“[community wealth building] is not community development. It is economic system change, economic rewiring, and I think people see community and think well, this is just a new name or a variant name of community development. It’s not; it’s much more about economic system change...

Despite increased interest among scholars and practitioners, community ownership has not yet achieved impact at scale to transform local economies. Often community ownership models must themselves scale to benefit from economies of scale, influence the market through purchasing power and access finance required to meaningfully compete with conventional investor-ownership forms of community wealth building assets.

Scaling community ownership of the economy requires transformational shifts in the institutional arrangements underpinning corporate capitalism. Beliefs about markets, the role of the community sector and the role of government have locked in institutional arrangements that are antagonistic to community forms of ownership of the economy. These beliefs include that markets are efficient and that profit-making is the primary legitimate motivation for entrepreneurship. Policy initiatives aimed at extending beyond these roles - such as to support community forms of ownership - are often criticized as distortionary and protectionist.