Stewardship: Private property without private ownership
Stewardship Economy is a radical approach to the problems of market economies and our relationship with the natural world. The approach questions one of the foundations on which market-based economies are based: the system of property rights. It proposes an alternative form of property rights for the natural world, referred to as stewardship; this has far-reaching implications for society, for the economy and for the environment. It is the subject of a series of books by Julian Pratt.
Stewardship is rooted in the principle that everyone is entitled to an equal share of wealth created by the natural world. A steward of land or the environment has an exclusive right to use that part of the natural world, but also a responsibility to care for it and a duty to compensate others by paying a stewardship fee. This compensation can be used to fund public services, reduce or replace other taxes and be redistributed through a universal basic income.
The series of books sets out the moral and economic arguments for stewardship as well as demonstrating how it would work in practice and how transition to a full stewardship economy could happen.