only way
>> to get where we want to go to appeal to the better nature of people?
>> 
>>         Is there a way to use the same type of carrot that is held out
>> for employee ownership, to accomplish the rest of your program? In the
>> US we have gotten to the level of approximately 10 million employee
>> owners via ESOPs by using voluntary tax incentives that make it
>> financially worthwhile for companies and their owners to share the
>> wealth. Additional millions (albeit, mostly highly skilled technology
>> workers) have become stockholders via the increased use of broad based
>> stock options. However, both of these ideas have become increasingly
>> popular throughout the world, and are having some impact on spreading
>> capital ownership.
>> 
>>         I look forward to your comments.
>> 
>> Best regards,
>> Deb Olson
>> 
>> Attorney Deborah Groban Olson
>> Chair
>> Captial Ownership Group
>> c/o Shared Equity Strategies, Inc.
>> 3163 Penobscot Bldg.
>> 645 Griswold St.
>> Detroit, MI 48226
>> (ph) 313/ 331-7821  or 964-2460
>> (f) 313/ 331-2567     or 964-4065
>> 
>> dgo@EsopLaw.com
>> www.EsopLaw.com
>
>-- 
>David C. Korten
>PCDForum
>pcdf@econet.org
>http://iisd.ca/pcdf
>