Neil McInroy - How to Build an Economy That Works for Everyone

Neil McInroy is the Global Lead for Community Wealth Building at The Democracy Collaborative, where he advances systemic economic reform and democratic ownership strategies across the United States and internationally. He served for 20 years as Chief Executive of the Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES), where he helped pioneer community wealth building in Britain and develop the Preston Model, and was a Community Wealth Building Adviser to the Scottish Government until 2023. He was one of the principal advisors on the Community Wealth Building (Scotland) Bill, which passed the Scottish Parliament in 2025 and represents the first piece of legislation of its kind anywhere in the world.

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Timestamps:

00:00 — Is Neil a capitalist?

01:05 — Introduction and overview of community wealth building

03:00 — The five pillars: work, land, finance, procurement, democratic ownership

10:30 — Defining community geographically

13:00 — The history of wages and labour's declining share of wealth

15:00 — Automation, AI and the case for ownership over employment

18:30 — Local economic multipliers vs. foreign investment (the Amazon question)

24:00 — How to think about work in the 21st century

28:00 — The Community Wealth Building (Scotland) Bill: what it actually does

33:00 — Scotland as a branch economy: energy insecurity and sovereignty

41:00 — Wind energy, community ownership and Shetland's fuel poverty paradox

48:00 — Thatcherism, neoliberalism and the dismantling of economic mediation

53:00 — Norway's sovereign wealth fund and Scotland's squandered North Sea oil

59:00 — Post-capitalism: beyond both state socialism and free-market capitalism

01:32:00 — GB Energy, AI data centres and Scotland's energy future

01:37:00 — Repopulating the Highlands and Scotland's long-term economic geography

01:41:00 — Young people, apathy and community wealth building as a generational project

The Democarcy Collaborative - https://www.democracycollaborative.org/

Community Wealth Building (Scotland) Bill: https://www.parliament.scot

Neil McInroy on X (@nmcinroy): https://x.com/nmcinroy?s=20

Neil McInroy on Bluesky (@neilmcinroy): https://bsky.app/profile/neilmcinroy.bsky.social