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Featuring Gar Alperovitz and James “Gus” Speth, formerly a presidential advisor, Administrator of the United Nations Development Program and dean of Yale Forestry School, the discussion was moderated by John Cavanagh, director of the Institute for Policy Studies.

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More about the book: Unjust Deserts: How the Rich Are Taking Our Common Inheritance and Why We Should Take It Back

Podcast:  A discussion of Unjust Deserts at Washington, D.C.’s Politics and Prose:

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Article in Truthout: How the 99 Percent Really Lost Out – in Far Greater Ways Than the Occupy Protesters Imagine

The biggest “theft” by the 1 percent has been of the primary source of wealth – knowledge – for its own benefit.

Knowledge? Yes, of course, and increasingly so. The fact is, most of what we call wealth is now known to be overwhelmingly the product of technical, scientific and other knowledge – and most of this innovation derives from socially inherited knowledge, at that. Which means that, except for trivial amounts, it was simply not created by the 1 percent who enjoy the lion’s share of its benefits. Most of it was created, historically, by society – which is to say, minimally, the other 99 percent.

Interview about the book: Dissent Magazine

Basically the story is that we have moved from a labor-intensive, small-scale farming economy to a knowledge-based information economy. In the process, the sources of growth have changed, but it’s important to understand that individuals have not really changed. We work no harder today than our ancestors did in 1800 or in the ancient past, and just the same, we are no more intelligent, in terms of basic brain capacity and reasoning ability. The cave paintings of earliest human culture are works of roughly the same basic intelligence as the theory of relativity. Let’s hold that thought: Essentially, we work no harder and are no more intelligent than our ancestors from the near or even the ancient past.

And yet our economy is more than 1,000 times larger than it was in 1800, and the best measure of prosperity, per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP)—the amount of output the economy generates for every person—is twenty times higher today than it was in the early nineteenth century (it was $42,000 in 2006, the equivalent of almost $170,000 for a family of four). The key to this growth, experts agree, is rising productivity, usually measured in terms of the amount of output per hour of work, which rose more than fifteen-fold since 1870.

Gar Alperovitz – Our Time in History: The Possibility of Fundamental System Change from New Economics Institute on Vimeo.

Bob Massie and Susan Witt of the New Economics Institute provided this gracious summary of the talk in a post titled, “Twenty Years From Now“:

At our recent conference “Strategies for a New Economy” at Bard College, [Gar Alperovitz] had planned to speak about the role of multi-national corporations.  However when he arrived early to Olin Auditorium, and saw the hundreds of people from more than 300 organizations who had come from around the world to participate and to create change, a new talk formed in his mind.  He stood up and spoke from the depth of his wisdom.

To paraphrase Gar’s remarks:  Twenty years from now, those of us here will look back at this conference, this time in history, and will recognize that it marked a turning point in the way economics is conceived and practiced.   What started as isolated projects in communities around the country, have grown in scale and visibility and are now seen as part of a single movement for change.  What were long-standing assumptions about our banking and financing system, about the way corporations are structured, about ownership of the commons, about the way money is issued, about the imperative of growth — have all been effectively questioned and challenged.  The practical programs placed before us at this conference affirm the possibility of a fair and sustainable economy and the power of engaged citizens to implement it.

A threshold has been passed.  There is no turning back to an old and failed economic system.

He went on to say that the knowledge that we are at a turning point implies a responsibility to act to the scale and consequence of that knowledge.  Our behaviour should reflect the certainty of change.  Our strategies no longer need to focus on criticizing the old, but rather on defining and catalyzing the new economy.

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