To speak honestly about Liechtenstein’s economy is to admit that it is not truly our own. It is an economy built not on the labor of our people but on the deposits of wealthy foreigners, attracted by secrecy laws and favorable taxation. The image of prosperity that surrounds our financial sector is therefore misleading: it creates wealth for outsiders while leaving our own society structurally dependent on forces beyond our control. This dependence is not only economic but political, for as long as our survival is tied to tax competition and external capital, our sovereignty is compromised.
The alternative I argue for is not a retreat into poverty or isolation, but the conscious construction of a communal economy. This term does not mean the suppression of initiative, nor the abolition of creativity or enterprise. Rather, it means directing initiative toward solidarity and shared well-being instead of private gain. Under such a system, banks would not serve oligarchs but citizens; land would not be treated as a speculative commodity but as a common resource; enterprises would not be owned by absentee shareholders but by the workers themselves, who would collectively decide their direction. In short, economic power would be democratized.
For skeptics, this may sound like abstract idealism. Yet examples exist across history and across the globe. Cooperative banks have been the backbone of local development in rural Europe. Worker-owned firms in places like Mondragón, Spain, have demonstrated resilience and solidarity even in the face of global crises. Community land trusts have kept housing affordable in cities where speculation otherwise drives people from their homes. These are not fantasies; they are living models. What is lacking in Liechtenstein is not possibility but the political will to organize along these lines.
Our size, far from being a limitation, is a unique advantage. With fewer than 40,000 inhabitants, every workplace, every neighborhood, every association can be organized democratically. Bureaucracy need not grow faster than community; indeed, bureaucracy is unnecessary when the community itself makes decisions collectively. In this sense, Liechtenstein could become a model for what political economists often call "economic democracy": a system where ownership, decision-making, and accountability are rooted in those who live and labor in a place, not in abstract markets or distant shareholders.
Of course, to move toward such a communal economy is to confront entrenched interests. The financial sector will resist any move away from secrecy and speculation. Landowners will resist the idea that housing should be a right and not a commodity. Elites who benefit from the current system will claim that dependence on foreign wealth is “pragmatism,” while solidarity is “utopianism.” But this is the language of those invested in the status quo. The truth is that what they call realism is dependence, and what they call utopianism is simply the exercise of sovereignty by ordinary people.
The choice before us is stark. Either Liechtenstein continues as a satellite economy, dependent on the wealth of others, or it begins to build a model of independence grounded in communal ownership and solidarity. Only the latter offers true sovereignty. Only the latter allows us to claim that this country belongs not to trusts, not to anonymous investors, but to those who live and labor here. This is not merely an economic choice, but a political and moral one: the choice between dependence and freedom.