{"id":927,"date":"2026-07-15T16:41:01","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T16:41:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/propertytransitionmedia.com\/?p=927"},"modified":"2026-07-15T16:41:01","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T16:41:01","slug":"democrats-turn-to-economic-democracy-and-you-already-know-what-they-mean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/propertytransitionmedia.com\/?p=927","title":{"rendered":"Democrats Turn To ‘Economic Democracy,’ And You Already Know What They Mean"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\u201cWe cannot save our democracy unless we democratize our economy.\u201d A truck is backing up to the loading dock, delivering a giant cargo of old wine in new bottles. You\u2019re going to be hearing more of this language.<\/p>\n

Read more The Real Threats Against SCOTUS Are Not \u2018Bipartisan.\u2019 They\u2019re Coming From The Left<\/a><\/p>\n

Speaking this week at the annual conference of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (which they somehow abbreviate as NALEO, skipping a letter), California Governor Gavin Newsom called for a new era of economic democracy:<\/p>\n

The term \u201ceconomic democracy\u201d (ED) has been bouncing around for a long time, extensively defined and discussed by academic theorists: \u201cRather than being made unilaterally by private actors, important decisions about production are the results of broad deliberation processes among workers and, potentially, other constituencies \u2026 All models of ED, as conceived here, appear incompatible with capitalism.\u201d<\/p>\n

You can read the \u201ccore ideas\u201d of economic democracy here, at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. That page explains that under the magic unicorn conditions of true economic democracy, \u201cit is not the owners of capital, or the anonymous forces of the market, but the democratic voices of all citizens that controls the economy.\u201d We vote to make houses free, for example. Owners<\/em> don\u2019t get to decide anymore how their resources are used, which means that ownership ceases to exist.<\/p>\n

At the base of all this discussion is the view of what a \u201cmarket\u201d is, the foundation of economic exchange. In a 2020 book, the former Clinton administration official turned UC Berkeley professor Robert Reich offered this absolutely extraordinary explanation of the term:<\/p>\n

Read more Todd Blanche Is Finally Punishing \u2018Sanctuary\u2019 Cities For Getting Americans Killed<\/a><\/p>\n

If you and I live in the woods with no contact with anyone else, and I offer you some of my venison in exchange for some of your acorns, we would start negotiating over the value of the exchange: No way am I giving you this much venison for just twenty acorns, but I\u2019d think about it for forty. We\u2019re setting a price. We\u2019ve made a market. Robert Reich, being a very smart professor, feels confident that we couldn\u2019t possibly have a market until a government showed up to create one for us. We\u2019d just have to stand there holding our food items with no way to exchange them, in the absence of regulatory agencies to facilitate the trade. Government first, then everything else.<\/p>\n

They are moving forward on this conception of the world, abandoning the idea of free trade outside of the mechanism of state power. And the euphemisms are going to pile up in a hurry. \u201cSocial control of investment,\u201d moving decisions about the allocation of resources to government. \u201cWage replacement\u201d or \u201cwage buyouts,\u201d finding more and more ways to pay people for not working. \u201cGuaranteed basic needs,\u201d the reconception of food, clothing, housing, fuel, medical care, and so on as inviolable rights that don\u2019t attach to effort. Free stuff, no matter what, after a seizure of the means of production.<\/p>\n

In a press release on Newsom\u2019s comments at NALEO, the governor\u2019s office gave examples that help to make sense of the term:<\/p>\n

It means redistribution of wealth from earners to takers, more and more free stuff from the government. Benjamin Franklin probably didn\u2019t say the thing that people incorrectly attribute to him: \u201cWhen the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.\u201d But if he\u2019d met Gavin Newsom, he would have.<\/p>\n

Read more Dem Admits \u2018It Would Be Hard\u2019 To Win Elections If Voting Required Proof Of Citizenship<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Democrats are proposing “economic democracy,” a euphemism for taking resources from productive people and giving them to lazy parasites.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":926,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[559],"tags":[2921,2438,524,2922,2923,2924,2925,2926,1055,2927,2928],"class_list":["post-927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economics","tag-economic-democracy","tag-free-stuff","tag-gavin-newsom","tag-guaranteed-basic-needs","tag-markets","tag-naleo","tag-redistribution","tag-social-control-of-investment","tag-socialism","tag-takers","tag-wage-replacement"],"yoast_head":"\nDemocrats Turn To ‘Economic Democracy,’ And You Already Know What They Mean - Property Transition Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/propertytransitionmedia.com\/?p=927\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Democrats Turn To ‘Economic Democracy,’ And You Already Know What They Mean - 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