We think our wealth today comes from productive corporations and workers, but they merely add icing to a cake baked long ago. In this provocative book, Peter Barnes argues that most of today’s wealth is co-inherited from nature and past human efforts, not individually earned. If some of that co-inherited wealth were placed in trust for each of us, living and yet-to-be born – creating what Barnes calls ‘universal property’ – capitalism would be fundamentally transformed.
As Barnes notes, capitalism as we know it has two tragic flaws: it relentlessly widens inequality and destroys nature. Both flaws are a result of one-sided property rights that favor capital over everything else. Adding universal property to the current property mix would create a market economy in which businesses prosper, nature’s limits are respected, and a large middle class thrives. This smart and concise book could set the agenda for a post-COVID world.
Table of Content
Acknowledgments
Foreword by James K. Boyce
Author’s Note
1 What Is Universal Property?
2 Why Markets Fail
3 Twenty-First Century Realities
4 The Jobs Of Universal Property
5 Interlude for Imagination
6 Universal Money Pumps
7 Toll Gates at Nature’s Edges
8 The Politics of Universal Property
9 The Adjacent Possible
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Peter Barnes is a socially responsible entrepreneur and writer about capitalism. His previous books include Who Owns the Sky?, Capitalism 3.0, and With Liberty and Dividends For All.
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