Would you vote for a just and sustainable economy? If a just economy provided for everyone's basic needs and a sustainable economy provided for this generation without compromising the capacity of future generations to provide for their needs, would you vote for that? I think most of us would. So why is our economy so far away from what we desire and, in some cases, moving in a contrary direction? It is because of a mistake – one that will continue to frustrate our efforts to create a just and sustainable economy until we correct it.

Many of us are aware of the mistake, at least on some level. In 1998, Ray Anderson, the CEO of Interface Inc., told an audience that the first industrial revolution was a mistake, in spite of all the good that had come from it. The mistake was that our focus on economic growth had blinded us to the destruction of the natural environment. Instead of “captains of industry,” Anderson argued, future generations would see corporate leaders as “plunderers of the earth.” People in the early days of the environmental movement or more recent advocates of sustainability have made similar arguments. We are on the brink of bringing chaos to the planet like it has seldom seen before. Al Gore, among others, has worked tirelessly to get us to recognize this “inconvenient truth.”

What is the mistake? In a nutshell, it is to base our economy on property and property relations.