We believe
- a more sustainable
- a more ethical
- a more equitable
- a more humane
- a more joyful
- a better
world is possible.
Join us on our mission.
The economy is broken – step into our vision for what comes next.
The best way to understand the roots of the crisis and a plan to fix it.
The best way to understand the roots of the crisis and a plan to fix it.
Hi, we’re PIES
The Peoples’ Institute for the Enlightenment of Society
We’re building a financial system that empowers people and supports the longevity of our planet.
Because right now, there’s a disconnect.
The people who care about how the world is shaped…
aren’t the ones shaping it.
You can choose what to buy.
You can choose where to work.
But you don’t really get to choose how businesses behave.
Not at scale.
That power lives somewhere else.
We’re building a system that gives power to the stakeholders.
Learn more about PIES and our mission.
We’re Trapped in a Vicious Cycle
Here’s How We Break the Cycle of Harm and Build Cycles of Harmony
From participation to stewardship
PIES begins with education and everyday economic decisions, but it does not end there.
The long-term vision is an economy in which people can understand what they are sustaining, choose where their economic power goes, coordinate with others, and exercise meaningful governance over the organizations and systems they depend on.
Understand → Choose → Coordinate → Govern
That is the path from passive participation to economic stewardship.
Understand
See what is at stake.
Learn how the economy affects you, your community, and the planet… and how your own economic participation contributes to those outcomes.
PIES helps participants understand the organizations, products, investments, systems, and relationships that make up their economy.
Choose
Put your economic power behind what matters to you.
Every purchase, investment, job, partnership, and other economic decision helps sustain something.
PIES gives people the information and tools to make those choices intentionally, based not only on price or financial return, but on the missions, values, and impacts they want to support.
Coordinate
Turn individual choices into collective action.
One person’s economic choices matter. Coordinated choices can reshape markets.
PIES helps people, organizations, communities, and missions find one another and work together, combining their purchasing power, capital, labor, knowledge, and influence around shared goals.
Govern
Help decide what the economy sustains.
Economic power ultimately comes from more than having information or making better choices. It comes from having meaningful rights within the institutions that shape our lives.
That is why PIES is building real financial and governance infrastructure.
Our planned market architecture includes mechanisms that can change how economic power is exercised, including activity-based trading fees that reward patient participation and algorithmically determined shareholder rights that consider factors beyond wealth alone.
The goal is not for PIES to govern the economy.
The goal is to give people better tools to govern their economy.
Sound Too “Pie in the Sky”? We’re Happy to Offer Something More Grounded.
The PIES Economy offers a vision, not a fantasy, of a thriving solarpunk future. What will make it real is the financial infrastructure behind it.
It will start with a clearing agency, the PIES Registry, which will have unique rules for trading and owning stock.
These rules will change the incentives in the marketplace to reward mindful foresight and stewardship. Simultaneously, these incentives will make it expensive to speculate and gamble.
An ethical economy isn’t a fantasy – it’s simply a matter of constructing the right financial pressures.
Want in? Become a Scholar of our Institute.
We’re building a new kind of economy, one shaped by the people it’s meant to serve. When you sign up, you’re not just joining a list. You’re becoming one of the first voices in a growing movement.
We call them PIES Scholars; curious, conscious, and ready to help shape what’s next.
