Event Summary: Democratizing Wealth and a Sustainable Future

On Wednesday, the Asset Building Program was pleased to host Gar Alperovitz for a conversation about his new book, “What then Must We Do? Democratizing Wealth and Building a Community-Sustaining Economy from the Ground Up.”. A recording of the event is available here.

Alperovitz is a political economist and co-founder of the Democracy Collaborative, an organization based at the University of Maryland working to develop innovative community development policies that promote shared wealth ownership. As introduced by Asset Building Program director Reid Cramer, Aplerovitz is a “big thinker,” whose work on democratic access to wealth and capital has the potential to shift our thinking about economic equality and shared prosperity.

Alperovitz characterizes his book as “accessible,” and informed by his research at the Democracy Collaborative, in government, and as an academic coming from the field of progressive economics. He explains a shift that occurred in his thinking during which he began to see the limits of a traditional progressive economics approach to addressing growing inequality. He draws connections between a widening wealth gap and other social and economic ills—an ever-increasing rate of incarceration, persistent climate change—to suggest that the old capitalistic system is on the decline. As wealth concentrates, he argues, so too does power, which creates instability. He draws on a range of examples of shared or democratic ownership to chart a new path forward.

Specifically, Alperovitz highlights the potential for public-owned banking institutions, worker-owned companies, public health insurance programs, and non-profit land trusts to dramatically re-envision the community development field and more effectively build shared economic prosperity in the 21st century. He draws on the work happening at the state and local level: Cleveland, Ohio, for example, has incubated several of the concepts Alperovitz and the Democracy Collaborative view as most promising. Localized models of community ownership have the tendency to grow and shift thinking about the way our economic systems are set up. Ultimately, while some of the new models draw on public ownership or create socialized systems, he says the approaches taken are highly individualized and thus “very American.”

While he continues to identify as a progressive, Alperovitz agrees with the Chicago School economists on their assessment of the effectiveness of trying to break up banks (although he says it’s a “nasty argument”). As he explains, conservative economists believe that banks that are too large to regulate are also too big to break up, because they will simply regroup themselves, thereby becoming stronger and more consolidated. Instead, making banks public would be one strategy to curb the threat posed by consolidated corporate power. Alperovitz draws on his conversations with young activists across the country for inspiration and ideas and expresses optimism for new models of shared wealth to emerge. While acknowledging that decay of old systems has the potential to give way to chaos, he is optimistic that we're in an important moment to build an alternative system from the bottom up and create a new political agenda.

Audience participants asked Alperovitz to comment on the potential for new systems to be inclusive and address historic forms of discrimination, the role the press and media have played in framing or neglecting to cover the decline of our old economic system, and the relationship between community ownership and movements to promote environmental sustainability. The question and answer session starts around the half-way mark. You can also check out tweets from the event @AssetsNAF or with the hashtag #democratizewealth. Also be sure to check out CFED’s summary of the event on their blog here.