The first priority of Prout is to guarantee the minimum necessities to everyone: food (including pure drinking water), clothing, housing (including adequate sanitation and energy), medical care, and education. The right to meaningful employment with fair wages is also a fundamental human right, so that people can pay for their basic necessities with the income they earn from honest work. Women, people of color, immigrants, the elderly, and others who are disproportionately in poverty, are part of the economic underclass who need special consideration with the erosion of personal safety nets. Women, for example, make less, and don’t have adequate access to childcare provisions and proper reproductive health care. These are not merely economic issues, but they are related to an economic organization that relies on the free labor of women to reproduce itself as a political system. 

People need to be empowered to make economic decisions that directly shape their lives and communities. It is a basic right of workers to own and manage their enterprises, free from manipulation or exploitation. Prout advocates a three-tiered economy to accomplish this:

• Locally-owned, small-scale private enterprises: small businesses dealing with non-essential goods and employing few people
• Worker-owned producer and consumer cooperatives: the bulk of the enterprises in the society should be run by cooperatives in which the workers will be the owners and entitled to elect the management of these enterprises
• Publicly-managed key Industries: industries and services affecting the entire economy which are too large to be run by cooperatives should be publicly managed. These may include mineral extraction, transportation, energy production, and mass communications, large manufacturing, etc.  Local governments or independent public boards will be responsible for running these industries efficiently so that they may depend on subsidies in case these companies run on loss. This concept differentiates Prout from socialism.

Economic democracy decentralizes decision-making and gives citizens the right to choose how their local economy should be run. Local economies with sustainable agriculture that grows healthy food, renewable “green” industries, credit unions that offer loans to local people are all elements of a vibrant community.  

Prosperity in one geographic area cannot be accompanied by poverty in outlying areas.  Manufacturing and services should be spread out in the countryside to prevent over-urbanization and to provide economic, educational and cultural opportunities to people wherever they choose to live. Women, people of color, immigrants and other marginalized groups will become key stakeholders in the new economy. 

The best way to achieve a balanced economy is for every region to become as self-sufficient as possible in food, medicines, and the other minimum necessities of their population. Barter trade can allow countries and regions to gain resources they lack without the need to go into debt to obtain foreign currency.  If a particular state/region does not have all the resources to be economically self-sufficient, then it can combine with other states/regions in the vicinity to create a body that will be able to produce the basic necessities for its population.  Trade policies should be formulated with regional self-sufficiency in mind; uncontrolled free-trade cannot be supported. 

The success of economic and political democracy depends on the morality, education and socio-economic consciousness of the general public. From this body of the general public, honest and service minded leaders will emerge.  Government funding of elections would ensure fairness for all candidates. The media, managed by cooperatives of journalists, should be required to give equal media coverage to each candidate to present his or her platform and to debate the issues. In this way, voters would be able to compare the stand of each candidate objectively.

The foundation of a cooperative system is coordinated cooperation where free human beings with equal rights and mutual respect for each other, work together for the welfare of the others. This differs from subordinated cooperation, where people work individually or collectively but remain under other peoples’ supervision.

The most-asked question about Prout is: “Where has it been put into practice?” Although examples of Prout cooperatives and communities exist in various countries and on every continent, the world will be unable to see how this model can enrich the living standard and quality of life of all until an entire state or country chooses to materialize the whole integrated system.