As I noted last week, the cooperative model is an excellent way for people to meet common needs. Instead of maximizing investment returns, a co-op operates to maximize member benefit.

Cooperatives strengthen their communities because of their local ownership, control, and operations. Profits remain in the local economy. When members patronize their consumer cooperative, for example, they’re supporting employment and business activity in their home communities.

The structure of co-ops – one person, one vote, electing leaders to oversee management – is a model of economic democracy, and also of political democracy.

The cooperative universe includes user (or consumer) co-ops (members use the service the co-op produces, like retail, housing, utilities, or credit), producer co-ops (members produce goods and share the purchasing of inputs, marketing, etc.), service co-ops (offering elder and child care, medical services, etc.), and worker co-ops, in which workers are directly manufacturing a product and the workplace is cooperatively run.

In the US, about 130 million people belong to cooperatives. These are mostly consumer and producer co-ops. Around 7,000 people nationwide are part of worker co-ops. In places like Cleveland, Ohio, co-ops are thriving. Grocery stores, cooperative housing, producer and consumer cooperatives, farmers’ cooperatives, all contribute to the remarkable growth of this sector of the economy.

And in many other parts of the world, co-ops are intimately integrated into economic development as worker-owned businesses. The go-to model, of course, the one everyone talks about, is Mondragon.

Located in the Basque region of Catalan, Spain, Mondragon is the largest such system in the world, with over 200 distinct enterprises employing close to 100,000 people.

In an introduction to the book Reflections, Nathan Schneider writes, “The mighty Mondragon enterprises of manufacturing, retail, and finance carry out a model, an entrepreneurial scheme. The pay ratios, the mutual investment, the job protections, the mechanisms of self-governance - there is much for modelers to examine and export. Mondragon even has its own university.”

“The cooperative idea was neither crony capitalism nor state communism,” Schneider continues. “It blended personal responsibility and solidarity… Economic democracy is as much a matter of culture and spirit as any economics.”

American scholar David Herrara crafted a poem from the voices of workers he interviewed at the Mondragon cooperatives:

I’ll never be rich, I’ll never be poor. I’ll have all I need and most that I want. And I’ll have enough. At least I will know the work that I do will not just result in having a few who already are rich get even richer!

Executive pay is set at no more than nine times that of the lowest-paid employee, materializing the sense of fairness and equity in Mondragon’s ideals. Of course, Mondragon has its challenges and has been impacted by its effort to compete at a global level. Writer Roar Bjonnes notes that, at times, Mondragon resembles conventional capitalism in its tendency toward hierarchical leadership. Participants can feel like they are rubber-stamping management’s ideas rather than being engaged in true co-creation, he notes. The idea of ‘lean production’ rather than ‘radical participation’ has slowly filtered into some of the management philosophy.

I’m inspired by much of the work being done at Mondragon. But it’s also important to remember that a cooperative economy exists to serve its members and the local society, not the other way around.

To get a more rounded understanding of the range of cooperative styles, we might look to Emilia Romagna in northern Italy. In this region of 4.5 million people near the university city of Bologna, two out of every three residents are co-op members. Together, they produce around 30 percent of the region’s GDP.

The system thrives to such a degree that an Italian dairy cooperative recently raised more than $6 million in financing, journalist John Duda notes, by issuing “bonds backed by aging wheels of Parmesan cheese.”

There is a tradition of collective support and work here that goes back to the 1850s, rooted in a rich agricultural history. Historical factors of self-governance and a reliance on small-scale industries have also played into the nurturing of cooperative values.

Emilia-Romagna differs from Mondragon in important ways. In Italy, they are more about building intertwined cooperative systems rather than large, monolithic businesses. A more decentralized system keeps the values of collective welfare close to heart, tapping into energy at many different levels, a web of mutual support.

This is not to say that all cooperative enterprises in the region are small-scale. They can grow to be quite large, but remain nestled within a network of decentralized businesses. The largest retail supermarket chain in Italy, Coop, claims close to 20 percent of market share. It’s owned by 7.4 million consumer members across the country.

Cooperatives, of course, need support to develop, especially in their initial phases, and Italian government policy has been favorable in this regard. Co-ops are specifically mentioned in the Italian constitution, which helps them to raise capital. Regulations for co-ops are clearly defined, and co-ops are eligible for government subsidies. Thanks to Italian law, co-ops can easily procure loans from members, and some undistributed profits remain exempt from taxation.

A 1971 law exempted co-ops from some banking limitations. As a result, Coop was able to raise a good deal of financing from its many members, who each contributed a small amount.

John Duda also remarks upon the strong emphasis on service coops in Emilia Romagna, which work with the elderly, and offer childcare and other services. They are workplaces “built around compassion—not profit—and are designed with the interests of workers and those receiving care in mind. Here, cooperatives are community institutions that humanize social services in a way that neither state nor market mechanisms alone could.”

The cooperative systems of Mondragon and Emilia Romagna represent successful, if slightly different, constellations of cooperative structure. We see through their lenses both the achievements and the challenges co-ops represent in achieving economic democracy, and offering dignity to working people. They are also, to varying degrees, about relationships. How things are done is as important as what is done. Producing trust is as important as producing useful goods.

References:

Reflections: Insights from the Founder of the Mondragon Cooperatives (SolidarityHall, 2022).

https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2016/07/05/the-italian-place-where-co-ops-drive-the-economy-and-most-people-are-members

https://prout.info/the-mondragon-cooperatives-how-democratic-and-how-local-are-they/

There is now widespread recognition of the need for more democracy in the workplace. People are fed up with the oligarchical, hierarchical, patriarchal structures that have bled our economies and societies dry for so long. I believe cooperatives represent the workstyle of the future.

On a fundamental level, cooperatives create a more just distribution of wealth, while allowing members to make decisions democratically. Employees who own their own workplace determine their own future. They’re also great for building relationships.

Farmers have long known the benefits of pooling their resources and working together. Many folks are starting bicycle or car cooperatives to share transportation these days. Consumers recognize the implicit value of collective structures like housing and food co-ops. And at the most basic level, things like gardening co-ops, to share tools and skills, are growing.

This is because the cooperative model is an effective way for people to meet common needs. Instead of operating to maximize investment returns, a co-op operates to maximize member benefit. This turns the current economic driver on its head – not profit, but well-being, becomes the motivating force of the economy. Of course, there needs to be a certain amount of profit in any business enterprise, including co-ops. But in this approach, profit is kept at reasonable and sustainable levels.

Let me just address the argument that huge profits are necessary because they are the only way to raise enough money to invest in research and development, and develop new products, medicines, and technology. In reality, research can be supported in many ways, including open-source development and public funding. In fact, when massive profits are not going into the pockets of shareholders, more money is available for R and D.

Cooperatives diversify and strengthen their communities because of their local ownership, control, and operations. Profits tend to remain in the local economy because they are returned to members, or reinvested. When members patronize their local cooperative, they’re supporting employment and business activity within their own communities. This is all in line with the surge we are seeing in localism and strengthening local economies.

Members’ active participation in a cooperative can also benefit a community’s civic life. The empowering experience of self-determination through cooperation provides a perspective and set of skills that can be applied to other community activities.

Co-ops in general pay their workers above what they would get paid in non-co-ops. I spoke with Shawn Berry, director of LIFT economy, who consults with businesses to help them become cooperatives or worker-owned. He told me that worker co-ops generally offer better benefits and pay, tend to source locally, have better supply chain practices, and tend to be ecological. There’s definitely not going to be poison dumped into the stream out back of the factory.

A big transition to the worker-owner model is currently happening in the business world, Berry said. Baby boomer business owners are all retiring; it’s called the silver tsunami.

Berry and I talked about how having work that allows you to embrace your deepest human values, needs, and aspirations is a powerful thing. He noted how many business workforces are famously disengaged. You get to work, you send a few emails, then there’s a huge peak of wasting time on the internet, people go to lunch, they come back and send a few emails, then there’s a huge website spike again.

“If you’re a worker-owner and you like your job, and you’re empowered to control some of the ways you’re doing it, your workspace, the people you’re working with, then you’re incentivized,” he said. “You can actually bring together your gifts for humanity. You’re creating value, and you’re meeting needs. Also, you’re engaging in your personal growth and development at work.”

How can we move more quickly toward a more cooperative-based economy?

It’s challenging, says Berry. But it’s emergent. “My work has been about how we create those opportunities for people to have direct lived experiences of economic democracy,” he said. Offering aspirational values in the workplace – being loving, being accountable – is a first step.

“Humans are incredibly intelligent,” Berry said. “If you’re not empowering me to have agency and control over my sphere of expertise and influence, then you’re making a stupid organization. This idea that certain men are more intelligent than the entire decision chain below them is absolutely wrong. The good news is I don’t think the shift is too far away.”

Co-ops can work well on quite small scales, too. While researching my book, I visited a dairy cooperative at Dancing Rabbit ecovillage in Missouri.

The co-op there requires significant ongoing work every day and is managed in a decentralized system. The work can be categorized into a few areas: animal care, pasture management and cheese/product making, and sales/purchasing. Usually there are one or more persons who hold bottom-line responsibility in each of these arenas.

“We’ve had meetings more or less regularly over the years, currently something like once per month,” co-op member Mae told me. “Routine management decisions are made pretty unilaterally by the person/people who do the most work in that area, things like where and when to graze which group of animals, milking schedule, what cheese to make, how to get the product to market.”

New members pay a nonrefundable buy-in, sort of a training fee. Since they acquired Sugar (their first cow, in 2019) they’ve made enough money to cover expenses and pay off outside debt on the barn. All members get as much dairy as they want. The distribution of this has been informal, with some tracking but no agreements on quotas or quantities.

“Because we’re pretty small-scale,” Mae said, “marketing is a delicate balancing act of trying to move what we have, while setting accurate expectations around seasonal fluctuations in supply.”

But the co-op is growing.

Next week we’ll look at how scaling up has worked for cooperatives, specifically several of the world’s largest cooperative systems.

(This week’s substack draws on material from my forthcoming book, “Strength for What Lies Ahead: Restoring Balance in a Time of Crisis.”)

Travelling gives one a sense of the workings of the world. Indirectly, we observe where things are imported from, the amount of foreign businesses and many other subtle nods at the fact that we live in a fragile system. The old adage of “Not to give man a fish but, teach man to fish” is what shows us we had and still have an instinct to create sustainable living systems.

On my travels through Germany, Luxembourg and France, to Spain, I saw day after day how costs fluctuated depending on the origin of the product, not whether it was in season or not in the local production areas. You’d think that the local fruit and veg would be cheaper than that imported from half way around the world… but it’s actually the exact opposite. Adding the costs of a plane ride, the agricultural workers wages, the costs of production, international manufacturing/packaging, national transport, salespeople’s salaries, overhead costs from the point of sale, somehow makes a product cheaper? How?!

In my head, it’s clear, local resources that support the local economy should logically be the cheaper option because two thirds of the costs detailed above are simply not present. Luckily, Prout is also very direct on this point.

- Every region’s resources should first benefit its own people, through local production and local employment. -

Prout goes further than having this as a general principle, it lays out a clear economic logic for why and how this should happen.

At the heart of Progressive Utilisation Theory (Prout) is the idea of maximum utilisation. This doesn’t just mean “use resources efficiently”, it means using “resources in a way that creates the maximum benefit for the local population.”. So instead of exporting raw materials, Prout strongly advocates turning raw materials into finished or semi-finished goods locally and building local industries around those resources. This works because Prout understands that raw materials usually have lower economic value, while processed goods have a higher economic value. Plus, if we export raw materials, we also export potential jobs.

Prout sees a very clear connection between lowering local production and lowering local job opportunities which in turn creates unsustainable economic dependency. However, when resources are processed locally, jobs are created across the entire value chain from extraction, to processing, to manufacturing, to distribution. There is also an advantageous passing on of skills that are developed within the community and people will become more economically engaged, lowering economic exclusion. Luckily, Prout sees full employment as a primary objective of any healthy economy - and I echo this.

My last Substack spoke of the importance of local people having first rights over the natural and economic resources of their area. Their land, water, forests, and minerals should be used for their local benefit first. It outlined the importance of preventing large external actors like corporations or distant governments from being able to exploit resources at the expense of any local communities. And finally, that decentralised and locally driven economic planning is imperative to achieving this. All of these apply here, too.

Prout, here, once again identifies and provides solutions to a very common global pattern - inconsiderately exporting raw materials is a form of economic exploitation, even if it appears “normal” in global trade.

But wait, does that mean each town or village will have to have its own heavy industry to support itself? Reliable as always, Prout proposes that more small-scale businesses, cooperatives, and resource appropriate industry should be prioritised. This ensures that jobs are widely distributed, workers have ownership and dignity in their work and that production remains sustainable and adaptable at the global and local level.

Prout is an advocate of self-reliance executed in a way that does not push people into acting in isolation. It cleverly suggests that each region should aim to meet its basic needs locally (food, clothing, housing & essential goods), but without completely cutting off global trade. Instead we should trade what we cannot produce efficiently and produce locally all that we can. This way a balanced system can be created of local economic strength with healthy global cooperation.

I say, economic systems should serve their people. All else is illogical.

In recent weeks, we’ve explored the foundations of a localised economy: why it matters, who the “local people” are, why they must make their own economic decisions, and how local resources can be mobilised for local employment.

But how does this actually happen in practice?

The concept of “block-level planning” was articulated by Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar as the practical engine of economic decentralisation. A “block” might be a cluster of villages, a town and its surrounding land, or a defined ecological region. The key is that it reflects real conditions, not arbitrary political boundaries.

Block-level planning is a bottom-up approach. Economic planning should begin at the smallest meaningful socio-economic unit – small enough to be understood deeply, but large enough to sustain an economy.

Centralised systems try to manage entire countries from a distance. But they cannot see the soil composition of a valley, the seasonal rhythms of a river, or the skills of a community. As a result, there is fatal misalignment: industries without infrastructure, crops without markets, or jobs without people trained to do them.

What Gets Planned?

Block-level planning is about aligning four essential factors:

1. Cost of production

2. Productivity

3. Purchasing capacity

4. Collective necessity

1. Cost of Production

In centralised economies, prices are often dictated by distant markets and large buyers, leaving producers disconnected from the real costs of their own labour, inputs, and tools. This results in chronic underpricing, hidden losses, and long-term instability for local producers. For example the cost of agricultural products are largely dictated by the supermarket monopolies. Working backwards to the point of production, farmers get a fraction of the revenue which is not well related to the actual cost of production.

Block-level planning restores this link by organising production, often through cooperatives, so that true costs are calculated locally and prices reflect real conditions, ensuring viability and fair returns.

2. Productivity

Centralised systems frequently suppress productivity by misaligning investment, labour, and resources leading to idle capacity, underused land, or capital flowing out of the region instead of circulating within it. Production is driven by external profit logic rather than local potential and need.

A localised, block-level economy reinvests surplus within the community, aligns production with available resources, and prioritises full employment, allowing the economy to develop its own self-sustaining, expanding productive capacity.

3. Purchasing Capacity

In centralised economies, wealth often concentrates while wages stagnate, weakening the ability of ordinary people to actually buy what is produced. This creates a disconnect where economic “growth” does not translate into improved living standards. The very people who are building local homes cannot even afford to buy them themselves.
Block-level planning focuses directly on increasing purchasing capacity through stable prices, local employment, and circulation of wealth, ensuring that economic activity translates into real access to goods and services.

4. Collective Necessity

Centralised planning and markets frequently produce mismatches, overproducing non-essential goods while underproviding basic needs like food, housing, or infrastructure. Decisions are made at a distance, without sensitivity to local realities.
Block-level planning begins with local needs, ensuring that essential goods and services are prioritised first, and that development aligns with both present and future requirements of the community.

Planning at the Right Scale

A key strength of block-level planning is scale. It operates at a level where problems are visible, people are known, resources are identifiable, and decisions are accountable

Local people can meaningfully contribute because they understand the terrain, the culture, and the constraints. Leadership emerges from within the community, rather than being imposed from outside.

Crucially, local planning does not necessitate isolation. Not everything can be solved at the local level.

Block-level planning distinguishes between two types of challenges:

Intra-block planning – this focuses on what a single block can handle independently:

• Local food production

• Small and medium industries

• Basic services and employment

Inter-block planning – this addresses issues that cross boundaries:

• Water systems and river management

• Transport and communication networks

• Energy production

• Environmental protection

PROUT recognises that a healthy system requires centralisation and localisation depending on the practical reality.

Block-level Planning in Action

A leading example of block-level planning is the Cova de Beira Converge in Portugal.

The initiative began by selecting a bioregion of three municipalities – Covilhã, Fundão, and Belmonte, with around 80,000 people – chosen for its shared geography, fertile land, and cultural identity rather than political boundaries. From 2020, organisers carried out a participatory diagnostic process, conducting interviews with 30+ local organisations (including municipalities, farmer groups, and universities) alongside community sessions and outreach in local markets. This revealed key issues such as lack of cooperation, ageing farmers, underused agricultural land, and weak local supply chains.

In response, the movement launched in 2022 with a large public gathering, and has since held monthly assemblies rotating across towns and villages. These gatherings combine discussion, skill-sharing, and cultural activities, and have led to the formation of working groups in agriculture, education, environment, culture, and social welfare. From these groups, practical initiatives have emerged: seed-saving projects, rubbish collection campaigns, partnerships with an agricultural school with 300 hectares of land, and early-stage efforts to supply local school canteens with locally grown food.

To give these initiatives an economic structure, the movement recently established an integral cooperative (a network of varied cooperatives), with founding members including farmers, cultural organisers, and local associations. Its initial focus is building a local food system by connecting small-scale producers with schools, restaurants, and households. By linking participatory planning with cooperative enterprise, the project is gradually transforming a fragmented rural economy into a coordinated, self-organising system rooted in local needs and capacities.

Planning for Economic Democracy

Block-level planning offers a practical route toward economic democracy by shifting decision-making from distant centres to the communities that actually live with the consequences. In the case of Cova de Beira Converge, this means that farmers, educators, municipalities, and citizens are no longer passive recipients of policy, but active co-creators of the local economy through assemblies, working groups, and cooperative structures. By linking participatory diagnosis with concrete institutions like the integral cooperative, planning becomes directly tied to production, employment, and everyday needs. In this way, economic activity is progressively reorganised around local accountability, shared resources, and collective well-being rather than external control or market abstraction.

Twenty-five years ago, I was living in the city of Philadelphia, engaged in a two-year study of the city’s Empowerment Zone project. Launched by the federal government in 1994, the Empowerment Zone and Enterprise Community (EZ) program was a community-led revitalization strategy designed to uplift the nation’s most economically distressed urban and rural areas. In the words of Bill Clinton at the time, “What we want to do is to empower people at the community level to make the most of their own lives by solving their problems, and have the Federal Government be a support to them for a change and not a burden.”

The U.S. government had tried this before. Thirty years earlier, Lyndon B. Johnson created the Model Cities program as part of his War on Poverty initiative. These government-funded “community-based” approaches were often plagued by political infighting between local governments and communities, insufficient resources, limited scope, bureaucratic overload, and challenges related to community representation and support. The question for me, then, was whether a program such as the EZ could truly empower communities to improve their economic conditions—that is, to create wealth for their residents. And if so, how?

The Philadelphia Empowerment Zone was particularly compelling because it was the most community-led among the 40 EZs originally designated (and living there was an added benefit). My background in international community development had taught me that bottom-up programs led by community residents are often the most successful and sustainable. Residents understand their problems, recognize their resources, and can create visions that are inspiring, mobilizing, and practical. This made the EZ a promising example of how communities, given the opportunity and resources, might take control of their own economies.

From 2000 to 2002, I walked the streets of Philadelphia’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods, interviewing dozens of residents, speaking with local business owners, meeting government officials, and reviewing program reports and data. While the EZ program addressed physical, social, and economic needs, my research focused specifically on community economic development. Typically, local economic development in the U.S. is managed by city departments that support local businesses and attempt to attract large corporations or franchises to create jobs and generate tax revenue. In contrast, community economic development is driven by residents themselves, who organize economic activity to meet local needs and create opportunities.

It was a rich and revealing experience. I attended meetings of Community Financial Institutions established through the EZ program, where local financial officers deliberated over which businesses should receive loans. I spoke with city program staff about the challenges of mobilizing residents. I met nonprofit leaders—many not local residents—who had long served these communities. Local business owners described their efforts to hire residents, including those with disabilities or criminal records. Representatives from community boards (the Philadelphia EZ worked across three neighborhoods, each with its own board) expressed frustration with weak program structure, internal conflicts, and limited capacity building. I even visited a new urban fish farm in an industrial park and learned about the difficulties of preparing residents to become cooperative owners.

I won’t go into further detail, but it’s important to remember that the EZ was a program—with a defined beginning, end, and set of resources. After several extensions, it concluded in December 2025, after 30 years. While difficult to measure precisely, billions of dollars led to some job creation, business support, and infrastructure improvements. However, it is doubtful that poverty rates in the target communities—some exceeding 50%—changed significantly since 1965. These neighborhoods remain deeply impoverished.

The experiences of the EZ, along with other efforts to shift economic decision-making to local residents, offer several important lessons:

1. True empowerment requires genuine participation, not token involvement. It is not enough for residents to simply attend meetings. To exercise real power, they must become the planners and decision-makers. Local economic planning boards should have the authority to design and implement both short- and long-term strategies.

2. Communities need preparation and support. Most are not initially equipped for complex economic planning and will require training and guidance. Even capable residents may lack experience in collaboration, economic analysis, and community needs assessment. Capacity building is essential.

3. Place-based approaches are limited in scope. While it is important to begin at the local level—whether neighborhoods, towns, or small cities—it is equally important to coordinate planning both horizontally and vertically. Economic decentralization should link local, regional, and national planning efforts into an integrated system.

4. Capacity building must include critical consciousness. Developing social and political awareness enables residents to understand power dynamics and prevent domination by external or internal elites. It also helps them identify and eliminate all types of exploitation wherever it may appear.

5. Strong social networks are vital. Research by Robert Putnam and others has shown that “social capital”—networks of trust and reciprocity—plays a key role in community wealth creation. Many struggling communities lack these networks, and strengthening them is crucial for economic vitality.

6. Solidarity is foundational. Communities divided by inequality and group conflict struggle to organize effectively. A shift from “everyone for themselves” to “we’re all in this together” creates the conditions for true economic democracy. This mindset begins within individuals and extends outward—to families, communities, and ultimately the global society—uniting efforts, aspirations, and values into a cohesive force.

The Empowerment Zone program mobilized billions of dollars to assist distressed communities. After its conclusion, it was followed by another federal initiative—Opportunity Zones—and likely more programs to come. But throwing money at problems is not enough. Rather than relying on temporary programs, we need a transformation of the economic system itself—one that places decision-making power in the hands of local people.

Economic democracy envisions a system in which all communities are empowered to build wealth for all residents. Achieving this will require deepening participation, expanding capacity, fostering critical consciousness, strengthening social capital, and cultivating solidarity. It will not be easy—but it will be real empowerment.

Gentrifying away local restaurants; over-crowding natural sites; outbidding real estate offers from permanent residents; paying taxes where they’re lowest, not where you live… There is a blurry line between calling yourself a local person and truly earning the title of “local person”. No matter whether you're the traveller or the resident, you’ve noticed that too, haven’t you? 

A lifelong immigrant myself, this dichotomy really challenges my yearning for the “local person” title. I am what they call a ‘third-culture kid’, or someone with each parent coming from a separate country and having grown up in an altogether new country, thereby adopting all three cultures in one single upbringing. The more globalisation makes the world a smaller place, the more third, fourth or even fifth and sixth culture kids will grace this planet with their uniqueness. As the world becomes a more integrated place of multi-lingual, multi-cultural and multi-ethnic people, so our understanding of what it means to embody locality must adapt in unison.

The word ‘local’ has been spread across many a definition but it generally conjures up images of “an inhabitant of a small or particular area or neighbourhood”. However, can we really see someone as local when they don’t participate in local activities, or care for local dilemmas?

In Progressive Utilisation Theory, Local People are not just residents of an area, but rather a central economic and moral force. Prout believes local people should have primary rights over their local resources, their economy, and their development decisions. You might be thinking, that seems completely logical. And to this I ask, do you have first choice of your local resources? Are you asked personally about whether you’d prefer to have a tram or a pedestrianised road going through your central square?

If your answer is no… then what does being a local really mean in today’s Western societies? And what do we think it should include? How can uni-cultural societies make space for numerous-culture people? How can we engage them so we too can benefit from the gift it is to be “multi” in anything and what does it take to become a true local? As per our usual narrative on this Substack, I strongly believe Prout holds a key to unlock a solution to this dilemma.

Prout offers a strong solution because it defines “local people” as those who have a deep, committed connection to a specific geographic area through residence, culture, and economic participation.

This implies that it is not based on ethnicity or race, but on people’s functional and lived connection. Being a local means to live and invest in an area, to be economically dependent on that region and to participate in its local social and cultural life.

Prout emphasises that local people must have first rights over the natural and economic resources of their area. In short, land, water, forests, and minerals should be used for local benefit first. This means external actors (corporations, distant governments) cannot exploit resources at the expense of the locals in that area. For this to work, economic planning would have to be decentralised and locally driven.

Prout further emphasises that local people form the base of any successful social organisation and that this is only possible by developing strong ideals of compassion in each citizen. A successful social organisation will only develop by ensuring the classical Prout concept of maximum utilisation, or more simply, by ensuring local people understand sustainable economic and resource management. Strengthen economic democracy (another Prout classic) via increasing local decision-making power, local political democracy without local economic democracy is impossible.

To support key areas of positive reinforcement, there must also be some red lines. For example, foreign resource extraction with consequent local wealth decline are identified as economic exploitation for Proutists.

The Prout perspective solves my lifelong dilemmas of whether I owe anything to where I come from and which cultures and places I should commit to and invest in the most. To clarify, anyone who lives in and integrates into a place can become “local” over time. So I get to choose, where I wish to belong and with what company. A freedom many have not yet seen possible. But which I hope this article has made it impossible to deny oneself.

As a newly declared local in a small Spanish town perfumed with orange blossoms, my duty is not more than to ensure that I remain universally compassionate in my daily decisions and to see everyone as a friend in this world. This includes advocating for control and self-reliance at the local level, while never forgetting cooperation and universal humanism at the global level in my new relationships.

At the end of the day, being a local has got to do with you… can your community count on you to be a local, or not?

It’s spring in Iowa, the skies are bursting with rain and the daffodils are making their presence known. Most every Saturday morning, I can be found wandering the packed aisles of the Iowa City Farmers’ Market, perusing mounds of fresh tomatoes, stocking up on sweet corn, sampling locally-baked bread. Next to the market, a local bluegrass band jams as hundreds of neighbors sit and listen in the sun, and kids chase each other across the grass.

Music, community, fresh produce, arts and crafts, baked goods, what else could you ask for? All these elements add to the rich quality of life in our town, and to creating a link between its people. We can see with our own eyes, taste with our own tongues, the quality of locally-produced goods, bought and sold locally.

These things work as antidote to the state of disconnection so many are currently feeling, from each other, from the land, and from the products we use, thanks to the impact of crony capitalism, its political shills, and its attempt to commodify our lives.

Wendell Berry, farmer, writer, and environmental activist wrote: “One does not know the history of the products one uses. Where, exactly, did they come from? Who produced them? What toxins were used in their production? What were the human and ecological costs of producing them and then of disposing of them? Though one is shopping amid an astonishing variety of products, one is denied significant choices. To be a consumer in this economy, one must agree to be totally ignorant, totally passive, and totally dependent on distant supplies and self-interested suppliers.”

He goes on to say, “We see unrestrained profit-taking, and the disintegration of communities, households, landscapes, and ecosystems. This is the destruction of the real wealth of the world.”

This real wealth, in other words, is found in our interactions, our relationships, our creativity and our connections to the earth. These connections are strengthened through local economic exchanges.

Too often in the globalized economy, wealth flows out of local communities toward centralized corporate headquarters, and the health and well-being of neighbors flows with it. Products are manufactured in far-off places and then shipped around the world in an effort to cut costs and streamline efficiencies. But cheap long-distance transport is viable only if we have cheap fuel, pollution-free packaging and shipping, international peace, control of terrorism, a healthy way to keep foods fresh, and a stable international economy.

Which, increasingly, we don’t.

Many people nowadays are shortening the distance between producers and consumers. They’re learning to use the consumer economies of local towns and cities to help preserve the livelihoods of farms and surrounding communities.

When local people vote with their dollars and their political support, and when local governments commit to planning decisions that privilege the local, not only does this create strength and resilience on an economic level, it also creates more meaning, richness and depth in people’s lives.

In other words, it’s up to local people to make decisions about what kinds of goods and services should be available, how they will be grown or produced, how and where their money will circulate, and how needs will be met on a local level. Berry again: “Of course, everything needed locally cannot be produced locally. But a viable neighborhood is a community; and a viable community is made up of neighbors who cherish and protect what they have in common. A viable community does not import products that it can produce for itself.”

“And it does not export local products until local needs have been met. The economic products of a viable community are understood either as belonging to the community’s subsistence or as surplus, and only the surplus is considered to be marketable abroad.”

Most countries of the world have adopted the policy of economic centralization. The economies of the capitalist countries are centralized in the hands of a few capitalist institutions, and those of the communist countries (such as they are) are centralized in the hands of the party. After so many years of economic centralization, how successful have these countries been at improving the standard of living of the entirety of the people? The answer: Not very.

This concentration of wealth in the hands of a relative few creates tremendous social and economic disparities: unequal education, poor health, crime, alienation, and war.

P R Sarkar (1921-1990), Indian philosopher, teacher and humanitarian, worked to create economies which actually benefited people. One of Sarkar’s main themes was encouraging the decentralized or local economy. “Successful planning can never be done sitting in an air-conditioned office thousands of miles away from the place where planning is to be undertaken,” he noted. “Economic planning must start from the lowest, local level, where the experience, expertise and knowledge of the local people can be harnessed for the benefit of all the members of a socio-economic unit.”

Sarkar puts forth a number of principles for creating decentralized economies. Future EDN substacks will focus on these specifics. I’ll just note that these principles include a focus on full employment for local people in local businesses.

Of course, decentralization of the economy varies according to resource availability – for example, while most production of food could be handled on a local level, a regional production facility would be more practical for, say, the manufacture of cars and other large-scale industries. But each locality has certain resources that can go toward production of certain goods.

Becoming as self-sufficient as possible leads to greater security. When you’re not reliant on global transport or far-off manufacturers, building local job security becomes easier. Yes, many of the products we use today are created based on global supply chains and international manufacturing realities. The point is that we may not be able to rely on these things indefinitely. Meanwhile, building local economic capacity is the best way to improve local people’s lives.

Once people’s economic problems have been solved, they have greater opportunities to develop their potential in the creative and spiritual spheres: music jams, a flourishing of literature and art, more time spent in forests and on lakes, or cooking using some of those farm-fresh ingredients.

Here are a few things you can do to begin to strengthen your local economy:

• Support local community agriculture projects and farmers’ markets.

• Grow your own food.

• Support local worker-owned businesses and cooperatives.

• Avoid shopping at corporate chain stores.

• See a need for a product in your community? Start a cooperative and make it yourself!

• Build connections with your neighbors. Talk about the needs of your local area and how you can address them.

• Encourage your local government to implement policies that favor local businesses, not businesses that send their profits away.

• Strengthen and support local art, music and culture.

• Help others understand the exploitative nature of the global system and the concentration of wealth.

Remember, the goal of a decentralized economy is the overall well-being of people. The economy exists because people exist and is meant to serve people, not the other way around. Creating local economic strength and balance is the first step toward achieving true security and well-being for all of the people.

By Luara Balista

“Once upon a time… Europeans arrived in Latin America” — growing up in Brazil, that is how the story I learnt in school begins about my home country, and of the entire continent. The “discovery” we learned about is the starting point of an incomplete narrative that was repeated to me from the age of eight, alongside the concept of colonialism — a word that seemed somewhat distant to a young girl, yet carries immense weight in world history and, unfortunately, in the current global distribution of resources.

Colonialism… how is this concept still so relevant today? The narrative I learned sixteen years ago — the one that helped me pass my final exams — is relevant not only for how it begins, but also for how it ends. Because the so-called “discovery” of Brazil was followed by a succession of violent acts — the theft of precious materials, human trafficking for forced labor, rape, and the cultural dispossession of Indigenous peoples — alongside the extraction of natural resources, among many other crimes worthy of a dramatic storyline, all of which concluded with: “Brazil’s independence brought an end to the colonial period in the region. The end.”

This simplified version of history, with its implied “happily ever after,” made it seem like a distant past, disconnected from the problems I saw and heard about around me. What this narrative failed to explain, however, is that colonization was not merely an event, but the foundation of a pattern — a pattern of extraction, hierarchy, and the displacement of resources, power, and value — that shaped the social structures of my country and defined its role in the international system, now under a reconfigured version of what we might call “neocolonialism”.

International dynamics are no longer explicitly framed as those of colony and colonizer, yet they have been reorganized into a model that continues to position Brazil — and much of Latin America — within a global economy anchored in the export of raw materials to and structural dependence on external centers of power. What was once imposed by force is now reproduced through markets, trade agreements, financial flows, and global value chains.

Within this context, the extraction of natural resources remains central. Territories rich in biodiversity, minerals, and water continue to be exploited to meet demands that are largely located elsewhere. The value generated through this process rarely remains in the place from which the resources are taken. Instead, it is displaced — reinforcing a historical pattern in which local abundance does not translate into collective well-being.

And that is why the story that began 500 years ago has not yet ended — much less reached a happy conclusion. Modernity has merely updated the labels of power dynamics that were never truly placed in the hands of local communities.

What are the consequences of this?

I live in a region of Brazil that was once considered one of the richest in the entire American continent. To give a sense of scale, the volume of gold and silver extracted from local mines rivaled that mined from the rest of Latin America. When those resources were depleted, the logic remained — it simply changed form.

Monocultures followed. Over the years, native forests were cleared, species disappeared, and the land was gradually reshaped for the expansion of soy, corn, and large-scale cattle production — largely for export.

I used to look out from my home and see forests. Today, I see an endless stretch of cornfields. And it is difficult not to wonder to what extent the air I breathe already carries the chemicals sprayed over these lands.

The expansion of commodity agriculture in Brazil has occurred alongside a decline in the production of staple foods for local consumption. We produce more and more for external markets, and less and less for ourselves. Land ceases to fulfill its most basic function — to feed — and instead operates primarily as a tool for value generation in the global market.

The intensive use of pesticides, many of which are produced and exported by countries in the Global North, has become a structural component of this model. We purchase these inputs, apply them on a large scale, contaminate soil, water, animals, and human bodies — and in doing so, generate profit for companies abroad while absorbing the impacts locally. This is a form of dependency that is not only economic, but also technological and health-related.

The result is a contradiction that is difficult to ignore: while Brazil’s agricultural area has expanded by around 30% over the past decade, hunger has increased by more than 100%. We produce more — but not necessarily to feed those who live here.

Forests are converted into productive land not to meet local needs, but to sustain global supply chains. In light of this, it becomes difficult to sustain the idea that we are dealing with a functional model.

If the problem is not the lack of resources, but the way they are used and distributed, then the solution must begin with a reorganization of this logic. This is what I began to understand when I realized that the “colonial story” I had learned in the distant past continues to shape the present — in my community, and among my friends and family..

Fortunately, we can begin to rewrite this social dynamic with a different ending, drawing on what the Progressive Utilization Theory (Prout) proposes.

Prout is grounded in a transformative principle: resources — natural, economic, and human — should be utilized to their fullest potential and distributed rationally, based on the real needs of the population, rather than solely on the demands of the global market. This full utilization of resources, of course, occurs within a context of maintaining balance between human needs and ecosystem health.

Applied to the context we have explored, this would require a shift in priorities.

Production would no longer be primarily oriented toward export, but organized around local needs. This shift would also require a reorganization of land use. Land concentration, which currently favors large-scale monocultures, would give way to more decentralized models, prioritizing small and medium producers, cooperatives, and collective forms of management. This would allow not only for a fairer distribution of resources, but also for greater productive diversity and reduced environmental impact.

In environmental terms, it would mean respecting the regenerative limits of ecosystems. Technology would no longer serve as a tool for exhausting resources, but as a means of maintaining balance.

It took me years to understand the deeper layers of the history I learned in school. And today, what seems undeniable is that any path toward collective well-being depends on strengthening communities. This means ensuring that they have control over their territories, their decisions, and their resources — strengthening local economies and reducing dependence on external dynamics.

Because if the story that began 500 years ago is still unfolding, then the solution cannot be superficial — nor can it replicate the same patterns of external imposition.

It must begin locally.

When I drive across my home state, mostly what I see is miles and miles of corn and soybeans. How wonderful that Iowa is producing all this food to feed people! But wait a minute. What’s that? All these crops are owned by corporate ag companies? The corn is going to produce ethanol? And the beans exported to other countries? Meanwhile supplemental school lunches are being cut and numbers of hungry people are rising? What’s up with that?

It’s no secret. Most corporations put profit before human well-being. I can share a long list of examples. In the U.S. in the 1990’s, the pharmacy company run by the Sackler family ruthlessly promoted their drug, oxycontin, fueling an epidemic of opiate addiction. Enron, the Texas-based energy giant, engaged in massive accounting fraud, went bankrupt, and many people lost their life savings. Oil companies have misdirected research on the harm being done by fossil fuel emissions in order to reap more profits. And corporate farms and ag companies despoil our land, air and water, pushing out family farmers in the process.

But of course, the shareholders must be satisfied. The CEOs must have their salaries (even if these are 400 times greater than their workers.) Billionaires need love, too.

One of capitalism’s unexamined assumptions has always been that the pursuit of profit by businesses would lead to more growth and more well-being for everyone. A rising tide floats all boats. Trick, trick, trickle-down.

After all, the pursuit of profit is sacrosanct. It’s what powers the engine of our most successful economic system ever. And leads to the development of the technology that underlies the comforts and quality of life we all appreciate.

What’s wrong with that?

First of all, not everyone benefits from this set-up. In fact, we are living in an age in which 80% of wealth is owned by the top 10% of people, and more and more folks are struggling to get by. In many parts of the world, poverty is widespread. The historical wrongs of capitalism – colonial extraction, slavery, massacre, and seizure of lands and assets - continue to have an impact on our current-day society.

And as far as tech is concerned, who can say that the massive accumulation of profit by a few tech monopolies bent on deciding how technology should influence our lives has been a healthy thing?

What if we flipped the formula of profit-above-all-else on its head? What if, instead of most people living to serve the economy, we designed things so that the economy was made to serve the people? What if profit was not the engine that drove things, but rather the driver was people’s needs and ability to grow, thrive, take care of their families, and live a modestly comfortable life?

Consumption, not profit, could be this engine. When I say consumption, I know some readers are thinking ‘consumerism.’ And that the consumerist lifestyle has brought our planet to the brink of destruction: we buy, we consume, we dispose (most purchased items end up in a landfill after six months), using more resources and despoiling the planet further.

I agree completely. What I mean by a consumption-based economy is one that is geared toward meeting the basic needs of people - not luxury goods, but requirements for living - food, clothing, education, health care and shelter - so that everyone has the fundamentals, and no one is mired in poverty. And there should be ever-rising levels of what’s considered fundamental, and so an ever-rising standard of living. This can exist in tandem with the promotion of cultural values that emphasize strengthening local economies and creativity and connection, over the acquisition of more stuff.

Does this seem unrealistic? That’s only because we’ve been bombarded with messages telling us that the way things are is the way things were meant to be. The invisible hand most efficiently directs wealth, we are told (when in reality this invisible hand is giving most of us the finger.) Unfortunately, messages of greed and over-accumulation are embedded in our culture.

But there are, of course, other voices. Voices offering a more cooperative, reciprocal vision. Our work now is to amplify these voices.

Certainly, profit has its place. Every business needs it. But I’m talking about proportionality, rationality and intentionality. I’m talking about reasonable profit, not excessive profit, as is too often the norm.

There is already interest in this idea. A growing number of businesses, for example, have embraced the idea of the quadruple bottom line – people, planet, profit, and purpose.

The idea of the triple bottom line – profit, people, and planet – emerged a few decades ago as companies encountered public demand that they become more accountable. Author John Elkington coined the term in 1994 as a way to measure corporate ability in the arena of social and environmental impact. It later evolved into a quadruple bottom line, including the fourth pillar of ‘purpose’ to foreground incorporating spiritual and emotional intelligence into business goals.

There are high adoption rates of this metric among large global companies, particularly in sustainability reporting. And a whole group of businesses known as ‘Certified B Companies’ have committed to an earnest embrace of the quadruple bottom line.

Of course, implementation varies, and these tools often serve more as a strategic lens than a method for prioritizing social issues over financial profit. It can be easy to greenwash your product by claiming adherence to this kind of metric.

The idea is gaining traction, though, and it was driven by consumers, who wanted to purchase goods from companies that mirrored their values and pressured governments to implement such regulations. It’s a sign that businesses can be responsive to circumstances, and focus on providing for human needs.

What’s needed now is a much broader cultural shift, a movement on the part of consumers, businesses and governments to implement and adopt ‘people above profit’ goals, focusing on more modest profit margins. Moving toward a more cooperative-based economy will hasten this transition, since cooperatives generally emphasize job satisfaction, connection to others, creativity and community well-being more than the relentless pursuit of profit.

In short, the practical aim of businesses and farms in an economy should be to provide for human need and human consumption. The planning, design, and implementation of policy should be aimed at fulfilling these needs (while ensuring planetary well-being). Profit will come, in reasonable measure, but it should not be unlimited.

Integrating these policies into a decentralized and balanced cooperative economic system - this is how we get to a true people’s economy, one that exists to serve the people, not the other way around.

I want to share a vision with you that makes me optimistic:

Imagine a world where the potential of every individual was unleashed.

As Andy introduced a couple of weeks ago in this Substack, a non-negotiable social agreement should be that if you work (for those who can), you have the opportunity to secure your basic needs: food, clothing, housing, education, and healthcare.

I’ve always had the feeling that we perform a strange kind of economic gymnastics around this very simple idea.

Most economic and political pundits argue that if we simply produce more and more goods and services, the resulting growth in GDP will eventually trickle down and benefit everyone. Prosperity, in this view, is something we approach indirectly: first grow the economy, and only then worry about whether people’s needs are actually met.

But why approach human well-being in such a roundabout way?

Instead, we could begin with the obvious question: how do we directly ensure that everyone’s basic needs are met? As well as the questions: how many people live in a region? How much land is required to produce sufficient food? How many houses are needed? What health care and educational systems must exist?

Rather than simply expanding production and hoping that security eventually follows, the approach of economic democracy is to aim directly for human security in the first place.

Take a moment to consider how many people in the world still lack adequate food, housing, healthcare, or education. Every day, people spend tremendous amounts of energy simply trying to secure these basic conditions of life.

Now here’s the exciting part.

Imagine what the world might look like if those needs were reliably met, if all that human energy currently spent on survival could instead be directed toward higher goals.

Last week, Howard explored the question of motivation for work. Beyond meeting basic needs, people are driven by deeper aspirations: opportunities for creativity, professional growth, autonomy, and access to resources that allow them to expand their capabilities.

These aspects of life, the things that make living not just possible, but easier, richer, and more fulfilling, can be called amenities. The word itself comes from the Latin amoenus, meaning pleasant. And indeed, life should be pleasant.

Throughout history, human progress has often taken the form of expanding these amenities. There was a time when people carried water from distant wells. Later came communal pumps and water towers. Today, in many places, clean water flows directly from taps inside the home. The goal — access to water — remained the same. But the effort required to achieve it became steadily easier.

Running water, public transport, electricity, the internet — the best of human innovation has produced amenities that free our time, reduce hardship, and expand what is possible in daily life.

Seen in this light, progress is not simply about producing more goods. It is about expanding access to the tools and comforts that make life better.

This connects with another idea we’ve been discussing in recent posts: purchasing capacity. When people work, they receive purchasing power (money) which allows them to obtain both necessities and amenities. Wealth inequality can therefore be understood as unequal access to these things.

Progress, in the sense described in the Progressive Utilisation Theory (Prout), means two things happening together: everyone gaining reliable access to the basic necessities of life, and society steadily expanding the range of amenities available to all.

Over time, what is considered a luxury today can become a basic necessity tomorrow. Electric lighting was once a luxury. Today it is considered essential. Internet access followed a similar path. Take electric vehicles as another example. At the moment, they remain relatively expensive and inaccessible to many people. Yet they offer a form of independence from the volatility of global oil markets. If a region chose to prioritise it, access to electric mobility could gradually become a widely available necessity rather than an exclusive luxury.

This is the deeper meaning of progress: the line between amenity and necessity slowly dissolves as amenities become accessible to everyone.

But at the same time, human beings are not identical in their interests, talents, or ambitions. Some people devote extraordinary effort to science, entrepreneurship, medicine, engineering, the arts, or social leadership. Others prefer combining meaningful work with family, community, and personal pursuits. A healthy economic system should recognise and respect this diversity.

This is where Prout proposes an important balance. Everyone should be guaranteed the minimum requirements of life and access to an expanding range of amenities. No one should be left struggling simply to survive.

At the same time, individuals who dedicate themselves to particularly demanding work, or who demonstrate exceptional talent, should have access to additional opportunities and resources — what P. R. Sarkar called ‘special amenities’. These might include better research facilities, or specialised equipment.

“The minimum requirements of every person are the same, but diversity is also the nature of creation. Special amenities should therefore be provided, so that diversities in skill and intelligence may be fully utilized, and talent is encouraged to contribute its best for human development. It will thus be necessary to arrange for some special remunerations to provide special amenities according to the age and time. But at the same time, there should be a constant effort to reduce the gap between the amount of special amenities and the minimum requirements of the average individual. This never-ending effort of proper economic adjustment must ceaselessly continue, fostering the spiritual, mental and physical evolution of humanity and the development of a cosmic sentiment for a world family.”

– [Social Discourses; The Thoughts of P.R. Sarkar]

In this way, initiative and innovation are encouraged, while the general standard of living continues to rise for everyone.

Capitalism often presents itself as a meritocratic system. In theory, those who work hardest or innovate most successfully rise to the top. In practice, however, it often produces a world divided between those who have secure foundations and those who do not.

Competition can be a powerful driver of progress — but only when the rules of the game are fair. When basic necessities are insecure, people simply cannot afford to take risks. Pursuing a new idea, learning a specialised skill, or experimenting with unconventional work becomes too dangerous when failure could mean losing access to housing, health care, or food. Under those conditions, many talents remain hidden and many ideas never emerge.

By guaranteeing the foundations of life for those willing to work, Prout provides something essential: a safety net that allows people to dream. It is about establishing a secure foundation and then using that foundation as a launchpad for human creativity and innovation. When people are free from the constant struggle for survival, they can contribute far more to science, technology, culture, and community. In this sense, the system becomes genuinely meritocratic — not because it abandons competition, but because it finally allows people to compete on fairer terms. Or to put it simply: society should ensure that everyone can live, and then encourage everyone to grow.

If we succeed in creating those conditions, the vast reservoir of human potential might finally have the chance to unfold. And this brings me back to the vision that makes me optimistic.

Imagine a society where everyone knows that their basic needs are secure — that food, housing, health care, and education are not constant sources of anxiety. Instead of spending enormous energy simply trying to survive, people are able to direct that energy toward learning, creating, experimenting, and contributing.

Those efforts produce new technologies, new ideas, and new ways of organising society — expanding the amenities that make life easier and more fulfilling.

As those amenities spread more widely, the general standard of living rises. More people gain the time, security, and resources to pursue their own interests and talents. And with more people able to innovate and contribute, the pace of progress accelerates further.

Security enables creativity. Creativity expands prosperity. Prosperity creates even greater opportunities for human potential to unfold.

In this way, progress becomes a positive cycle: a society that steadily moves not only from poverty to security, but from security to flourishing.

Not just surviving, but thriving

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“The minimum requirements of every person are the same, but diversity is also the nature of creation. Special amenities should therefore be provided, so that diversities in skill and intelligence may be fully utilized, and talent is encouraged to contribute its best for human development.”

P. R. Sarkar

I’m not entirely sure how I ended up with the duty of cutting the lawn and shoveling the snow when I was growing up. Sure, my siblings helped out from time to time, but somehow it always felt like the heavier work landed on my shoulders. And we had a big lawn and two wide cement driveways. Some of my friends were handsomely rewarded by their parents for doing chores around the house. They always seemed to have plenty of money to spend on whatever they wanted. I did get a few odd jobs around the neighborhood and managed to fill my piggy bank with some hard-earned cash. But being paid for work around my own home never really crossed my mind.

By high school I was able to find part-time jobs. They weren’t especially inspiring, but they covered some personal expenses until I finished college. Money helped meet some of my basic needs. At the same time, I also volunteered for causes I believed in. Looking back, I can see that several motivations pushed me to work: a sense of duty and responsibility, financial needs, and sometimes simply a desire to help others. Later on, I joined a social change organization and gave many hours of my free time to support its activities, driven by my personal values and the sense that my work had meaning.

Human beings are complex creatures. Each of us is shaped by different experiences, values, and ways of seeing the world. Throughout history, many religious and philosophical traditions tried to understand what motivates human behavior by looking at our basic needs and desires. In more recent times, with the rise of the scientific worldview, industrialization, and capitalism - this broad understanding of human motivation gradually narrowed its focus to the physical world and material needs. Capitalism in particular reduced motivation to profit and the accumulation of wealth – an impoverished view of human life. The socialist and communist systems that emerged during the same period also concentrated mainly on physical well-being. Their goal was to eliminate poverty and inequality by ensuring that everyone’s material needs were met. In theory, once these needs were satisfied, people would become motivated by collective welfare and ideological commitment rather than material incentives. In practice, however, the journey toward that goal has proven much more complicated.

Over the past century, researchers have begun studying human motivation more systematically. One of the most well-known among them was Abraham Maslow, who proposed the hierarchy of human needs. His pyramid illustrates how people are motivated by a combination of physical, mental, and ultimately spiritual aspirations. Near the top of this hierarchy lies the need for self-actualization – the desire to realize our fullest potential. Maslow spent many years studying individuals he believed had reached high levels of creativity, independence, and psychological maturity. These people – scientists, artists, reformers, and spiritual leaders – used their talents not only for personal success but also to contribute to human progress.

For Maslow, the drive toward self-actualization was not limited to a small group of exceptional individuals. Rather, he believed that many more people could develop their higher potential if supportive social and economic conditions were present. In this sense, the structure of our economy plays an important role in human development. An economy can provide not only well-compensated jobs that ensure material security, but also opportunities and incentives that encourage people to develop their talents and contribute creatively to society.

Looking at modern economic systems through the lens of human motivation reveals some clear shortcomings. In capitalism, the emphasis on profit often pushes people toward the pursuit of material possessions and pleasures, contributing to excessive wealth accumulation and deep social and economic inequalities. In many socialist systems, attempts to equalize income and wealth have helped raise basic living standards but sometimes weakened or eliminated incentives for initiative and innovation. This has often affected productivity and worker development, leading to decreased output, wages, and overall economic vitality.

What seems necessary is a more balanced approach. People need their basic needs met, but they also need incentives to develop their talents and contribute meaningfully to society. As we have discussed previously in this Substack, decentralized economic systems can help create sufficient employment with decent wages for all who are able to work - building the economy from the bottom up. As local economies grow stronger, the collective wealth of communities increases. When part of this collective wealth is directed toward encouraging creative, innovative, and engaged individuals, businesses become more productive and workplaces more dynamic, ultimately generating greater prosperity for everyone.

A healthy economic system should therefore design incentives that encourage people to do their best without allowing excessive concentrations of wealth to emerge. These incentives can include opportunities for creativity, professional growth, greater autonomy, access to facilities for research and development, and other resources that help people expand their capabilities. When workers are supported in realizing their potential and feel that their contributions matter, they are naturally motivated to give their best. Such an approach not only stimulates productivity and innovation, but also helps create a more balanced, equitable, and humane economy.

For the last two months I’ve been living in a community on a hill, here in Mexico. Houses are built, cheek by jowl, on top of each other, reaching from the valley below all the way to the top. It’s a creative and effective way to adapt to the circumstances of nature. Everyone belongs to the community - a neighborhood of several thousand people - and most people passing on their way to work say good morning to each other. They socialize, cheer each other’s triumphs and mourn each other’s losses.

However, those at the top of the hill have a wonderful view of the surrounding area and mountains; their houses are larger, and clearly belong to people of more means. Many houses in the middle or at the bottom of the hill are dark, cramped, and hard to get to. There are parts of the hill I would not feel safe visiting at night. Some areas are less developed, offer less opportunity, and some residents appear to be deprived of their basic necessities.

Which brings us to the fundamental question I want to pose. What do human beings need?

Certainly, love. Emotional support. Community. These things are crucial for the growth of us humans. But from a purely physical perspective - to be able to move from survival to contributing and thriving in society - I’d argue that at minimum, the following are essential: nutritious food, clothing appropriate to the climate, adequate housing, proper medical care, and education. These five fundamentals provide the support necessary for a human being to grow into other layers of self-expression and actualization, to climb the ladder of psycho-social fulfillment.

What happens when people lack their minimum necessities? Without food, shelter, education, etc., a person finds it difficult to get a foothold in life. The resulting poverty often leads to disruption and desperation: crime, addiction, mental illness, failure to thrive.

Of course, the love and affection of a family can go a long way toward helping people withstand some of these challenges. But why should the challenges of not having a proper shelter, or a winter coat, or access to medical care, exist in the first place? Imagine, for example, all the creativity that might flourish if people didn’t have to worry about where they were going to find their next meal.

Some places are better at figuring this out than others. The Scandinavian countries offer a strong social safety net to their citizens. Those who have fallen through the cracks are also supported. In Norway, every prisoner, following their release, is guaranteed a job and a place to live.

The United States, despite its immense wealth, generally leaves the problem of providing necessities to its people up to the ‘invisible hand of the market.’ Hence, the homeless population is huge, prisons are bursting at the seams, health care is out of reach for many, mental health crises abound and schools are struggling.

One of the fundamental principles of Prout - Progressive Utilization Theory, the socio-economic vision that inspires this Substack - is that, in any society, the minimum necessities of life should be guaranteed to all. We talk about the importance of ensuring basic human rights. These economic requirements - the basic necessities of life - are also human rights. They should be enshrined in the constitutions of every country of the world.

Notice that I didn’t say ‘given’ to all. Prout stands for the guarantee of purchasing capacity, and it supports an ever-increasing standard of living, especially for those at the bottom of the hill. This can be done through guaranteed employment.

The US did something interesting during the 1930s, creating massive work programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps, which lifted many out of poverty and helped stimulate an end to the Great Depression.

I’m not talking about that, exactly, though it’s an example of a society providing for its citizens. Nor am I talking about Universal Basic Income, a proposal making the rounds to directly give money to people each month. (Although I do believe that education and health care should be provided free of charge to all.)

What if the economy operated in such a way that everyone had meaningful work, in good working conditions, with wages sufficient to purchase everything they needed? What if everyone had access to extra resources, just as those at the top of the hill have? What if the economy was decentralized, and resources were controlled locally?

It’s not an impossible task to create economic democracy like this. The resources to accomplish it exist in every locale of the world. But it requires a restructuring of the way things are currently done. It’s not a redistribution of wealth, per se. It’s a redistribution of the power to create wealth.

If humans share a common bond, then we owe it to each other to help each other thrive. And if the resources are available to ensure that everyone has the basic needs of life, why wouldn’t we take steps to make this happen?

Some might say ‘let each look after their own.’ This is the message of capitalism: we do not belong to each other, to the land, or to the community. We are atomized individuals, driven purely by self-interest.

But it’s pretty easy to demonstrate that this vision of humanity is deeply flawed. We do share a common humanity, a common evolutionary patrimony, if you will. We all thrive when we’re in community, and we grow when we’re in connection to nature. We are each affected by what happens around us. Empathy is wired into our nervous systems.

What we’re arguing for is a baseline in society below which no one is allowed to slip. We need healthy minimum wages, and we need proportional maximum wages, curtailing the excessive accumulation of wealth. Wouldn’t society at large benefit tremendously from the freeing up of wealth that sits stagnating in off-shore bank accounts and speculative investments?

For those who don’t have the capacity to work due to disability, age, or other life circumstances, their minimum necessities could easily, in this system, be provided for.

In this way, our responsibilities to each other can be fully satisfied. And everyone can enjoy the view from the hill.

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¿Cómo pueden los países latinoamericanos colaborar para enfrentar desigualdad, deforestación y crisis económicas sin depender únicamente de poderes externos?En este episodio de ProutCast, Arunima conversa con Regiane Nitsch Bressan, profesora asociada de la Universidad Federal de São Paulo y especialista en integración regional y gobernanza en América Latina. Regiane nos guía a través de su extensa trayectoria investigando Mercosur, UNASUR, la Alianza del Pacífico y los desafíos del “regionalismo líquido”.Durante la entrevista exploramos:• Cómo la integración regional puede ser una herramienta para justicia social, sostenibilidad y democracia• La influencia de la Agenda 2030 de la ONU en políticas ambientales y sociales de la región• Ejemplos de cooperación local y sistemas de salud y educación que sirven como modelos para América Latina• Retos de los acuerdos internacionales, como el Mercosur-Unión Europea, frente a capacidades locales y diversidad regional• Propuestas para un regionalismo cooperativo que combine autonomía local, resiliencia económica y ética en la gobernanzaEste episodio es imprescindible para quienes buscan entender cómo ciencia, política y cooperación pueden converger para fortalecer comunidades y sociedades latinoamericanas.Escucha ProutCast en:Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6EdEm68TI16RrlhAa5RW9KApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/proutcast/id1845807777Instagram: @theproutcastX: https://x.com/ProutCastFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/proutcast/ Email: proutcast@prout-global.orgAprende más sobre PROUT: https://prout.info/

“The Purchasing Power Parity”, “The basket of goods”, “Groceries are getting so expensive” “Inflation”… and all those other things we hear that don’t quite make sense.

There is a parable that comes to me often when sitting at the tables I share with family and friends… It comes to me because the power of a story is often better received than expressing one's own opinion. From etchings on cave walls to modern day podcasts, storytelling piques the interest of those too young to understand and those too old to listen. So in this faith, I would like to share a story of a businessman and a fisherman.

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A fisherman is sitting on a pier, in simple clothes, admiring the sunset.

A businessman walking past, takes an interest in the fisherman and asks him, “How many fish have you caught today?”

The fisherman looks up, smiles and replies, “Two lobsters and two big mackerel. Enough for my whole family to eat today and tomorrow.”

The businessman, slightly confused, ventures to offer some advice. “If you go out again you might catch double or even triple that and be able to sell your extra catch in the market to earn more money.”

The fisherman, amused, humours him to continue. “And then?”

The businessman, enveloped in the interest in his business plan, continues, “Then you will eventually be able to save up for another boat, you could hire another fisherman to work with you and catch exponentially more fish, earn exponentially more money and expand your business until you have a fleet!”

“And then?” The fisherman prompts.

”And then you will be able to buy fleets in every ocean and export to the capital cities around the globe to fetch the highest prices. You could become a rich man. You could buy a beautiful beach house in a secluded place, with servants and the finest fresh foods, and…”

”And then…?” The fisherman asks for the final time.

”And then you could retire early and spend your days relaxing, fishing and enjoying the sunsets.” Says the businessman with light in his eyes.

The fisherman takes a deep breath and considers the businessman’s passionate advice. Some moments later he looks up, smiles peacefully and says to the businessman, “Your ideas are wonderful. The only issue is, I do live on a beautiful beach, I do spend my days relaxing and fishing, and I watch the sunset every evening from this exact secluded spot.”

Completely perplexed, processing a range of thoughts and emotions, the business man walks away. Coincidentally missing the sunset. 

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Upon entering this world we automatically sign up to a game we were never really asked if we wanted to join. The game of survival. As humans, we’re lucky, as our mothers are physically and psychologically wired to ensure our survival well into our physical development. During this stage our mothers provide sustenance, shelter, love and protection.

Our understanding of how to ensure our own survival pivots around these four elements. We develop the skills to attain these things. In many rural areas these skills include learning to plant seeds to fruit and arranging fallen tree trunks to hold a roof, erecting fences and cultivating a community of others who also develop these skills. In urban areas these skills are somewhat narrowed to ‘making money’. Reassured of ‘money’s’ capacity to provide us with the elements necessary for survival, urban dwellers seek simply to have sufficient money to purchase their survival.

I was born and raised in Malawi, a small peaceful country in South central Africa. My parents worked full time and then some. My family had money enough to have a big house, pay for nannies and security guards, and fill a shopping trolley to the brim twice a week with groceries. Some would say that I grew up having shelter, love, protection and sustenance.

Malawi is located at the bottom of the Great African Rift Valley, an enormous fault line spanning almost 7000 km down the African continent. Taking advantage of the water basins and altitude this provides geographically, Malawi makes most of its electricity from a large hydro-electric power plant. Sporadic power cuts were a twice a week occurrence - some blamed monkeys in the turbines. For my family it was an annoying nuisance. Sometimes the power cut in the middle of the night, but other times it cut when our house help was cooking lunch on our ‘state of the art’ electric stove. Ravenous from primary school, my sister and I would watch miserably as the village kids ate their lunch cooked on three-stone fires they themselves had prepared from watching their community do it every day.

I have vivid memories of feeling totally helpless. No matter how much weight we pulled, no amount of money could cook our lunch. Still in the single digits of age, I now realise I was receiving my first lesson in the complexities of “purchasing capacity”. My family's money was usable and hard earned, but it did not serve to provide me with my basic needs.

Time and time again, this lesson revisited me. You see, my “purchasing capacity” is the number of goods and services I can purchase with a given amount of money. My first salaries - from work I did while studying economics modules in university - allowed me to buy shelter, protection and sustenance. But as money-printing institutions printed more and more money, my shopping trolley also had fewer and fewer groceries in it each time I reached the checkout. The value of the Euros in my bank account was going down. Inflation. What’s more, my parents tried to help me purchase my survival by sending money from abroad but the cost of swapping one country’s money for another meant that even though they sent me the same amount, I kept getting less and less. Exchange rates. But the absolute worst part, was that no matter how much I worked to pay back the bank I had borrowed money from to pay for my education, the amount I owed them kept getting bigger and bigger. Interest rates.

After all I was doing to secure my survival with money, my ability to survive was plummeting through no fault of my own. Now two decades older, I felt like that little girl in Malawi watching the village children enjoy their lunch, while listening to my own stomach grumble. I had failed to get myself out of the vulnerable position of putting my capacity to survive in the hands of those who didn’t care much for it. In other words, my freedom to choose how I survived was intrinsically entangled with the assurance of value some people in offices very far away from me had promised, not my own choices.

Luckily, it didn’t take long before the framework laid forth by Progressive Utilisation (PROUT) provided me with a different perspective to this doomed loop of dependence I had been caught in. PROUT understands that purchasing capacity cannot be treated as a passive outcome of markets, but rather it must be valued as a central policy objective and a measure of a person's economic well-being. Instead of focusing on per-capita income or GDP as markers of personal prosperity, PROUT encourages us to see economic progress as how effectively one can secure their means of survival in an equitable way to anyone else.

PROUT takes into consideration that purchasing capacity should continuously expand over time, but adds that it should always be accompanied by coordinated economic policies. Why do we not consider this approach as a viable anti-inflation measure to stabilise prices? PROUT also states that no theoretical limit to people’s purchasing capacity would be needed if socio-economic areas across the globe are planned considerately and compassionately. Why is this not being championed as a solution to extortionate exchange rates? As a society, PROUT suggests that our goal is not just economic security, but also expanding standards of living without overshooting the limits of our true mother, the Earth. Why then, is global economic policy not pushing for interest rates that focus on the prosperity of all?

These questions stand true for both rural and urban dwellers. On the land, the more skills one has, the more options one has. In the cities, the more money we have, the more options we have. So when our money is limited by exploitative practices within the economic system, our options are limited too. Under current economic management we are slowly losing our freedom, not only to choose how we survive, but sometimes even to survive at all. This is where I see PROUT’s proposals as offering us the options, or freedom, we currently find slipping through our fingers.

In essence, true freedom comes from having sufficient purchasing capacity to meet all our essential needs. It is true the measure of a person’s economic liberty. That is what I would like to propose in this article. That we adopt PROUT’s changes in perspective, advocate for economic policies that support any individual’s ability to survive, and that we work together to promote systems that recognise each individual’s fundamental right to have sufficient purchasing capacity across their entire lifetime. Because at the end of the day, we all just want to enjoy our lives and watch the sunsets.

When I was young, board games were a favorite pastime in my family. We had a wide selection of games, including one of the more popular games at that time (and today as well), Monopoly. As the story goes, an unemployed sales person named Charles Darrow invented the game and licensed it to Parker Brothers, a private toy company on the brink of bankruptcy in 1933, during the Great Depression. The game made Darrow a millionaire and immediately turned a profit for Parker Brothers.

For me, Monopoly was very much like other board games. Everyone started out even, and with a combination of luck and skill, anyone could become the winner. Of course, the strategy of the game was pure capitalism. By throwing the dice and moving around the game board, each player tries to buy up as many properties as possible, develops them by purchasing houses and hotels, and then charges rent to anyone who lands on them. Eventually, someone comes out on top with the most properties and money and finally drives all the other players into bankruptcy.

The idea that we have an economy based on a free open market where everyone can thrive in an environment of healthy competition is a myth. The goal of capitalism is to make as much money as possible while getting rid of your competition. One result is the extreme concentration of wealth. Monopoly itself, together with all of its variations, is licensed in more than 113 countries and controls globally about 33% of the board game industry. Parker Brothers, which earned $2M in 1936 from Monopoly, was eventually bought by General Mills (of Cheerios fame), who sold it to Tonka Corporation, which was finally absorbed by Hasbro Inc., today a $14B multinational conglomerate. Over the years, Hasbro has taken over 1,800 brand names and controls a large section of its market.

Similarly in many industries, over the last 30-40 years, corporate mergers have turned into mega-mergers, creating oligopolies—markets dominated by three or four firms—and even monopolies. In response, more than 140 countries—representing over 90% of the world’s economies—now have some form of antitrust or competition law. In 1990, fewer than 20 countries had such regulations in place. These laws are meant to prevent excessive corporate power, protect consumers and small businesses, preserve democratic institutions, and promote competitive, innovative economies. Enforcement, however, remains a problem. With the top 10% of the world’s population controlling more than 75% of the global wealth, the growing number of wealthy individuals hold tremendous influence over governments and their regulations.

Monopoly is a game—the economy is not. In the real world, winners accumulate enormous wealth and power, while losers may spend their entire lives struggling to meet basic needs. And unlike the board game, players do not start out even. Wealthy and well-connected individuals, families, and corporations enter the field with major advantages that give them a decisive edge. They can overpower the competition and concentrate wealth even further.

If we view today’s economy as essentially a Monopoly game, then it is working as designed – maximizing onean individual’s wealth at the expense of others. However, if you think the economy should help everyone thrive, then we probably need another game, a new game. Let’s call it “Prosperity”. Prosperity would have to turn the economy upside down – that is, build wealth from the bottom up. Winning this game would mean that every player is able to develop their potential and thrive.

What would the rules in such a game look like? Let’s start with just three, though more can be added on later (what would yours be?).

First, playing would be based on cooperation, not competition. An economy rooted primarily in cooperation would help everyone work together and not leave anyone behind. This would not entail removing competition—we still need incentives to perform our best. However, a cooperative economy would cultivate an environment of collaboration among different players or teams, leading to more equitable and effective outcomes. Collective ownership would be a critical part of the game, such as cooperatives and other forms of worker-run businesses. Successful players would be motivated to build up comprehensive cooperative networks that include producer, distributor, consumer, financial, and service co-ops. And all of these cooperatives would work together to strengthen the economy – a true win-win situation.

Second, to avoid the inequitable results of concentrated wealth, winning in Prosperity would require decentralizing the economy. Players would work together from the bottom up, collectively planning the economies of their towns, cities, regions, etc. Local residents are more attentive to local needs and resources. Their involvement in the planning process would ensure that business activity is more sustainable, equitable, and profitable. Players would also focus on building local supply chains, creating more local jobs and raising local capital for investment.

Third, the game might include at least one penalty for players who interfere in the development of others. When outside actors involve themselves in local economies, wealth often gets siphoned out of a community. A player engaging in such anti-local behavior would have to remove any businesses or products located on another player’s squares—and perhaps even go to “jail” for a couple of turns!

At this point you might ask - would such a game be popular? It’s interesting to note that Darrow, who supposedly invented the game Monopoly, didn’t really invent the game at all, and Parker Brothers eventually knew about it. The concept for the game was originally developed by Elizabeth Magie, a writer, actress, and engineer, who invented a game called The Landlord’s Game in 1903.

Magie was a follower of Henry George, a 19^th Century social philosopher and political economist, who believed that by only taxing the land, enough money could be raised to support the government and serve the collective welfare of society as well. Magie invented the game with two sets of rules, Monopolist Rules and Prosperity Rules, to teach people about the advantages of George’s economic theory. Even though she patented her game, and though it did become popular in certain circles, she was never able to get corporate support probably for two reasons. First, she was a woman, and second, she held the radical notion that the economy should make everyone wealthy, not just the few.

In some ways, an economy is not so different from a game: it operates according to a set of rules that shape how people behave, what strategies succeed, and who ultimately wins. You can make small adjustments to those rules—add a tax here, a regulation there—but as long as the basic objective and structure remain the same, the outcome will follow the same pattern. Capitalism, like Monopoly, rewards accumulation, competition, and the concentration of wealth. It can be reformed at the margins, but its core logic does not change. If we want different results, then we need a new game altogether—one that empowers local residents to build their economies from the bottom up, incentivizes local production, jobs, and capital, and broadens access to resources; an economy dedicated to the prosperity of all.

When I first heard the term economic democracy, it sounded like bland political science jargon. One of those phrases that feels heavy with theory but strangely hollow in lived meaning.

But to really understand its meaning and power, I had to place it next to something far more familiar: political democracy.

I lived in the UK for most of my 30 years — in England, in a small town of about 20,000 inhabitants, an hour south of London by train. I grew up in a household that always supported the Labour Party. Historically, the UK has been governed almost entirely by either Labour or the Conservatives, with political power swinging back and forth like a slow pendulum. Although, things have been shaken up somewhat in recent years — with the Conservatives disgraced and nearly annihilated in the last election, and Labour polling in a way that leaves the race unusually open to other parties like Reform and Greens. However, despite being lifelong Labour supporters, for as long as I can remember, my parents voted for the Liberal Democrats.

Why?

Because in our electoral constituency, the Labour candidate rarely stood a chance. Meanwhile, the Lib Dem candidate was more competitive against the Conservative — the least preferred outcome. So voting became less about choosing what you believed in, and more about blocking what you most wanted to avoid.

Did it matter what the candidates actually stood for at a local level? Not really.

Under the UK’s first-past-the-post system — where the candidate with the most votes wins, regardless of whether they gain a majority — people tend to vote with one eye firmly fixed on the national outcome. The logic becomes: who is most likely to help form a government capable of passing legislation in Westminster? Everything else becomes secondary.

Frustratingly, I also played this game of “tactical voting”. In the 2025 election, my heart wanted to vote for the local Green candidate — a party calling for wealth taxes and state ownership of essential utilities like water and energy. But they had no realistic chance of winning, so I too gave my vote to the Lib Dems.

So what does this mean for my family’s role, and my own, in political democracy?

Roughly every four years, we vote for a party we don’t really support, largely regardless of the local candidate, in order to influence which party might form a government. That government then pushes through policies which will likely be undone when the pendulum swings back the other way a few years later. And if you’re unhappy about any of it, you can email your local MP.

To me, this has never quite felt like dēmokratía — the Greek root meaning “rule of the people”.

And this rather limited access to power doesn’t even touch on the deeper structural constraints of political party democracy in its current form: the influence of corporate lobbying; the tendency of parties to pander to simplistic or dangerous rhetoric if it satisfies a voting base; the profound detachment from local realities among politicians who rarely leave London; the role of mass media in shaping narratives and narrowing public debate; and the chronic lack of political education that leaves many people voting with fear, habit, or resignation rather than understanding.

More importantly, political democracy in its current form is structurally easy to manipulate. Under capitalism, money becomes influence — over politicians, media, and public debate. Over time, this allows a small economic elite to shape democratic systems in ways that protect and expand their own wealth. The result is a vicious circle: economic power captures political power, which then locks in economic power.

Economic democracy is the idea that economic power should lie in the hands of the people, in a decentralised way, so that local communities have real influence over the economic decisions that shape their lives: food, energy, housing, land, labour, and resources.

At the heart of a democratic economy are cooperatives. Whether worker-owned, consumer-owned, or producer-owned, collective ownership brings the day-to-day decisions that shape people’s lives back into their own hands: where things are sourced, what working conditions are like, who manages, how waste is handled, and what is done with surplus or profit. This structure naturally instils a sense of shared responsibility, as people work together to meet real needs. And this is key — these enterprises exist not primarily to maximise profit, but to serve human and ecological wellbeing.

While I first encountered these ideas through theory, and through frameworks like Progressive Utilisation (PROUT), they only truly came to life when I started seeing their echoes in everyday practice.

A year ago, I moved to Asturias, a region in northern Spain, with my partner. We came primarily for the nature. We now live equidistantly snug between mountains and sea. Brutal rock emerges from otherwise lush, tree-filled hills. Rivers pour down through valleys, offering fresh spring water from old stone fountains etched with Celtic symbols.

We also share a desire to live more self-sufficiently, yet still embedded in community.

When I first arrived, although we were busy around the clock setting up our new life, I still squeezed in an evening dose of British political drama via Novara Media, like one might follow a never-ending soap opera.

But as my emotional investment in UK politics waned, and I wasn’t so familiar with the Spanish political landscape, I found myself detached from the big political movers and shakers altogether.

Instead, my attention shifted to what was directly in front of me.

After meeting neighbours at an open-garden gathering, we discovered the Almazen Consumer Group. Founded in 2010, its aim is to make good food more accessible while supporting local producers. It works in two main ways.

First, individuals self-organise to bulk-buy produce directly from growers across Spain. Recently, for example, we collectively purchased several kilos of avocados grown right here in Asturias — a delightful change from paying luxury prices for them to be imported into UK supermarkets.

Second, the group coordinates weekly orders from local farmers. Every week, a volunteer gathers orders via an online form, totals them, and sends them to the producers. On Thursday evenings, farmers bring the produce to a local bar, where two more volunteers sort it into baskets. People come by, have a drink, catch up, collect their food, and pay what they owe.

This simple system generates an astonishing range of benefits: farmers receive fair prices and stable demand; consumers gain access to fresh, affordable, often organic food; supply chains shrink dramatically; people learn directly from growers; volunteers build skills and confidence; social ties deepen; and the whole process becomes deeply human again.

This is economic democracy in action. It’s decentralised, relational, participatory, and deeply practical. And it’s easily replicable. All it requires is a few committed volunteers, one or two producers, and a messaging app. This year, we hope to scale up our own vegetable garden enough to contribute as small producers ourselves.

Shortly before we moved to Spain, a major power outage affected large parts of the country, leaving millions without electricity for hours. That experience — combined with broader energy instability across Europe — strengthened our desire to go off-grid. We invested in solar panels and battery storage, and now generate our own electricity. It feels grounding to witness, day by day, the relationship between sunlight, energy, and our daily needs.

While we chose to go solo into solar, our local council is supporting community-owned solar schemes. Groups of households jointly invest in shared infrastructure, collectively owning and managing their energy system. Costs and benefits are distributed, skills are developed locally, and economic power stays rooted in the community rather than flowing outward to distant corporations.

I have experienced that the core difference between political and economic democracy is this: instead of indirectly voting for a centralised authority to influence how your basic needs are met, you directly participate in shaping those systems yourself. Necessities like food and energy become matters of shared stewardship rather than distant administration.

This is not an argument against political democracy. Political rights, representation, and legal protections matter enormously. But without economic democracy, political democracy becomes thin, fragile, and easily captured. Real freedom requires material security. Without access to land, energy, food, and meaningful work, political rights ring hollow.

Living here this year, I’ve encountered some tangible, everyday forms of economic democracy. It’s grounding to be tuned into my local community, and surprisingly liberating to step away from the constant noise of national politics. Whilst I’ve learned much in the hills of Asturias, local needs are being met by local people everywhere, in beautiful, diverse ways, all across the planet. Economic democracy is taking root

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I’m sitting in a picturesque café in a plaza in Guanajuato City, Mexico, where I’ve come to study Spanish. It’s a beautiful city of colonial architecture, built into the hills, surrounded by mountains. My wife and I are getting mucho ejercicio clomping up and down the stairways to and from our Spanish language class. Keenly aware of what’s going on in the US right now, our hope is to try to be of service to Spanish-speaking immigrants when we return.

Guanajuato is known for its mines – silver, copper, and other materials. Though now mostly played out, the city built its economy on the excavation of these natural resources. Like coal in the US, gold in South Africa, and today, precious metals around the world mined for technological purposes, these mines employed a great number of people in dangerous, dirty work, for which they got a fairly meager pay. Those who profited were the mine owners.

This scenario was and is replicated in many other industries across the world. My country, the richest in the world, was built predominantly on the labor of slaves and poor immigrants. Today’s system of banking and finance developed in order to facilitate the movement of wealth earned through the production of goods using those natural resources. Today, of course, much of the wealth generated on Wall Street is money earned through speculative investments, not the production of useful goods and services.

Listening to news from home, things seem bad. Greenland may soon be invaded, Minnesota is under attack, and the president is raking in illegal gains hand over fist. He’s trying to impose the values of greed, exclusivity and cruelty upon all of us, as if these were the values any of us would want to live by.

In a way, he’s a product of a system. Most modern societies have developed based on an unfair and skewed distribution of wealth. And many of our problems can be traced to this. There are clearly other ways to structure an economy, ways that don’t lead to alienation, poverty, exploitation, and ecosystem decline.

A group of friends and I are undertaking this substack, because we want to be part of a conversation for change. We live in various parts of the world, and draw on perspectives and experiences from those areas. We’ve studied economic democracy, localism, decentralized economies, and are inspired by the ideas of Prout, Progressive Utilization. (You can learn more at Prout.info. We want to contribute, discuss, build alliances, and encourage movement-building. We’ll highlight ideas, projects and alternatives around the world that are engaged in building a new socio-economic vision.

Today a minority of people in our world hold the majority of assets. And it’s not often true, as they will tell you, that they worked extra hard and so deserve what they have. What is true is that the system is rigged.

Most people have little control over their economic lives. Corporations make decisions around where their jobs are located, how much they will be paid, what their working conditions are, how much security they’ll have in their job. If companies feel they can make more money by shipping their factories overseas, they’ll do it.

It’s no wonder many people feel a sense of anxiety. They’re struggling to make ends meet, to get an education, to provide for their family. As Billy Bragg sings, “I lost my job, my car and my house, when ten thousand miles away some guy clicked on a mouse.” We all seem to be at the mercy of unfathomable, or worse, consciously exploitative, forces.

Private companies exercise zero accountability to the average worker. Not only that, they hold tremendous influence over politicians, lobbying for the relaxing of regulations in order to make more profit. Some CEOs earn 400 times what their workers earn.

Is this fair? Are you fed up yet?

The crux of what we’ll be writing about revolves around a belief in economic democracy, in a society in which wealth is shared in a rational way. A society in which all people have the jobs necessary to provide for themselves and their families, have control over their economic futures, and standards of living are continually improving.

To that end, we’d like to see less corporate control, and more employee-owned businesses and cooperatives, motivated by a sense of community spirit, not just profit. We believe in a more balanced economy, where everyone can contribute and flourish. It goes without saying that such a system would respect and protect the natural world, as well.

A cap on wealth is one approach to solving this problem. Another is to implement a society-wide fairer wage structure in which the gap between the lowest and highest salary paid is reasonable and the lowest is constantly improving.

We hear plenty of talk about political democracy. And that’s important, especially given the authoritarian nooses we feel tightening around our necks. But in order to have true political democracy, I believe it’s necessary to first have economic democracy. People must have control over their own lives, their jobs, their well-being. They need to develop cooperation amongst themselves and trust that their co-workers have their well-being at heart.

Economic democracy means local communities planning their own economies and outside forces not being allowed to extract wealth. It means strengthening the local economy through local production and purchasing.

I’m here in Guanajuato because I believe in the importance of building cultural bridges and connecting to people in other parts of the world. I’ll be back in Iowa City, where I live permanently, in a month or so, and look forward to engaging further in the work of encouraging a strong local economy there.

That’s the kind of thing we’ll be focusing on in this substack, every two weeks. Next time I’ll hand the reins over to Ralph Andrews, a Brit who lives in Spain.

I hope you’ll continue to tune in to explore more about how we can all engage in the work of creating a fairer world, one based in reciprocity and mutual cooperation, not greed and exploitation.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a few verbs to conjugate.

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In this episode of Proutcast, we speak with Pradeep Sharma, former Planning & Policy Advisor to the Government of Chhattisgarh, whose life journey bridges tribal village life, environmental activism, corporate agriculture, spiritual inquiry, and state-level policy design.

Born in a remote tribal region of central India, Pradeep’s early life exposed him to deep inequalities between industrial “development” and rural realities. After training as an engineer at IIT and working in the petroleum sector, he made a decisive break — turning instead toward environmental justice movements, grassroots agriculture, Ayurveda, and long-term village-based organising.From 2019–2024,

Pradeep brought these lived experiences into government, where he helped design and implement Narwa–Garuwa–Ghurwa–Badi (NGGB) — an integrated rural development model focused on water systems, livestock, soil regeneration, and nutrition. Under his guidance, NGGB later evolved into Rural Industrial Parks (RIPA), enabling villages to move from raw production to local enterprises, skills, and value-added livelihoods.

In this wide-ranging conversation, we explore:

• Why large dams and industrial farming fail rural communities — and how reviving small rivers (Narwa) transformed water security

• How cattle were reimagined from an economic “burden” into a regenerative asset through Gothans and compost systems (Garuwa & Ghurwa)

• Why nutrition and backyard gardens (Badi) are foundational to real development• The idea of Kisan–Kaarigar–Kalakaar — farmer, artisan, and artist — as a holistic model of human fulfilment• How women became central economic actors in village economies• The transition from NGGB to Rural Industrial Parks (RIPA) and what a post-growth rural economy can look like

• What it takes to adapt these models across cultures, regions, and countries

This episode offers a rare, grounded look at large-scale rural transformation built from the bottom up, rooted in ecology, dignity, culture, and practical systems — with lessons relevant far beyond India.

To learn more about this work:

Email: seva.service@gmail.com

Website: Centre of Science for Villages

If you’re interested in rural regeneration, ecological economics, cooperative development, or systems-level alternatives to extractive growth, this conversation is for you.

Listen to ProutCast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@proutistuni

Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/proutcast/id1845807777

Learn about PROUT (Progressive Utilization Theory): https://prout.info/

Connect with us:Instagram: @theproutcast

X: https://x.com/ProutCast

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/proutcast

Email: proutcast@prout-global.org

In this episode, community organiser Filipa Costa takes us inside the Converge Movement of Cova da Beira, a pioneering effort in Portugal where residents, local producers, associations, and municipalities come together to identify their real needs, create shared priorities, and solve problems through local, block-level planning.

In this conversation, we speak with Filipa Costa, one of the key facilitators behind Cova da Beira’s bottom-up transformation. She explains how the Converge process brings people from every sector of society into the same room — farmers, schools, cooperatives, activists, councils — to map local issues, pool resources, and collectively design solutions. From food systems and transport to land use, education, and economic resilience, Filipa shows how local intelligence and cooperation can achieve what centralised institutions often cannot: practical, grounded change that reflects the lived reality of the community.

In this wide-ranging discussion, we explore:

• how the Converge Movement strengthens community resilience in Cova da Beira

• why block-level planning leads to more accurate, effective decision-making

• how residents collectively identify needs and co-create practical solutions

• the role of local councils, associations, and cooperatives in participatory planning

• what other regions can learn from Cova da Beira’s model of grassroots development

Cova de Beira Converge (CBC): https://covadabeiraconverge.pt/

Prout Research Institute Portugal (PRIP): https://prip.pt/

Listen to ProutCast on:

YouTube: https://youtu.be/kMtOuM9Arro

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6EdEm68TI16RrlhAa5RW9K

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