Quotes from Gar Alperovitz

The top 400 people own more wealth now than the bottom 185 million Americans taken together. That is a medieval structure.

The most recent estimate is that a mere 400 individuals in the United States now own more wealth than the bottom 180 million Americans taken together -- a degree of wealth concentration that is accurately, not rhetorically, properly designated medieval.

our nation's truly critical problems are built into the very structure of the economic and political system; they are not something passing in the night that will go away even when we elect forward-looking leaders and actively pressure them to move in a different direction.

But if the system is the problem, the truth is that there will not be satisfactory answers in the here and now for lots of people. That is one of the (painful) ways you know that the problem is systemic. Which means that either you build forward no matter what, or you lose. Period.

The institutional requirements of community pose fundamental issues that neither corporate capitalism nor state socialism ever took seriously. The critical point of departure is the question: Can you have Democracy with a big D in any system if you don't have democracy with a small d in the actual experience and everyday community life of ordinary everyday citizens?

We are not "merely" talking about nurturing democratic community practice; we are talking about community practice as the basis of fundamental experiences of critical importance to the nation as a whole and of democracy in general. The answer to the question "Can you have genuine Democracy with a big D in a continental nation if its citizens have little genuine experience of democracy with a small d in their own lives?" is simple: No.

The reality of the world we live in is that people sometimes aren't interested in many circumstances; no matter how much young radicals yell at them, that isn't what they want to do right now.

Finding ways to organize work in which people are not locked into unequal power relationships is very important. Having said that, it's not easily done, and it's complicated.