How wealth rules the world saving our communities and freedoms from the dictatorship of property

Many of today's most serious issues—homelessness, gun violence, fracking, prison privatization, predatory lending, and many more—resist resolution because the "rights of property" undermine the rights of people. Issues that undeniably affect whole communities are determined by the courts to relate primarily to property, contracts, and corporations and are removed from the public sphere and immunized from public governance. There's a reason for this. Ben Price tells the story of how the Federalists—the more conservative faction of the Founding Fathers—secretly drafted the Constitution as a counterrevolutionary document. It restored to the colonial 1 percent privileges overturned by the revolution, avoiding a popular backlash by bestowing rights on wealth itself, rather than creating a British-style personal aristocracy. These rights of property deprive the majority of their ability to self-govern and weaponize government in ways that let the "minority...