Ours

The Case for Universal Property

Peter Barnes

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781509544837, 9781509544820
• eBook ISBN: 9781509544844
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Economic Policy
• Index: Economics

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 contents

• Cover
• Endorsement
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• 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
• Select Bibliography
• Index
• End User License Agreement