A business professional using a tablet with financial model charts (Photo by iStock/primeimages) 

“Wealth defense” refers to the structures and strategies that support the accumulation of wealth and the prevention of its democratic redistribution. It is now a multibillion-dollar industry. Like other industries, wealth defense arose in response to demands from the ultrarich (the top 0.01 percent) to reverse the wealth redistribution of the mid-20th century, which benefited the Global North’s working and middle classes. This industry has met its goals in three ways: by shifting, avoiding, and evading taxes (at the expense of the rest of society); by weakening the state’s capacity to collect fair tax; and by entrenching pro-rich tax policy.

Practices for Transitions in a Time Between Worlds

There is no manual for living through our wildly unpredictable times. How do we imagine, prepare for, and shape an unknown future? Who do we need to be or become? Instead of a road map, we offer this supplement to illuminate inquiries, capacities, and practices that we believe can open consequential new pathways to a better tomorrow. Sponsored by Joseph Rowntree Foundation

The wealth defense industry (WDI) is the mundane world of professional services (accounting, law, and finance). In law, it consists of lawyers working in trust and estate, private wealth, and tax law. In finance, it’s private banks, family offices, investment advisors, and wealth managers. In philanthropy, it’s donor-advised funds and foundations. These gatekeepers, while not the ultrarich, are handsomely remunerated to prioritize the accumulation of and protection of wealth for the few at the expense of society and the planet.

What might be possible if a group of WDI insiders instead used their knowledge for the benefit of society in this moment defined by polycrisis?

“Hacking” has become a shorthand for subverting existing systems for the purposes of revealing design flaws. We believe the WDI is a system ripe for disruption to transform it with the goal of helping channel wealth to benefit people and the planet. This “white hat” hacking requires deep domain expertise from insiders, the legal plumbers and financial engineers of the “hidden wiring” of the wealth defense industry.

Hacking is tactical and applied, much like the intervention made by a brilliant engineer who attached a tiny rudder to a ship’s large rudder. The little rudder, or the trim tab, initiates the turning of the entire ship, as Buckminster Fuller famously observed:

Think of the Queen Mary—the whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And there’s a tiny thing at the edge of the rudder called a trim tab. It’s a miniature rudder. Just moving the little trim tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around.

Similarly, we envision hacks as specific, small innovations with the capacity to turn the wealth defense industry toward justice. Specifically, we see a need for hacking in five domains: legal/structural, financial, technical, behavioral, and moral.

  • Legal/Structural: We see wealth holders litigating trust documents to align the trust’s purpose with contemporary priorities. Lawyers remind us of integrated definitions of fiduciary beyond the protection of financial interests. We see visionary advisory firms incubating beyond the endless growth mindset of traditional assets under the management business model.
  • Financial: Investors and founders are prototyping term sheets that capture what is enough, or a fair return.
  • Technical: We see experts crafting financial modeling tools that take planetary limits into account when modeling portfolio returns, and that make conspicuous the system impacts of investments.
  • Behavioral: We see people working to transform the sense of fear and scarcity that is deeply entrenched among wealth holders.
  • Moral: We see people developing tactics for holistically expressing their values, beyond financial value.

We seek hackers who are working on these and other interventions. Join us: hackingwealth.xyz.

Read more stories by Kate Barron-Alicante & Astrid Scholz.