Post-Growth Business, Patagonia's Ownership Revolution & The Wealth Siphon | Dr Jennifer Hinton

What if business was designed for people, not profit? That's the question at the heart of this conversation between Jeni Miles and ecological economist Dr Jennifer Hinton — and the answer might be more radical, and more hopeful, than you expect.Dr Hinton argues that inequality and ecological breakdown aren't the result of bad actors or poor leadership.

They're the inevitable output of a business system structurally designed to extract and accumulate private wealth. Swap the CEO, tighten the regulations, launch another ESG initiative — and the system keeps doing exactly what it was built to do.The alternative?

Not-for-profit business structures that stop the wealth siphon before it even begins — making economies distributive by design rather than trying to redistribute wealth after the fact.

Drawing on her five-dimension post-growth business framework, Dr Hinton walks through what genuinely transformative business looks like — from steward ownership models to Patagonia's ownership revolution, to what democratic governance and relocalisation could look like next.They also get into the circular economy's blind spot (you can't keep growing the circle on a finite planet), why 86% of corporate workers privately support post-growth practices but underestimate their peers' support, and what Big Tech might look like if it was structured as public infrastructure rather than private empire.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The relationship to profit is the most fundamental layer of any business — everything else flows from it
• Even good people behave poorly in bad systems — structural change matters more than individual ethics
• Not-for-profit business structures stop the wealth siphon before it begins — distributive by design
• Swapping the CEO cannot fix a structurally broken system
• Patagonia's ownership transformation is a real-world blueprint — and democratic governance could take it further
• 86% of UK for-profit professionals support post-growth practices but underestimate their peers' support
• A post-growth working week could mean shorter hours, stronger communities, and a genuinely circular local economy

ABOUT DR JENNIFER HINTON

Dr Jennifer Hinton is an ecological economist, systems researcher, and co-author of How on Earth. Her post-growth business framework bridges micro and macro economics to diagnose — and redesign — the structures driving our global crises.jenniferhinton.org

LINKS & RESOURCES

• How on Earth — howonearth.usKate Raworth — kateraworth.com
• Doughnut Economics Action Lab — doughnuteconomics.org
• Steward Ownership — steward-ownership.com/en
• Purpose Economy — purpose-economy.org/en
• Upstream Podcast, Part 1 episode on worker co-ops — https://www.upstreampodcast.org/workercoops1
• Della Duncan — dellazduncan.com
• Luke Kemp, Cambridge — cser.ac.uk/team/luke-kemp
• Digital Degrowth, Michael Kwet — plutobooks.com/product/digital-degrowth
• House of Hackney: houseofhackney.com/pages/nature-our-director

FOLLOW JENI MILES

LinkedIn — linkedin.com/in/jenifisher

Substack — moralfootprint.substack.com