“Owning the Future offers a vision for a future beyond capitalism. It will require nothing less than a radical democratization of ownership. An ambitious book that should inspire many to help workout the details of a much needed transition.”
—Katharina Pistor, author of The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality
“However queasily anxious it makes the political class, the question of who should own what in our economy still hangs in the air, unanswered. This pacy and accessible book unpacks the issues and offers solutions with a welcome dash of imagination and optimism.”
—Aditya Chakrabortty, Senior Economics Commentator, The Guardian
“Amid a growing divide between those who own assets and those who don’t, Owning the Future offers an essential guide to the shifting landscape of property, politics, and power today, from the enclosure of knowledge in vaccine IP to the outsized power of massive asset managers. Seamlessly blending social theory and case studies, Adrienne Buller and Mathew Lawrence lucidly diagnose the pathologies of private ownership across a range of sectors—housing, data, ecosystems—and make a powerful case for the necessity of public and democratic alternatives.”
—Alyssa Battistoni, co-author of A Planet to Win
“A must-have guide for anyone interested in reimagining ownership in our age of compounding crises. Lawrence and Buller map out how we can escape from a world of escalating competition over dwindling assets towards a future where the inherent value of every person is recognised. Read this if you want to maintain any hope in a different vision of the twenty-first century.”
—Kojo Koram, author of Uncommon Wealth
“Buller and Lawrence imagine a world where corporates are democratized, the stock market loses its power, and the state invests in a common fund for citizens and makes real and substantial investments in decarbonization. This is no fever dream. It is a well-reasoned plan of action and far more possible than we think.”
—Mark Blyth, author of Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea
“You will finish this gripping book equipped with the tools to rethink what property means, ready to reimagine and transform ownership so that we can effectively redistribute power, decommodify the provision of essential goods and services, and expand the meaning of the commons. A powerful exposé of how, together, we can own the future on an habitable planet.”
—Isabelle Ferreras, author of Firms as Political Entities
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