Democratic Ownership

For-profit energy utilities exercise their political and economic power to roll back climate regulation. Transitioning energy utilities to public ownership could help dismantle barriers to climate action and catalyze the redesign of power generation and distribution. A movement could simultaneously harness the opportunity for more democratic engagement in public utilities to accelerate energy democracy, while also taking for-profit utilities into community hands to reorient their focus towards the public good. read more

Exploring strategies for combating displacement, expanding ownership, and building community wealth. read more

When the next financial crisis hits, we need to be ready for more than another round of no-strings-attached bailouts and weak regulations that corporate finance can roll back a few years later. It’s time to put permanent public ownership on the table as a policy option for how we rescue banks that are still too big to fail. read more

The solidarity economy is a global movement to build a just and sustainable economy. It is not a blueprint theorized by academics in ivory towers. Rather, it is an ecosystem of practices that already exist—some old, some new, some still emergent—that are aligned with solidarity economy values. There is already a huge foundation upon which to build. read more

If we want a new economy and real democracy, we need to tackle the media question. Laura Flanders explores what a people-powered 21st century media ecosystem could look like at scale. read more

The US economy’s deep systemic inequalities of income, wealth, power, and opportunity are part of global inequality trends, but US-style capitalism and public policy make inequalities more acute. What are the systemic interventions needed to deconcentrate wealth and move towards a more equal America? read more

Different forms of public ownership are advocated for different parts of the economy, but with an emphasis upon the implementation of democratic and decentered institutional frameworks. read more

Economic democracy is the foundation of any viable alternative to capitalism as we know it. It is the absence of democracy in our economies that is destroying democracy in our politics and allowing the expansion of the toxic forms of capitalism we are witnessing today. read more

A shift in paradigm from profit-driven economic growth to a steady-state economy will not be accomplished if we can only identify partners within our own “system silo.” read more