Matt Prewitt: Lawyer, Writer, & President of RadicalxChange Foundation
In today’s episode, guest host Margaret Levi interviews Matt Prewitt, President of RadicalxChange Foundation. With the tables turned from our last episode, Margaret interviews Matt on rethinking property rights. Beginning with a reflection on the state of political liberalism, Matt dives into the mechanics of Partial Common Ownership (also known as “Plural Property”) and it being part of the solution to manage assets in a fairer, more efficient way and how experimentation like PCO can lead toward a politics of change.<br><br>RadicalxChange has been working with Margaret Levi and her team at Stanford, together with Dark Matter Labs, on exploring and reimagining the institutions of ownership.<br><br>This episode is part of a short series exploring the theme of What and How We Own: Building a Politics of Change.
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Transcript
This is a RadicalxChange production. Hello, and welcome to Radical Exchanges. This is the second episode in our short series exploring the theme of what and how we own, building a politics of change. In our last episode, Matt Pruitt spoke with Margaret Levy of Stanford University about the work she and her team are doing as they rethink property rights to create a property system that prioritizes well-being, sustainability, and relational equality. In today's episode, the tables are turned with Margaret interviewing Matt on his work in rethinking property rights. They begin by first discussing his views on the uneasy relationship between property and political liberalism. Then they explore the mechanics of partial common ownership and why it fits with a better conception of liberalism. Radical exchange is working with Margaret Levi and her team at Stanford together with Dark Matter Labs on exploring and reimagining the institutions of ownership. So without further ado, let's dive in with Margaret Levi and Matt Pruitt.
It's really a delight, Matt Pruitt, to have this conversation with you, and to talk a little bit about this very interesting idea of, partial common ownership and where it comes from. So what I'd like to do is really start before we get to partial common ownership to sort of understand what it's embedded in, what's what's the larger set of issues that are raised for you and that partial common ownership is partially a solution for. So I know that that there are couple of concerns that as we've talked about these issues over time are very, that you feel. One is that there is a problem with liberalism as we currently construe it. And another is your desire to achieve legitimacy in any kind of new institutional arrangement or problem solving, that you engage in. So I'd like to spend a little time first, just sort of parsing out some of those ideas, what you mean by liberalism, how that affects the property regime, what accounts for legitimacy, and then then we can delve more deeply into partial common ownership itself. So why don't we start with, liberalism? And maybe you could tell me a little more about what you mean by that term, where you see the problems lying, and, we can go from there.
Sure. So I think that, the place I'm coming from here is that I take a lot of the critiques of liberalism quite seriously. I think that there are, pretty powerful arguments out there that, that kind of demand a, a response from, people committed to some sort of notion of of liberal politics. And, and to me, the analysis of of property rights and our conceptions of ownership are are an important part of that. So that's kind of how the pieces fit together for me. Now one one point to make is that just just on the topic of of liberalism, I even though I take a lot of these critiques of liberalism quite seriously, I also feel, concerned that many of the, sort of proposed alternatives to liberalism are either underbaked or utopian or or dangerous or something like that. And and to and to be clear, I actually think I I do wanna be clear that I sometimes think it's sort of, it's sort of unfair to push back against the critiques of liberalism by saying that the alternatives are dangerous. I don't I don't think that that's always a fair way of sort of tarring the, the alternatives. Nonetheless, there's some truth to it. And, what I, and I basically I I remain committed to something that,
that I think fits into the rubric of liberalism in an important sense. And I I don't Can I push you for a minute? Because I'm still not clear what you mean by liberalism. So as you it's a term that gets used by all sides in our current contemporary political debates. Almost every claims to be a liberal either in the classical sense, which is sort of, you know, the the Adam Smithian sense of being a liberal or as it's been understood by the neoclassicist and the neoliberals, or they or it's used as a sort of term for the progressives. So what do you mean? And when you say you're a liberal, what are you telling us? Or when you say you're against you know, you're critiquing liberalism, what are you critiquing?
So I I think that the, so it's first important to distinguish, as you're suggesting, these kinds of parochial usages of liberalism. I don't just mean sort of progressivism in the American sense. I don't mean, like, the term liberal in European politics often means, like, sort of pro market or something. Right. The these are not the usages of liberalism that I have in mind. To me, the core of the of the concept of liberalism has to do with the the constraint of power, basically. It it has to do with with the idea that that is you know, we want a certain relationship between between authority and between, you know, the the parties that are subject to the authority. So, I I look to a couple of principles that Ronald Dworkin, laid out as a as a pretty good guide to, like, the core of the concept of liberalism. I'm not Dworkin, the philosopher. Right. Ron Dworkin, the the legal philosopher. His he so he gives sort of two two principles, as a core of liberalism, which are both kind of directed at, the the sort of the problem of, the legitimate use of coercive force by a government against its citizens. And the the the prince the first principle so I'll I'll lay them out briefly, and then we can kind of talk about them more. I actually don't fully sign on to both of them, but I think it's a great place to start. The, the first principle is that, that coercive power is illegitimate if it is not, motivated if it is not, you know, guided by basically equal concern for all of the, persons that are subject to to the power. Right? So this sort of criterion of equality or equal concern. And then the second principle is is the idea that, coercive power is illegitimate unless it respects the right and responsibility of every individual to decide, for themselves, what would count as success, what would count as a good life, what would count as the good. So to me, these two principles, which both have to do with the kind of, with sort of constraining the exercise of coercive government power are the are really the the the core of it. And the these these ideas, are more abstract, and they cover most of the different sort of particular conceptions of liberalism that, that people talk about.
Great. Okay. So what is your critique of liberalism then, and how does property fit into that?
Well, so I I think that liberalism, I'm not sure if it's a critique of liberalism or if it's critique of, like, a misconstrual of liberalism. But but, basically, basically, I I worry about, I worry about how liberalism has been applied in practice, because I, I think that many governments and many societies that consider themselves liberal have sort of excessively relied on a few different kinds of institutions to, like, instantiate their commitment to liberalism. And one of the most important, of those institutions is the institution of of property. Right? So the idea of the idea of private property kind of seems, you know, to express these two principles because it has this sort of quality of neutrality. Right? It has this this quality of of, you know, property rights themselves, you know, it's kind of easy to make them formally, apply equally to everyone in a polity. And and property rights themselves also have seemed to kind of not put their thumb on the scale of, of any particular conception of the good. And you can make a similar statements, I think, about other sorts of economic institutions such as, such as money. Right? Money also seems to have this kind of neutrality, this kind of, quality of not respecting or favoring some groups over others and not embodying any particular conception of the good. And therefore, I think that, you know, many, many thinkers who thought of themselves as liberal have understood these economic institutions like property and money as compatible with a literal ordering of society. And, and that is, that is the core of my worry. I also think there's, there's another
It's a core of your worry because you don't think of them as neutral. Is that
it's the core of my worry because I I actually think that that that these institutions it's not just that they're not neutral. It's more that they don't actually, embody, you know, these values. It's not they don't they they don't, express equal equal respect for for everyone. They, they don't and and and so what happens is basically the concentrations of power that, that form through the sort of through these economic institutions end up themselves being sort of sites of illiberalism. Right? They they end up being, nodes of illiberal power that are functioning in supposedly liberal societies. That's basically my worry.
And do you see those nodes of power as being another term you use a lot as illegitimate or legitimate? So what would make those nodes of power either illegitimate or legitimate? Well Or does that term not apply to them?
When I talk about the way that I think about, legitimacy is, I I basically take legitimate to essentially just mean, like, justified power in the context of a, like, a legal ordering. That that's bay you know, so I have quite a general way of understanding, legitimacy. But I but I think that liberalism is trying to, ensure that our is is legitimate. And I think that, I think that if we have kind of a better conception of what liberalism, is trying to do or should be trying to do, then it suggests to us ways that we could reform these economic institutions, that would, that would better ensure the legitimacy of of power operating in liberal societies. Does that make sense?
Not fully to me because you've just decide to find legitimacy as having to do with the legal system and that it's and property and money are both very much within the legal system as they are currently constituted, as legal systems are currently constituted. So it seems that by definition, they're legitimate. But I'm hearing you worry that they could that somehow conflict with liberalism.
I see. I see. I mean, so I can understand it. Yeah. So, I mean, I guess we're we're getting tripped up on this sort of, positivist sort of thing. Like, the in other words, the, I'm using legitimacy in a in a deeper way than just saying than than, for example, legality. I'm like, I I when I'm suggesting that power might be illegitimate, I'm, I'm not saying it's necessarily illegal. I'm saying that there might be some sort of moral, problem with its ordering.
No. I would buy that, but that's the way you defined it earlier got us, I think, down this verbally defined it, got us down this path a little bit. Okay. So liberalism may be a basis for legitimate power, but you feel like some of the institutions that have gotten embedded in it are problematic for that legitimacy and problematic for the state use of power. Is that
That's right. That's right. And I think that I think that in order to make them more legitimate, we need to have, you know, we don't necessarily need to start here. This is a little bit theoretical, but I think it helps to have a better conception of what, of what liberalism is trying to do. And the way I understand that is, I view these sort of liberal principles as a way of, a way of ordering a society in which, you know, either irreconcilable or very difficult to reconcile conflicts of value exist, but that can nonetheless function peacefully and stably and, you know, to the maximum, happiness of of of everyone. Right? So I I I understand liberalism is playing kind of a kind of a mediating role. It's like a way of thinking about, the coercive power or government power or whatever as sort of a sort of a mediator. And, and I think that we've, gotten into, you know, I think a lot of twentieth century liberals and kind of had a understanding of what such a mediator should be doing that I believe needs correction in order to reform these institutions.
Okay. So that leads us, I think, into some of the more concrete ideas you have about how to reform these institutions so that government can play more of a mediating role. And just so I let me get one more piece of clarification out, Matt, if I may, which is that, part of what I think I hear you arguing about, prop the way in which property and money are embedded in liberalism currently is that they make for a a kind of unequal playing field that then comes back and affects the way government can act because it affects, power within government. Because part of what liberalism is also about, I as I understand you, it has to do with, a kind of democratic piece as well that there's a popular piece of the accountability there. And if the population, is very unequal or is unequal in ways that it can't be made, relatively equal in political terms, even if it's unequal in economic terms, then there's a problem.
Yeah. The the way I would put it is, I think that there is a I think that liberalism in some ways has well, Let me let me, let me put it this way. I think that one one problem with liberalism is that, I think that in many cases, its principles have been sort of over applied. So So in other words, if you take these kind of these liberal ideas about how power should be exercised, which, you know, are were kinda originally sort of, conceived as constraints on government power, and then you apply those same liberal principles outside of the sphere of government power, they can sort of erode, or disrupt different kinds of associations in society. I think this kind of over application of government principles has led to or over application of liberal principles has led to some backlash against the concept of liberalism. And then on the other hand, I think we often have, like, under application of liberal principles. So we have we, there are sites of power in society that that are, are not legitimate, that are morally objectionable, where we are tempted to, apply liberal principles, for perfectly good reasons. And, and what I wanna suggest is that, like, there's a I think that there's a a different sort of enemy that liberalism should, should understand itself as having. So, like, liberalism I think many liberals basically look throughout society and they look for examples of illiberalism, and they try to liberalize examples of illiberalism. And and I think that what instead what we should understand liberalism as doing is identifying certain kinds of illegitimate power and constraining those. And and what I suggest as the sort of criterion for identifying that kind of illegitimate power is, is in this this idea of, like, compounding power of sort of geometrically, exponentially, expanding, power imbalances between different actors in society. And so this connects very closely with the idea of monopoly. I basically think that, like, monopoly power is in a sense the problem that liberalism is trying to solve. And I think that's a more precise way of understanding what liberalism should be trying to do than just saying, for example, liberalism is about the constraint of of government power, of course, of government power. And I think that the, the reason that makes sense is because coercive government power is a classic example of a monopoly. Right? The, the government, uses its coercive power to prevent other actors throughout society from using, coercive power amongst themselves. Right? So it has this kind of compounding, effect. Now I don't think that's a bad thing. I think that it we we we do want to minimize the amount of coercion that's that's going on throughout society. But because you have this kind of process that has a potential to reinforce itself, coercive government power is dangerous. And, like, that's why liberal principles are a valuable guide upon it or valuable constraint on it. So what I'm trying to do is suggest, like, a different sort of target for the application of liberal principles, which has to do with monopoly.
Okay. So that gets us into thinking about, partial common ownership because part of, of course, what drives radical exchange is a concern with creating a set of institutions that are not monopolies, but in fact are radically decentralized often, are certainly decentralized, in terms of the distribution of power and accountability. So maybe you could talk a little bit about how one property has become a monopolistic problem and then how partial common property ownership is a way around that.
Yeah. So, so, property the I mean, the place to start here is just with the idea that that private ownership of certain kinds of things, amounts to a kind of compounding power, a power that has the potential just to reinforce itself and and grow exponentially. And as a cons because of that, I you know, that's that's my story, basically, for why, certain kinds of of of economic power, should be guided by liberal principles instead of just, you know, being assumed as as legitimate or or natural. So pro property often gives its owners a a kind of power that has a political character that can't really be, accurately understood as as, you know, of a different kind than the course of power that government, the government has. So partial common ownership is is an is a a way of kind of re reconceptualizing or redesigning property rights that tries to draw a clearer line between the kind of power that property rights, between the sort of political power that property rights give and the, and the non compounding, less, presumptively illegitimate, sorts of of of of of economic power or or power to, you know, to steward assets or manage assets or or resources. Right? So we're it's it's about trying to distinguish between, the monopolistic aspects of property and the non monopolistic aspects of property.
Okay. So tell me precisely as you can what partial common ownership is.
Okay. So it's a it's a way of rethinking, the components of of an of an ownership interest. The the way that it works is, is as follows. Right? So you might you might imagine, so let's imagine in the first case, just a traditional ownership interest over something like land. The way that, if you made a partial common ownership interest attaching to that same asset, it would look different. Instead of being sort of one permanent interest, enabling its owner giving its owner sort of permanent dominion over that land, the idea would be to split that, that asset into two separate assets. One of those assets is what you could call a partial common ownership license. The other, we'll call it a residual, and we'll get to that in later. But the a partial common ownership interest, works as follows. It's, it's an impermanent interest, but it's still an equity it's still a kind of of of equity like interest. The way that it works would be if I if I have the if I have a partial common ownership interest in land, what that enables me to do is it enables me to that entitles me to act like the owner of the land for a particular for for a fixed period of time. So it's a kind of a time delimited, form of of of dominion.
But I take it it's different than the ninety nine year lease in to British homes or whatever. So
the the the the crucial difference is that is that at the end of that, of that time delimited dominion, the asset goes on to goes up for auction. When it is when it goes up for auction, the the previous owner, can participate in the auction and can can bid on it. And and if they win the auction, then they if they put in a high bid, then they retain the asset. If they don't win it, then the asset goes to, a new steward who then has, you know, a sort of a subsequent partial common ownership interest in it. But the key, the key twist here is that the, the winning bid for the asset from the new owner goes to the old owner. So in other words, if the if the value of the land increased during the time that I possessed it, then I proportionally benefit from that increase in the, in its value and vice versa if if it goes down. Similarly, like, if the if the if the prior owner of the land wins the auction, they then they you can sort of think of them as they would have to pay the money to themselves, so no money has to change hands. They just they just hold on to it. But at the time of each, of each auction, some percentage of that winning bid is taken as a as a fee or sort of like a property tax, which which then passes to the, to the holder of the residual of in the asset. And, Which is a second asset, I think. Which is a which is a second asset. And I can talk a little bit more about, you know, how how that residual, works. But you can already sort of see the dynamic that there's a, what what the the the the dynamic this is creating is is where the license to use assets passes between, owners, and, and it may fluctuate in value. And some, you know, some portion of, and and and there's a basically, a stream of of of taxes or payments on the asset that is constantly being being generated and being passed back to the, to the holder of the residual as the asset fluctuates. Okay. Let's make this even more concrete.
So I know you've been doing some work with the Serpentine in London and with artists and with other owners of cultural property. And you've also been doing some work in Skowhegan, Maine. Maybe you could give me give us some concrete examples of how this works and who benefits and what the advantages of this system are.
Sure. So the, the idea is well, here here here's a good example in the case of in the case of art. So let's say that, that an artist, creates a creates a work, could be like a tangible sculpture or something like that. They, you know, if they wanted to create a partial common ownership interest, what they would do is instead of just sort of selling the the object, they would sell a, a partial common ownership interest in the in the object, which would then be, you know, periodically put back onto, onto the auction block so the different owners would have the opportunity to to, acquire possession of it for temporary periods of time, you know, ad infinitum. Right. So the so the asset will pass around between different, between different stewards. Meanwhile, it will generate a stream of income that goes back to the, to the residual. Now the the way to think about the residual or the holder of the residual, and I think some of the interesting possibilities with this become clear here, is the idea for the idea is to make the residual, I something that is collectively held and potentially and either minimally or nontransferable. So in the case of a of of an artist creating works, a good way of thinking about this would be like an artist collective. So let's say you have a group of artists who are all creating, creating works of art. They, maybe they're young artists, for example, and they don't really know if maybe one of their careers will take off and the other ones won't. Maybe maybe some of the things that they create will end up becoming very financially valuable and whereas most won't. Okay. So if they all if everyone in the collective create you know, made their art available, through partial common ownership interests, then you could imagine the collective being the holder of the of the residual for all of those interests in art. And so what that would mean is that, is that the the the artist collective would, would would receive a a permanent stream of payments that, that are generated by these by these artistic assets that are put out there into the world. If some of them explode and become super valuable, then the, you know, the the the lion's share of the benefits from that will be divided among the group of of, of of artists in the collective. And so with this, you can it's kind of like a social insurance scheme.
Though it does raise a question, though, Matt, in any of these, systems, which is inheritance. So it's clear that the that the person or persons who have to put the object or land or whatever up for auction, inheritance is irrelevant because it's, it's a question of whoever bids for it at that time. But in terms of the residual, inheritance becomes an issue. So in the artist collective, does the one of the artist's children then become a residual a recipient of the residuals? Is there inheritance in this system?
I think that, you know, you could do it either way. I mean, you you know, you there it could be or or or or it could not. I mean, all of these are sort of design questions that that I think,
can be is a very particular design issue when you think about the history of property because that's often how cumulative advantage happens. Right? You can hit something for which you have not put in any of the effort.
Yeah. I mean, the the, one way of thinking about it, so is let's if if the residual of an artist if if if the if the holder of the residuals for a, you know, group of artworks is like an artist's collective, then it, you know, it could be that the that those residuals are simply held by the collective, so that it would be up to the up to the collective to work out problem you know, the issues of of of inheritance as the next generation, comes into being.
Or it could just belong to the collective and who's ever in the collective. Exactly. Or or it could just belong to them. Kinds of land or property ownership where there's collective ownership.
Yeah. And and the the whole idea of of the of these kinds of residuals is is to to make them nonindividual assets. Right? Assets that don't attach to particular individuals. And so, therefore, it gets around sort of the problem of of, you know, one person wanting to pass on their financial assets to to the next generation. I mean, if these so these these residuals are sort of permanent kind of kind of assets, and the idea is that they should be, they should be, held, held not by individuals, but by institutions or by networks or by, by other kinds of, you know, non individual, entities. So, you know, you you you, you have also done a lot of thinking about how, for example, trusts could, could hold residuals and and then pursue, like, a a particular kind of mission for the,
for how to how to use the return. Many examples of land trusts where that that kind of, process occurs. Not partial common ownership, but the residual piece.
Yeah. Exactly. So so there's a lot there there are institutions that exist that are capable of handling this kind of kind of a problem. And, yeah.
One of the things that I'm curious about is, you know, their resonances in this, not surprisingly, to the book by Glenn Weil and, post Richard Posner, on radical markets. And they're like so but this is different. Right? So how is it different? Maybe you could explain that a little bit. Yeah. So that,
that book did a really nice job, laying out the basic mechanism design idea upon which, upon which this, this work, is based. But there are a lot of details in the way that it's exposited in that book that, that I think are impractical or, or or they just aren't aren't necessarily useful for the kind of work that I'm doing now, which is trying to trying to build practical institutions that are able to, to use you know, to to to to gain some of the possible benefits of the system like this. So a few I'll name a few of them. So, in that book, the idea of partial common ownership is primarily depicted as as a, a continuous auction. So in other words, an an auction that is, you know, constantly ongoing so that anyone can get outbid at any time. That's actually a very good way of illustrating theoretically the power of this mechanism, but it's impractical because for many kinds of assets, people need a certain degree of security, in in possession over a certain amount of time to be able to practically make use of something. Another, another important difference is that, is that in that book sort of, proposes that partial common ownership could be, could be effectuated through changes in property tax regimes, which I, again, I think is an interesting idea, and I don't totally rule out that there are, you know, possible ways that this idea could improve property tax regimes. But I don't think that you can, really convert legal ownership interests into partial common ownership interests through a tax regime, through a change in a property tax regime without, for example, triggering the takings clause. So, so I think that the the, yeah, I mean, the just the the the more salient, more practical ways of moving this idea forward, go through other channels than that. They have it has more to do with, setting up ways for communities to use partial common ownership to share power over common assets.
So can you tell me how this improves upon common ownership? Common property ownership? I mean, why partial common as opposed to common?
Sure. So one, in a way, what it's doing is splitting a false dichotomy that I think has, has, impeded, people's creativity in, in imagining new ownership relations. And that false dichotomy, has to do with, the idea that, like, if we want to distribute ownership over over assets, you know, like, the the most you know, one way of doing that is to is to split the asset into many different pieces, you know, and and essentially give everyone little fractional shares of a particular of a particular asset. And another way of doing it is to, consolidate the, you know, absolute dominion over the asset in one institution and then kind of put faith in the ability of that institution to represent the collective interests. I think that both of those, both of those means of dividing power over assets have, have problems. They basically both run into the same sort of coordination problem. If we if we take an asset like a, if we take an individ an indivisible asset like a sculpture or something like that, it's a bit weird to imagine lots of people owning little different shares of it. Right? Because then what we're doing is we're we're kind of just financializing it. We're not resolving the question about, you know, who gets to put it in their museum or who gets to display it in their living room. And, and we're kind of, you know, potentially inviting, complex coordination, problems and collective decision problems, between the many different owners of of of all the fractions of the asset. Then on the other hand, if we if we, you know, give the asset to the government, let's say, and then, and then assume that the government is, you know, an accurate, representer of the common interest, then, you know, to whatever extent the government is dysfunctional or to whatever extent the government is not actually able to embody or represent the collective interest, we haven't really done what we've wanted to do. So what partial common ownership does is it retains, it it retains this kind of feature of of assigning a, an economic actor, the, the the ability to manage the asset, to steward the asset, to to possess the asset, to act like the owner of the asset, and to fulfill many of the of the functions that in an ideal sense, asset owners, fulfill, without giving that individual owner, excessive or unnecessary or unnecessarily permanent power, over the asset.
Got it. But so would you see this partial common ownership as replacing common property in places where there are literally commons? You know, the Elinor Ostrom kind of No. This is an alternative or,
you know, a compliment to that. No. I think it's a compliment to that because if you there are lots of examples of, of assets that are, are held in common or that are managed by some, you know, representative of a shared interest that just work fine. Yep. And, partial common ownership, you know, properly understood, properly applied, partial common ownership should not seek to, change that. Right? So a good example is like a park. Right? You know? Yeah. No. I was thinking about parks and I was thinking about grazing areas. Yeah. Right. So there's no reason to, partial common owners you know, there's no reason to use partial common ownership to, to change the way that, that that parks are owned because, parks work well, you know, so when we have collective institutions that work well, when we have commonzing arrangements that work well, there's just this is, solving a problem that we don't have. Where where this is, where this is interesting is where this sort of, mentality of private ownership is is is over applied. And where where our, you know, sort of lack of creativity in imagining alternatives to, to, you know, individual private ownership kind of, you know, demands, you know, you know, demands an alternative or we can do better.
Okay. That leads into my last question, which is you know, one of the things that this conference is really about is the politics of change. So what is your how does this all feed into and what is your theory of change here?
My theory of change is that, well, I think that I think that there are many examples in history, of a kind of a lack of creativity preventing us from, doing more to, to indicate the common good. And, and I think that we're in one of those moments where we've we have kind of so fetishized the, the efficiency and the justice and the and the, legitimacy of private property arrangements that we just aren't seeing, different ways of doing it. I think that by experimenting with this particular way now I think that this this is a different way of doing it that I think is uniquely powerful, uniquely interesting. Serves as kind of a a template for, building different kinds of ownership arrangements, that do things that other kinds of, you know, common, commonzing arrangements, don't do. The and I think that when we get more experiments with it, when we get, when we build more of a critical mass of of of people and institutional actors who, who kind of get this idea and who are able to put it into practice in their, in in their work, in their institutions, you know, whether those are artists' collectives or land trusts or, or, data coalitions or whatever it may be. There's lots of different sort of domains of application. But we when we start to build a critical mass of of people who, who deeply understand this idea and are committed to experimenting with it and building on this as a as a as a template for better ownership arrangements, we will start to see more, a broader understanding of it. We'll start to see some of these arrangements work well. It will inspire other examples. It will inspire governments to think about, you know, well, you know, maybe we, maybe we can do better than just sort of, you know, selling the city land to the highest bidder. Right? Maybe we can set up a different kind of, of arrangement. So I think that, you know, my theory of change is is that, my theory of change I I I can't find the right word. My my theory of change is that, you know, this is a a a better toaster oven. And then when people see that it's a better toaster oven, more, more institutional actors and and, and organizations that are in position to serve the common good will be inspired to, to to take it up, and it'll change the way we think about property.
Let's hope you're right. Lovely. Well, thank you, Matt. That was a great conversation.
Thank you. Really appreciate it.
Thanks again to Margaret Levy and Matt Pruitt. The Radical Exchanges podcast is executive produced by g Angela Corpus and Matt Pruitt and is co produced and audio engineered by myself, Aaron Benavides. This episode was produced and recorded by Matt Pruitt. If you would like to learn more about Radical X Change, please follow us on Twitter at rad x change or check out our website at radicalxchange.org. And if you'd like to join in the conversation, we'd love to hear from you. So hop on our Discord where we have channels discussing topics like what you heard today, as well as topics like plural voting, community currencies, soulbound tokens, and more. There will be links for all of these in the description. Have a great day and stay radical.
