Ours E-Book

Peter Barnes

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 185

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

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.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Endorsement

Title Page

Copyright

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Author’s Note

1 What is Universal Property?

What is it?

Notes

2 Why Markets Fail

The three market failures

Notes

3 Twenty-First-Century Realities

Notes

4 The Jobs of Universal Property

How universal property would work

A tour of the territory

Notes

5 Interlude for Imagination

Polyopoly

Gaiaopoly

Googleopoly

Notes

6 Universal Money Pumps

Universal property and taxes

Make polluters pay

Make oligopolies pay

Make speculators pay

Universal property and taxes, again

Brief case

Objections

Notes

7 Toll Gates at Nature’s Edges

Objections

Notes

8 The Politics of Universal Property

Prospects

What about scale?

Notes

9 The Adjacent Possible

Notes

Select Bibliography

Index

End User License Agreement

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Endorsement

Title Page

Copyright

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Author’s Note

Begin Reading

Select Bibliography

Index

End User License Agreement

List of Illustrations

Chapter 1

Figure 1

Where Today’s Wealth Comes From

Chapter 2

Figure 2

Raworth’s Doughnut

Chapter 3

Figure 3

How Our Economy Works

Figure 4

Phases of Market Development

Figure 5

The Two Economies

Chapter 4

Figure 6

Markets with Toll Gates and Money Pumps

Chapter 5

Figure 7

Figure 8

Temperature Self-Regulation in Daisyworld

Chapter 6

Figure 9

US Labor Productivity and Wages

Figure 10

Income Effects of Carbon Cap and Dividend

Figure 11

Lincoln’s Greenback

Chapter 7

Figure 12

The Market-Biosphere Boundary Today

Figure 13

How to Align Markets with Nature

Chapter 8

Figure 14

Income Security Stool

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“Lucid and persuasive.”

Robert Reich, Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and former US Secretary of Labor

“We are in a transformative crisis, when bold ideas suddenly seem obvious. Whether on the political right or left, thoughtful people should support the core idea of this exciting book – a trust fund for providing everybody with basic income security.”

Guy Standing, SOAS University of London

“Ours offers an elegant, market-based solution to inequality that is hiding in plain sight. It’s not subsidies or tax credits, just smart and fair management of wealth we inherit together. Thomas Paine pointed the way two centuries ago; Peter Barnes shows how to do it today.”

Chuck Collins, Institute for Policy Studies, author of The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Pay Millions to Hide Trillions

“Twenty years ago Peter Barnes asked Who Owns the Sky? and his answer inspired a new way of addressing the ownership of common assets. Now, by tackling head-on the inadequacy of present property rights, he is more comprehensive and just as inspiring. Both concrete and visionary, Ours points the way to a market economy that automatically generates income for everyone and simultaneously curtails its destruction of nature.”

David Morris, founder, Institute for Local Self-Reliance

“This long-awaited book is a distillation of wise thinking over decades. Barnes shows how unconstrained use of common assets leads inexorably to wide discrepancies in human wealth and degradation of the natural world. His carefully detailed solution is a new form of universal property, neither public nor private, to be held in trust for the benefit of all living beings in this and future generations.”

Susan Witt, Executive Director, Schumacher Center for a New Economics

Ours

The Case for Universal Property

Peter Barnes

polity

Copyright © Peter Barnes 2021

The right of Peter Barnes to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2021 by Polity Press

Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press101 Station LandingSuite 300Medford, MA 02155, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4484-4

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Barnes, Peter, 1942- author.Title: Ours : the case for universal property / Peter Barnes.Description: Cambridge, UK ; Medford, MA : Polity Press, 2021. | Includesbibliographical references and index. | Summary: “How we can rewireprivate property to work for people, not corporations”-- Provided by publisher.Identifiers: LCCN 2021000325 (print) | LCCN 2021000326 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509544820 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509544837 (paperback) | ISBN 9781509544844 (epub)Subjects: LCSH: Property. | Equality. Classification: LCC HB701 .B367 2021 (print) | LCC HB701 (ebook) | DDC 330.1/7--dc23LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021000325LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021000326

The publisher has used its best endeavors to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.

Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com

Acknowledgments

I could not have written this book without the continued love and support of my partner, Cornelia Durrant.

Others who inspired me with ideas and feedback include Marcellus Andrews, William Arnone, Joseph Blasi, David Bollier, Matthew Bruenig, Robert Costanza, Gus diZerega, Layla Forrest-White, Natalie Foster, Robert Friedman, John Fullerton, John Garn, Sam Hammond, Robert Hockett, Alex Howlett, Chris Hughes, Edward Kirshner, George Lakoff, Mary Lehmann, Wendy McLaughlin, Christopher Mackin, Ioana Marinescu, David Morris, Griffin Murphy, Janelle Orsi, George Owers, Lenore Paladino, Richard Parker, Brent Ranalli, Mike Sandler, Scott Santens, Jeremy Sherman, Fraser Murison Smith, Gus Speth, Guy Standing, Marshall Steinbaum, Steve Randy Waldman, Karl Widerquist, and David Sloan Wilson. In addition, I am grateful to Tom White and the Vedanta Society of Northern California for providing me with beautiful spaces to think and write.

I am also deeply indebted to a long line of original thinkers, including Thomas Paine, Henry George, John Maynard Keynes, Arthur Pigou, James Meade, E. F. Schumacher, Louis Kelso, Herman Daly, and James Lovelock. And special thanks to James Boyce for years of friendship and intellectual collaboration.

Finally, as always, I am deeply grateful to my extended family: Zachary Barnes Miller, Eli Barnes, Leyna Bernstein, Pam Miller, Valerie Barnes Jordan, and Jess Almendarez.

Foreword

James K. Boyce

Ours introduces a transformative idea whose time is coming: universal property.

Universal property is a birthright belonging equally to all. It is individual, it is inalienable, and it is perfectly egalitarian. Unlike private property, universal property cannot be bought and sold, owned by corporations, or concentrated in a few hands. Unlike state property, income derived from the use of universal property flows not to governments but directly to the people themselves.

As Peter Barnes explains in this lucidly written book, universal property can help address some of the gravest failures in the functioning of markets and governments alike: above all, the growth of extreme inequalities of wealth and income and the destabilization of the Earth’s climate by rampant carbon emissions. We urgently need innovative solutions that will reduce inequality without increasing carbon emissions, and reduce carbon emissions without increasing inequality.

In making the case for universal property, Barnes breaks from the well-worn state-versus-market divide that has delimited conventional political discourse in the past two centuries. He offers a fresh vision for the twenty-first century that draws on the pioneering works of earlier writers like Thomas Paine and Henry George, who also defied the ideological boxes that today we call “left” and “right.”

At a time when inequality has metastasized – when twenty-five men in the world own more wealth than the bottom 4.5 billion – it is crucial that we create a more level playing field for all. Universal property is one way to move in this direction.

At a time when climate destabilization poses grave risks to millions of people here and now, and even graver risks to future generations, it is crucial to curtail the amount of fossil carbon we dump into the air, while at the same time protecting the real incomes of working families from increases in the prices of energy. Treating the limited capacity of the biosphere to absorb emissions as universal property is one way to do this.

At a time when many nations are sharply polarized along lines of race, ethnicity, class, and conflicting partisan loyalties, it is crucial to find shared interests and values that can help to unite us. Universal property is one way to build this common ground.

Offering a bold path to a more equitable, sustainable, and sane society, Ours will appeal to a readership as wide and diverse as the ownership of universal property itself.

Author’s Note

Keep your eyes on the stars but your feet on the ground.

Theodore Roosevelt

Over the decades I’ve studied our economy from inside and out. As a journalist, I often wrote about it from the outside. Later, I co-founded businesses that probed the limits of capitalism from within. One was a worker-owned cooperative that installed solar heating systems in the 1970s. Another was a socially screened money-market fund called Working Assets, and a third was a progressive phone company called Credo Mobile.

In all these ventures, profit was a goal but not my primary one. My primary goal was to see whether, and by how much, businesses could shift, in a positive way, the behavior of our larger economy. Could they model good corporate behaviour that would then be emulated? Could they challenge the dominant algorithm of corporations, maximize return to shareholders? Could they non-trivially alter the flow of money through our economy?

Sadly, after twenty years, my conclusion was that, while socially minded companies can do good things, they can’t change our economy by much; they are swimming against a tide that is too strong. What we need is not a few companies voluntarily behaving slightly better, but a system that makes all companies behave a lot better, whether intentionally or not. But how, very practically, could such a system be designed and installed?

More broadly, the need to repair or replace capitalism is now indisputable. This is not just because of the financial meltdown of 2008 or the Covid collapse of 2020. It is first and foremost because of markets’ built-in systemic flaws – ever-widening inequality and disruption of nature. Those trajectories cannot continue. They must be turned in their opposite directions – toward greater equality and alignment with nature. But again, the practical question is how.

Ruminating on these questions, I came to the realization that something important is missing from markets. Modern humans are heirs to a vast trove of naturally and socially created wealth. This wealth legitimately belongs to all of us together and equally. It also comes with a duty to be preserved, if not enhanced, for future generations. The problem – and it’s a huge one – is that this co-inherited cornucopia is simultaneously ignored, stolen, and destroyed by markets as structured today.

This is more than an intellectual failure; it is a real-world failure with vast social and planetary consequences. But the point of this book is that it can be fixed. If, through property rights, we recognize co-inherited wealth as assets to be preserved and beneficially owned by all persons equally, we could transform markets, societies, and our planet simultaneously. Instead of destroying nature, markets would protect it; instead of widening inequality, markets would reduce it. Yes, markets would do those things. And that would change everything.

With this realization in mind, I began putting together a mental model of an economy that retains the dynamism and efficiency of markets, but adds a new kind of property rights for large chunks of our co-inherited wealth. In this model, we would each inherit equal non-transferable shares of that co-inherited wealth and surrender them when we die. We would also co-inherit a legal obligation, administered by trustees, to preserve our joint inheritances for future generations. What I came to see was that this kind of property regime could, at scale, make markets work for everyone, including nature and future generations.

Let me make four quick points before you read on. First, the book will invite you to think differently about our economy than you probably have before. So be willing to take off your old economic glasses and put on a new pair.

Second, I’ve written the book for informed general readers, not experts. For that reason, I often skimp on details in order to keep the main argument clear. If you want more depth on a particular topic, the endnotes and bibliography can lead you to it.

Third, although the ideas expressed in this book can apply to all modern economies, they are a product of my experience in the United States, and are perhaps more applicable in Anglophone countries than elsewhere.

And finally, though I began writing this book long before the Covid pandemic, the ideas expressed here are even more pertinent now than ever.

Peter BarnesPoint Reyes Station, California

1What is Universal Property?

Capitalism as we know it has two egregious flaws: it relentlessly widens inequality and destroys nature. Its “invisible hand,” which is supposed to transform individual self-seeking into widely shared well-being, too often doesn’t, and governments can’t keep up with the consequences. For billions of people around the world, the challenge of our era is to repair or replace capitalism before its cumulative harms become irreparable.

Among those who would repair capitalism, policy ideas abound. Typically, they involve more government regulations, taxes, and spending. Few, if any, would fundamentally alter the dynamics of markets themselves. Among those who would replace capitalism, many would nationalize a good deal of private property and expand government’s role in regulating the rest.

This book explores the terrain midway between repairing and replacing capitalism. It envisions a hybrid market economy in which private property and businesses are complemented by universal property and fiduciary trusts, whose beneficiaries are future generations and all living persons equally.

Economists wrangle over monetary, fiscal, and regulatory policies but pay little attention to property rights. Their models all assume that property rights remain just as they are forever. But this needn’t and shouldn’t be the case. My premise is that capitalism’s most grievous flaws are, at root, problems of property rights and must be addressed at that level.

Property rights in modern economies are grants by governments of permission to use, lease, sell, or bequeath specific assets – and just as importantly, to exclude others from doing those things. The assets involved can be tangible, like land and machinery, or intangible, like shares of stock or songs.

Taken as a whole, property rights are akin to gravity: they curve economic space-time. Their tugs and repulsions are everywhere, and nothing can avoid them. And, just as water flows inexorably toward the ocean, so money, goods and power flow inexorably toward property rights. Governments can no more staunch these flows than King Canute could halt the tides.

That said, the most oft-forgotten fact about property rights is that they do not exist in nature; they are constructs of human minds and societies. The assets to which they apply may exist in nature, but the rights of humans to do things with them, or prevent others from doing them, do not. Their design and allocation are entirely up to us.

In this book, I take our existing fabric of property rights as both a given and merely the latest iteration in an evolutionary process that has been and will continue to be altered by living humans. Future iterations of the fabric will therefore be a product not only of the past, but also of our imagination and political will in the future. And, while eliminating existing property rights is difficult, adding new ones is less so.

Before we talk about universal property, we need to look at co-inherited wealth, for that is what universal property is based on.

A full inventory of co-inherited wealth would fill pages. Consider, for starters, air, water, topsoil, sunlight, fire, photosynthesis, seeds, electricity, minerals, fuels, cultivable plants, domesticable animals, law, sports, religion, calendars, recipes, mathematics, jazz, libraries, and the internet. Without these gifts and many more, our lives would be incalculably poorer.

Universal property does not involve all of those wonderful things. Rather, it focuses on a subset: the large, complex natural and social systems that support market economies, yet are excluded from representation in them. This subset includes natural ecosystems like the Earth’s atmosphere and watersheds, and collective human constructs such as our legal, monetary and communications systems. All these systems are enormously valuable, in some cases priceless. Not only do our daily lives depend on them; they add prodigious value to markets, enabling corporations and private fortunes to grow to gargantuan sizes. Yet the systems were not built by anyone living today; they are all gifts we inherit together. So it is fair to ask, who are their rightful beneficial owners?

There are, essentially, three possibilities: no one, government, or all of us together equally. This book is about what happens if we choose the third option and create property rights to make it real.

Let’s start with an obvious question: how much is this subset of co-inherited wealth worth? While it is impossible to put a precise number on this, estimates have been made. In 2000, the late Nobel economist Herbert Simon stated, “If we are very generous with ourselves, we might claim that we ‘earned’ as much as one fifth of [our present wealth]. The rest [eighty percent] is patrimony associated with being a member of an enormously productive social system, which has accumulated a vast store of physical capital and an even larger store of intellectual capital.”1

Simon arrived at his estimate by comparing incomes in highly developed economies with those in earlier stages of development. The huge differences are due not to the rates of economic activity today – indeed, young economies often grow faster than mature ones – but to the much larger differences in institutions and know-how accumulated over decades. A few years later, World Bank economists William Easterly and Ross Levine confirmed Simon’s math. They conducted a detailed study of rich and poor countries and asked what made them different. They found that it wasn’t natural resources or the latest technologies. Rather, it was their social assets: the rule of law, property rights, a well-organized banking system, economic transparency, and a lack of corruption. All these collective assets played a far greater role than anything else.2

The preceding analysis doesn’t include ecosystems gifted to us by nature, but Robert Costanza and a worldwide team of scientists and economists took a crack at that in 1997. They found that natural ecosystems generate a global flow of benefits – including fresh water supply, soil formation, nutrient cycling, waste treatment, pollination, raw materials and climate regulation – worth between $25 trillion and $87 trillion a year.3 That compares with a gross world product of about $80 trillion.

These calculations suggest that we are greatly confused about where our wealth today comes from. We think it comes from the fevered efforts of today’s businesses and workers, but in fact they merely add icing to a cake that was baked long ago.

The calculations also suggest that we should devote far more attention to co-inherited wealth than we currently do. Nowadays, economics textbooks don’t even mention such wealth, much less its magnitude. Nor do Wall Street analysts or financial reporters. This is a grievous oversight that greatly impedes our understanding of our economy. It is like trying to comprehend the universe without taking dark matter into account, or analyzing a business while ignoring over eighty percent of its assets.

Figure 1 Where Today’s Wealth Comes From

Paying more attention to co-inherited wealth, however, is just a first step. If we want to change market outcomes, we need to functionally connect this wealth to real-time economic activity. And to do that, we need property rights, managers and beneficial owners.