Wealth Defense is the structures and strategies that support the accumulation of wealth and the prevention of its democratic redistribution.
The Wealth Defense Industry (WDI) is the ecosystem of professional services that are paid to prioritise the accumulation and protection of the wealth of the few.
Examples include legal professionals specialising in trusts, estates, private wealth, and tax law; financial services practitioners such as accountants, private bankers, family office managers, investment advisors, and wealth managers; and philanthropic entities such as donor-advised funds and foundations.
The Wealth Defence Industry represents a vast network of organisations, that represent the global majority of private wealth being held by high net worth individuals on the planet.
What might be possible if a group of industry insiders (Wealth Hackers) used their knowledge and expertise to influence this industry towards wider beneficial outcomes, in the era of polycrisis?
“Hacking” is accepted shorthand for subverting existing systems for the purposes of revealing design flaws and developing new pathways. As self-described Wealth Hackers, we see that the WDI is ripe for transformation and disruption, and we believe we can use our deep domain expertise to engineer solutions that channel wealth and resources for the benefit of people and the planet.
The WDI meets its goals in a number of ways. A few representative examples include:
Legal / Governance: entrenching pro-rich tax policy and weakening the state’s capacity to collect fair taxes
Financial: focusing on financial products that maximise returns at the expense of people and planet and that consolidate wealth rather than building community wealth
Digital: utilising technology platforms for investment decisions that focus on a narrow definition of wealth (growth and accumulation) and do not orient towards a holistic perspective
Accounting: enabling accounting practices that focus on off-shoring and evading taxes
Behavioural: promoting narratives and worldviews that reinforce wealth accumulation as a societal benefit and aspiration rather than harm
Hosted by the Emerging Futures team from the UK’s Joseph Rowntree Foundation, a group of trans-local systems change practitioners and wealth justice advocates came together in New York City in October 2023 to share the innovative approaches, tools and technologies we have been discovering and developing that help shift wealth into a more thriveable economy.
An economy that:
is reparative rather than harmful;
is regenerative rather than extractive;
distributes power, wealth and opportunities rather than concentrating more of these things in the hands of fewer and fewer people
centres human and planetary flourishing rather than the creation of wealth for wealth’s sake.
With a thorough exploration of the connecting points across our work, and the systemic obstacles we face across sectors, we determined that we are each hacking the Wealth Defense Industry from different angles…so, what if we collaborated on our hacks? What if we organised and worked to rewire the systems through a series of coordinated hacks across multiple dimensions?
We are a group of disjunct hackers who have each been hacking away at the systems and structures that underpin the Wealth Defence Industry in our work across financial services, wealth management and financial planning, philanthropy, tech cooperatives, solidarity economy investments, and social enterprises.
Our work is supported by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation
We imagine a world where our fellow WealthHackers are encouraged to develop and launch their hacks, and are supported through a combination of financial and social capital and access to an aligned hacker community.
We are partnering with our first supporting sponsor, the UK-based Joseph Rowntree Foundation, to launch the inaugural Hacking Wealth Challenge and to identify new ideas or works in progress that can be significantly advanced with a one-time infusion of GBP 15,000 over a 4 - 8 week sprint.
As we launch the first Hacking Wealth Challenge and continue to assemble our “hacker cells” across the globe, we plan to build out a community platform that prioritises coordination inside of and between sectors and specialisations around the Wealth Defense Industry.
If you would like to join our WealthHackers Community waitlist, please click here.