Peter Barnes

Role & Relevance

Entrepreneur, author, and commons advocate — Co-founder of Working Assets and Credo Mobile. Author of With Liberty and Dividends for All: How to Save Our Middle Class When Jobs Don’t Pay Enough (2014) and Capitalism 3.0 (2006). His central thesis: fund a universal dividend from shared “commons” wealth — land, airwaves, atmosphere, and other natural and societal assets that nobody created privately. This framing is directly aligned with Common Wealth Canada’s “economic rent dividend” thesis and the Alaska Permanent Fund model. [Source: compiled from public bio + scrumban tasks, 2026-04-30]

Why He Matters for CWC/UBI Works

• His “commons dividend” framing is one of the cleanest intellectual precedents for the Canadian Sovereign Wealth Fund case
• Demonstrates that universal dividends from shared assets can be structured without income-tax redistribution — reducing right-wing objections
• Frequently referenced alongside the Alaska model when making the CWC case

Sources

• Scrumban tasks (extracted 2026-04-24)
• With Liberty and Dividends for All (2014)

Related

• common-wealth-canada — his commons-dividend framing aligns with CWC’s thesis
• alaska-permanent-fund-dividend — key model he references
• sovereign-wealth-fund-canada
• universal-basic-income