*Is there another way? Yes—and people are already building parts of it.*
A home can become more valuable while becoming less affordable. A company can report record profits while the community around it loses its livelihoods. An economy can grow while the living systems supporting it deteriorate.
These contradictions invite a better question: **What is the economy supposed to accomplish—and for whom?**
An economy organises how we meet our needs through work, resources, production and care. Finance helps fund that activity and manage risk. Their purpose should be to support a good life within the capacity of the planet.
When accumulating financial claims becomes more important than meeting those needs, the means displace the purpose.
We have inherited a mixture of markets, public institutions, private corporations and cooperative traditions. These arrangements have financed important advances. They also contain rules that allow wealth and decision-making power to concentrate, while costs fall on people with less influence.
The results are visible. The *World Inequality Report 2026* estimates that the wealthiest tenth of adults holds about three-quarters of global personal wealth; the bottom half holds just 2%.
Meanwhile, UN Trade and Development reported in October 2026 that 3.7 billion people live in 51 developing countries where government interest payments exceed spending on health or education. Borrowing can build essential infrastructure. Its terms can also leave governments with less room to provide essential services.
The consequences extend into nature. UNEP’s *Global Resources Outlook 2024* found that worldwide resource extraction had tripled over five decades. An economy that counts the proceeds of extraction while allowing ecological damage to go unpaid receives a dangerously incomplete account of its performance.
A familiar observation captures the need to question what we accept as normal:
> “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
Often attributed to **Jiddu Krishnamurti**, this is the usual wording; his foundation cannot verify these exact words as his.
Applied to economics, the question is practical: should people spend their lives adapting to insecurity, or should our institutions become better at providing security?
**A different economy begins with different rules about ownership, power and responsibility.**
There is no single replacement model ready to install everywhere. There are useful approaches: cooperatives, community land trusts, accountable banking, public services and institutions that protect shared resources. Often described as parts of a solidarity economy or community wealth building, they address different pieces of the problem.
Consider four examples.
In India, the Self-Employed Women’s Association helped establish **SEWA Bank in 1974**, making savings and credit a cooperative undertaking among women working in the informal economy. The starting point was the financial needs of working women themselves.
In Italy and Spain, **Banca Etica** operates as a cooperative bank. Members have equal voting rights regardless of how many shares they hold. The bank publishes its loans and assesses social and environmental effects alongside financial considerations. Members participate in an institution with a stated public purpose and visible lending decisions.
In Vermont, **Champlain Housing Trust** uses public and other investment to make homes more affordable and preserve that benefit through resale restrictions. Its shared equity approach allows homeowners to build equity while limiting the appreciation they take when selling. The next household benefits from the original affordability investment. A home can provide security across generations of residents.
In Ohio, **Evergreen Cooperatives’ Fund for Employee Ownership** acquires businesses and converts them to employee ownership, supporting them with capital, training and governance assistance. Existing companies become a route toward broader ownership and a stronger stake for the people doing the work.
These examples change specific relationships: between a borrower and a lender, a household and land, a worker and the business they help sustain.
They also require money, expertise and sound management. Cooperative lenders still face defaults. Housing trusts need land and funding. Worker-owned businesses need customers, equipment and reserves.
A fair economy must pay people, maintain assets and fund future needs. It must also prevent powerful participants from taking disproportionate rewards while leaving others to absorb the losses.
**How do we prevent extraction and exploitation from returning under a different name?**
Write the protections into the institution: meaningful voting rights; fair pay; transparent contracts; enforceable labour standards; environmental obligations; independent scrutiny; and clear rules for distributing surplus.
Respect Indigenous sovereignty, land rights and free, prior and informed consent. Communities must have authority over decisions affecting their territories and livelihoods. A “green” investment cannot justify dispossession.
Make participation possible for people without spare money or time. Otherwise, a community institution can become dominated by its most comfortable members.
And connect local change to wider reform. Fair taxation, competition policy, universal public services, responsible lending and workable debt restructuring can give community initiatives room to succeed. A cooperative cannot repair the international financial system on its own.
> “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking that created them.”
This widely circulated maxim is useful here without an unverified Einstein attribution. The change in thinking is to judge investment by the capabilities it creates: secure housing, worthwhile work, healthy ecosystems and communities able to shape their futures.
Another familiar line describes what is already visible:
> “The future has always been here, it just hasn’t been evenly distributed.”
This wording adapts **William Gibson’s** observation. In this context, the unevenly distributed future includes institutions that already share ownership and preserve benefits for the next person.
The opportunity is to help them connect.
A community can begin with one concrete need. Bring together the people affected, workers, local businesses, public institutions and suitable finance providers. Trace where money currently flows. Identify what could be owned or governed differently. Agree on a viable budget, decision-making rights and measures of success.
Then test, publish the results and improve the design. Share the methods openly, including the mistakes.
> “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
Used here as a popular warning about repetition, this saying has no substantiated Einstein attribution. Its practical invitation is to learn—and change the rules when the evidence demands it.
A healthier economy would give more people the ability to contribute, enough security to plan ahead, and a meaningful say in what happens around them.
We already have examples to learn from. The next step is to give those possibilities the ownership, funding, public support and connections they need to become everyday life.