Marjan Ehsassi is the executive director of the Federation for Innovation in Democracy (FIDE) - North America, an international organization working to increase citizen participation in policymaking. On this research call, we discussed her article "We Need a Fourth Branch of Government" about how we can use citizens' assemblies to better democracy, capitalism, and academia.

Katie Boland, co-founder of the Delta Fund, recently wrote an article arguing that KKR isn’t providing employee-ownership, but is “equity washing." A baseline employee ownership deal (known as an ESOP) would be much better, she says.

I think it’s a mistake to compare a private equity company like KKR to traditional employee-owned companies—we should compare them to other private equity companies. Is KKR’s model better than what other employee-owned companies are doing? Probably not! Is KKR’s model better than what other PE companies are doing? ABSOLUTELY!

In Becky Chambers’ beautiful novel and masterpiece, A Psalm for the Wild Built, Sibling Dex is afraid to walk off the path because of the harm they might cause the grass and the creatures that live in it. But they come into contact with a robot who finds this strange. “Every living thing causes damage to others, Sibling Dex. You’d all starve otherwise. Have you ever watched a bull elk mow its way through a bitebulb thicket?"

All life causes harm. Shouldn't we, for our own wellbeing?

New York City’s mayoral primary has served as a kind of theater for what the future of the Democratic Party should look like in the United States.

The story is told through three characters: The Trad Democrat, played by Andrew Cuomo, The Social Democrat, played by Zohran Mamdani, and The Abundance Democrat, played by Zellnor Myrie, Brad Lander, Whitney Tilson, and Adrienne Adams.

What kind of Democrat do we want in America? Well, that’s the subject of the show, and you, as the audience member, can vote on who wins.

But be warned: Whoever you choose will have to go up against one of Trump’s henchmen in the final round this fall. And whatever’s modeled here in New York City could eventually be modeled in the state, and even the country.

Can your choice of Democrat defeat Donald Trump in the final showdown for our country?

Employee equity programs created a new entrepreneurial class and fostered a generation of employee-owned companies. They also led to rampant inequality.

Without Silicon Valley cutting employees in on the deal, all of our economic value could have funneled to the top instead of just nearly all of it. Our task now is to drastically expand what Silicon Valley started: To increase the share of companies owned by working employees and to increase the share of worker equity that goes to non-executive employees.

If 120 million workers became owners in the companies they work for, the impact on wealth ownership would be seismic. Here's how it could work.

We should create more US States. A growing separatist movement aims to do just that.

What if US states had the same autonomy as EU countries? Theoretically, Vermont could become a social democracy just like Malta—after all, they have the same population size and GDP per capita. California has the same population as Spain and is twice as rich by GDP per capita—they could afford to subsidize childcare, healthcare, and education just like Spain. Despite being our least populous state, Wyoming is richer than Sweden or the Netherlands on a per capita basis—it could establish a sovereign wealth fund just like Norway does, investing its surplus oil revenues for the benefit of its citizens. We don’t need to talk about secession to make this a reality, just taxation.

Companies are wealthier than nation-states. They don't have borders. They pioneered workers’ rights before governments mandated them, and are often more inclusive than nations. Companies are smaller and more nimble than nation-states. They are more efficient and less polarized than countries. Company campuses are already a lot like city-states. A Google employee is better cared for than a United States citizen. Companies will reshape our future, that's why we need to build better ones.

A century after Karl Marx argued for a more fair and just society, José María Arizmendiarrieta started building one. Here's the story of the Catholic priest that inspired the world's biggest worker cooperative.