The Wealth School Think Tank
The Wealth School Think TankWealth:
Structure, Limits, Inheritance
The programme
The Wealth School Think Tank is developing “Wealth: Structure, Limits, Inheritance”, a long-term research programme exploring how wealth shapes societies and individual lives.
The programme will draw on sociology, anthropology, economics, psychology, political science and philosophy in a post-disciplinary inquiry — one organised around the question of wealth rather than the boundaries of any single field. It will also examine how artificial intelligence is changing the meaning of wealth.
2 working distinctions
It will explore how wealth shapes social relationships, life paths and ideas of progress, and what it means for the common good. 2 working distinctions guide the inquiry:
The society of treasure
where wealth is kept and passed on
The society of capital
where wealth is set in motion to grow
Structure · Limits · Inheritance
Structure
How does wealth take shape, in a life, a family and a society?
- Which forms of wealth does a society recognise, record and reward, and which does it leave unrecorded?
- What changes when wealth is held as treasure, put to work as capital, or valued in other ways?
- How do trusts, foundations, family offices and enterprises organise ownership, authority and responsibility across generations?
- How might artificial intelligence change which capacities, assets and relationships are recognised as wealth?
Limits
What can wealth do, and where does its reach end?
- Which forms of wealth can stand in for one another, and which are irreplaceable?
- What does one finite life allow a person to hold, use and pass on?
- How much is enough for a person, a family, a society?
- When does accumulation strengthen the common good, and when does it begin to weigh on it?
Inheritance
What do we pass on, and how do those who receive it make it their own?
- What passes between generations beyond assets: values, obligations, relationships, stories?
- How can a person choose what to carry forward from an inheritance they did not choose?
- Who gets to decide what endures, what can change, and what is left open?
- What will future generations inherit from the way wealth is held today?
The programme is designed to test the School’s own theory as well as to extend it.
Academic and public events
Through academic and public events, we will examine the structure, limits and inheritance of wealth, and propose new social, political and economic practices.