Category: Book

  • Today Humanity Goes Extinct

    Today Humanity Goes Extinct

    Today is Friday, November 13, 2026. And according to a scientific prediction made 66 years ago, humanity is supposed to go extinct today.

    In 1960, physicist Heinz von Foerster and his colleagues Patricia Mora and Lawrence Amiot published a scientific paper in the journal Science with the rather alarming title:

    Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, A.D. 2026.

    The researchers had examined historical population growth and discovered what appeared to be an accelerating mathematical trend. Their calculations suggested that the world’s population was increasing so rapidly that it would eventually approach a mathematical singularity — a point at which the projected population would become infinite.

    And the date they calculated for this extraordinary event was November 13, 2026.

    Today.

    Well, here we are.

    Humanity is still here. More than eight billion of us, in fact.

    We are not extinct.

    So what happened?

    Were the researchers simply wrong? Or did something happen between 1960 and today that fundamentally changed the trajectory of humanity?

    The answer is rather fascinating.

    The Population Explosion That Never Happened

    During the middle of the twentieth century, the world’s population was growing at an unprecedented rate.

    In 1960, approximately three billion people inhabited the planet. Medical advances, improved sanitation, better nutrition, and declining infant mortality had dramatically increased life expectancy.

    More people were surviving, and populations were expanding rapidly.

    The fear of overpopulation became widespread.

    In 1968, biologist Paul Ehrlich published his famous book The Population Bomb, warning that rapid population growth could lead to catastrophic food shortages and widespread starvation.

    The underlying assumption was that humanity would continue multiplying until the planet could no longer sustain us.

    And looking at the population trends of the time, such concerns were understandable.

    But something happened that the mathematical projections failed to anticipate.

    Changing Behavior

    Humanity changed its behavior.

    People began having fewer children.

    Not everywhere at once, and not for exactly the same reasons, but gradually, across much of the world, birth rates began declining.

    Women gained greater access to education, employment, contraception, and reproductive choices. Families became smaller as societies developed and urbanized.

    As healthcare improved and infant mortality declined, parents could increasingly expect their children to survive into adulthood.

    In agricultural societies, large families had often been economically advantageous. In modern urban societies, raising children became more expensive, and education required more years of investment.

    People’s expectations, opportunities, and priorities changed.

    Meanwhile, agricultural innovations dramatically increased food production, allowing humanity to feed a population far larger than many had imagined possible.

    The result was a profound transformation.

    The annual global population growth rate, which peaked at around 2.3 percent in the 1960s, has now fallen below one percent. In some countries the concern is that too few babies are born.

    And according to United Nations projections, the world’s population is expected to peak at approximately 10.3 billion during the 2080s before gradually declining.

    Instead of the uncontrollable population explosion predicted in 1960, humanity is now moving toward a stabilization of its population.

    The future changed because the conditions and behavior shaping that future changed.

    And perhaps there is a much greater lesson here.

    The Fear of Too Many People

    Even today, we frequently encounter the fear that there are simply too many people on Earth.

    That humanity is multiplying beyond the planet’s capacity.

    That we will inevitably consume all available resources, destroy nature, and ultimately bring about our own extinction.

    Sometimes this fear almost becomes a form of hysteria, as though the very existence of billions of human beings were itself the fundamental problem.

    But is it?

    Certainly, population matters. Every human being needs food, water, shelter, energy, and other resources. Our planet is finite, and there are ecological limits to what it can sustainably provide.

    But does that necessarily mean that humanity’s numbers are the primary problem?

    Or could the problem be something entirely different?

    Perhaps the fundamental question is not how many people inhabit our planet, but how we organize the way we live on it.

    Consider the enormous differences in resource consumption between people living in wealthy industrialized societies and those living in poverty.

    Consider how much food is wasted while millions of people go hungry.

    Consider how many products are manufactured primarily to generate sales, only to be discarded and replaced long before their useful lives are over.

    Consider the vast amounts of energy, materials, labor, and transportation involved in maintaining a global economy that depends upon continuous economic growth and increasing consumption.

    Is this really the most intelligent way to manage the resources of one finite planet?

    Careful Assumptions

    The failed population prediction demonstrates that we should be careful about assuming that current trends must continue indefinitely.

    It does not prove that environmental limits are imaginary or that population pressures are irrelevant.

    But it does show that humanity’s future cannot be understood simply by extending yesterday’s behavior into tomorrow.

    And that brings us to an even more important question.

    The Predictions of Today

    Today, humanity faces an extraordinary number of predictions about its future.

    Climate change is expected to bring rising temperatures, melting ice, rising oceans, and increasingly severe environmental consequences.

    Scientists warn about biodiversity loss, ecosystem degradation, and the depletion of natural resources.

    Economists warn about debt crises, financial instability, unemployment, and the consequences of slowing economic growth.

    Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of people continue living in extreme poverty despite humanity’s extraordinary technological and productive capabilities.

    Some even warn that humanity could eventually destroy itself through environmental collapse, nuclear conflict, or uncontrolled technological development.

    These are not all predictions of the same kind.

    Many climate projections, for example, are grounded in well-established physical processes and extensive scientific evidence. Their consequences cannot simply be wished away.

    But there is something important that we should remember when looking into the future.

    Most projections depend upon assumptions about what humanity will continue doing.

    What if those assumptions change?

    What if humanity changes its behavior?

    Changing the System

    What if we change not merely our individual habits, but the very system through which we organize civilization?

    What if we stop treating continuous monetary growth as the primary measure of human progress?

    What if we stop organizing the production and distribution of resources primarily around profitability?

    What if we begin managing our planet’s resources according to actual human needs and ecological sustainability?

    Would that not fundamentally change many of the trajectories we are currently predicting?

    The System We Take for Granted

    For centuries, humanity has organized its economic activity around money, trade, ownership, competition, and the accumulation of wealth.

    Today, virtually every country operates within a global monetary system in which access to resources depends heavily upon purchasing power.

    Production is largely driven by the expectation of monetary returns.

    Businesses must remain profitable. Economies are expected to grow. Employment and incomes depend upon continued economic activity.

    And because consumption drives so much of this activity, we find ourselves in a peculiar situation.

    We are constantly encouraged to consume more, even while being warned that our consumption is placing unsustainable pressure on the planet and the natural world upon which we depend to live.

    We are told that we must reduce waste and conserve resources, while simultaneously being told that declining consumption threatens economic stability.

    We possess the technology to produce enormous quantities of food, yet people still go hungry because they cannot afford what they need.

    We possess the knowledge and resources to build housing, yet millions remain homeless or inadequately housed.

    And we continue to measure economic success primarily through monetary transactions rather than the actual well-being of humanity and the living planet.

    Perhaps this is not simply a collection of unrelated problems.

    Perhaps many of these contradictions arise from the way we have chosen to organize our civilization.

    And perhaps we have reached a point in human history when we are finally capable of recognizing them.

    What If We Changed the System?

    Imagine that humanity decided to approach the management of our planet in an entirely different way.

    Instead of dividing the world into competing economic interests, imagine organizing our resources through global cooperation.

    Instead of treating natural resources as commodities to be owned, bought, and sold, imagine treating them as a shared inheritance that humanity has a responsibility to manage wisely.

    Instead of producing goods primarily for monetary profit, imagine producing what people actually need, in quantities and ways that nature can sustainably support.

    Imagine using artificial intelligence, robotics, advanced agriculture, renewable energy, and sophisticated resource-management systems to coordinate production and distribution intelligently.

    We could design products to last rather than to be replaced unnecessarily.

    We could reduce duplication, waste, excessive transportation, and unnecessary resource extraction.

    We could restore ecosystems, protect biodiversity, regenerate damaged landscapes, and organize human settlements around the well-being of both people and nature.

    And we could ensure that everyone has access to the necessities of life without requiring them to compete for monetary purchasing power.

    This is the fundamental idea behind a global resource-based economy.

    An economy based not upon the circulation and accumulation of money, but upon the intelligent and sustainable management of Earth’s resources for the benefit of all life.

    Such a transformation would not automatically eliminate every environmental problem. It would require extraordinary cooperation, careful planning, scientific understanding, and a profound respect for the ecological limits of our planet.

    But it could change the assumptions upon which many of today’s frightening predictions are based.

    And perhaps most importantly, it could allow humanity to reduce its ecological footprint dramatically while simultaneously improving the quality of life for billions of people.

    A prosperous life does not necessarily require endless consumption.

    It requires access to what makes life worth living.

    Food, shelter, healthcare, education, security, companionship, creativity, freedom, and the opportunity to participate meaningfully in the world.

    None of these fundamentally requires the perpetual accumulation of monetary wealth.

    Perhaps we have simply confused the means with the ends.

    A New Prediction for Humanity

    And now, on this rather remarkable Friday, November 13, 2026, allow me to make another prediction.

    I predict that humanity is approaching a great awakening.

    Not necessarily a spiritual awakening, but an awakening of understanding.

    An increasing realization that the global monetary system we have created, with its endless pursuit of profit, accumulation, competition, and economic growth, is placing enormous pressure upon humanity, nature, and the living planet itself.

    I predict that more and more people will begin questioning not merely how to improve this system, but why we continue organizing civilization around it in the first place.

    Why should access to the necessities of life depend upon money?

    Why should our ability to care for one another depend upon whether doing so is financially profitable?

    Why should humanity compete for ownership of the resources of one planet when we could cooperate in managing them for everyone’s benefit?

    And why should we continue pursuing endless economic growth when what we actually desire is a flourishing life on a flourishing planet?

    Perhaps humanity is approaching the point where these questions become impossible to ignore.

    And perhaps, as our understanding changes, our behavior will change as well.

    Just as millions of individual decisions transformed humanity’s demographic trajectory during the past 66 years, a growing collective understanding could transform the way we organize our civilization during the next 66.

    We could move from competition toward cooperation.

    From ownership toward stewardship.

    From monetary accumulation toward sustainable abundance.

    From an economy organized around transactions toward a civilization organized around life itself.

    And in doing so, we might fundamentally alter the future that so many of today’s predictions assume awaits us.

    Will my prediction come true?

    I cannot know.

    But neither could the researchers of 1960 know what humanity would become 66 years later.

    And perhaps that is precisely the point.

    The Future Is Ours to Create

    Today, November 13, 2026, humanity was supposed to go extinct.

    It didn’t.

    The mathematical trajectory predicted in 1960 did not become reality because the world did not remain the same.

    Technology changed.

    Societies changed.

    Human behavior changed.

    And the future changed with them.

    Today, we face another collection of alarming predictions about where humanity is heading.

    Some describe a future of ecological devastation, increasing inequality, resource conflicts, and declining living conditions.

    But perhaps we should ask ourselves a different question.

    What if we don’t continue along our seemingly present trajectory?

    What if we recognize that many of our greatest problems are not inevitable consequences of human existence, but consequences of how we have organized our civilization?

    What if we discover that the resources, knowledge, technology, and human creativity already available to us could be organized in an entirely different way?

    What if we choose to create a world where every human being can flourish while nature is allowed to flourish alongside us?

    A world of cooperation, trust, sharing, and intelligent stewardship.

    A world where humanity no longer regards itself as a collection of competing economic interests, but as one civilization sharing one extraordinary living planet.

    Perhaps such a world would seem almost like paradise compared with the one we know today.

    But paradise need not mean a perfect world without challenges.

    It could simply mean a world in which humanity has finally learned to live intelligently, peacefully, and sustainably with itself and nature.

    The researchers of 1960 could not predict the profound changes that would alter humanity’s population trajectory.

    And perhaps today’s researchers cannot fully anticipate the changes in human understanding that may alter our economic and ecological trajectory.

    Because the future is not predetermined by the systems and circumstances of the present.

    We are not prisoners of our predictions. We are participants in creating the future.

    The Beginning

    And perhaps, rather than approaching the end of humanity, we are approaching something entirely different.

    The beginning of a new civilization.

    Want to Experience This Future ?

    Since you’ve read this far, I assume you enjoy reading!

    And if you’d like to read a little more, perhaps even immerse yourself in a story set in the future world described in this article, I invite you to discover the novel: Waking Up: A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity.

    There, you’ll experience this extraordinary new world firsthand through the eyes of the bewildered billionaire Benjamin Michaels, a man who, facing terminal cancer, chose cryonic preservation in the hope of escaping his fate.

    When he awakens 100 years later, he discovers a world beyond his imagination. A world without money, poverty, or competition for survival. A world where humanity has fundamentally transformed the way it lives.

    And Benjamin, a man who built his entire life around money, power, and ownership, is shocked, to say the least…

    Discover the story

  • Doomed to Consume – COP31

    Doomed to Consume – COP31

    Once again, world leaders are gathering at a climate summit to discuss the future of our planet. But they are, as always, caught in the trap of the monetary system.

    At COP31 in Turkey, representatives from around the world are trying to find ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and move away from fossil fuels.

    And the urgency could hardly be greater.

    The year 2026 is shaping up to be among the hottest years ever recorded, following a succession of extraordinary global temperature records. Glaciers are retreating, ice sheets are losing mass, oceans are warming, and sea levels continue to rise.

    Heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, floods, and extreme rainfall are affecting communities and ecosystems around the world. And although nobody knows exactly how warm 2027 will be, the underlying trend is unmistakable.

    Humanity has been releasing enormous quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere the last century, primarily through the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas.

    This is hardly news.

    The consequences have been understood for decades.

    Yet fossil fuels continue to power much of the world’s transportation, industry, agriculture, and energy production. It is the culprit of global warming, there is no doubt about it.

    And so, once again, the world’s leaders are gathering to find a way out of fossil fuels.

    This morning, I was listening to a news report from Swedish Radio about the climate summit. The reporter explained that representatives from around the world were meeting to find ways away from fossil fuel consumption.

    But something else in the report caught my attention.

    According to climate researcher Mattias Fridahl, concerns about jobs, competitiveness, and economic growth are slowing the transition away from fossil fuels.

    Think about that for a moment.

    Humanity knows that burning fossil fuels is destabilizing the climate of our planet. 

    We know that we must change direction.

    The Profitability Paradox

    Yet we hesitate because we are concerned about economic competition and monetary growth.

    Countries worry about losing their competitive advantages. Industries worry about profitability. Governments worry about unemployment, falling tax revenues, and declining economic growth.

    And understandably so.

    Because within the monetary system, these are very real concerns.

    But consider what this means.

    Humanity is struggling to protect the natural system that sustains all life because doing so might disrupt the economic system humanity invented.

    How crazy is that?

    And that raises a rather uncomfortable question.

    What if the problem is much bigger than fossil fuels?

    The Choice We Do Not Have

    What if the climate crisis becomes so severe that humanity is forced to make fast changes far beyond anything currently being discussed at international climate summits?

    What if phasing out fossil fuels is not enough?

    What if the destruction of ecosystems, the depletion of finite resources, the loss of biodiversity, and the growing consequences of climate change force humanity to drastically reduce its overall consumption of natural resources?

    Not merely replacing petrol cars with electric cars.

    Not merely replacing coal-fired power plants with solar panels and wind turbines.

    But fundamentally reducing the enormous quantities of materials, energy, and resources that modern civilization extracts, processes, transports, manufactures, consumes, and discards.

    What if humanity discovers that the planet simply cannot sustain the scale of consumption upon which the global economy depends?

    What if reducing that consumption quickly becomes a matter of survival?

    And what if doing so threatens the very economic system upon which billions of people depend?

    Because there is something profoundly troubling about the civilization humanity has created.

    Our global economic system depends completely on consumption.

    Enormous quantities of consumption.

    • People must continue buying products and services 
    • Businesses must continue selling them 
    • Workers must continue earning wages 
    • Investors must continue receiving returns 
    • Governments must continue collecting taxes
    • And preferably, all of this must continue growing

    More production. More sales. More economic activity. More consumption.

    This is what supposedly makes the world go round.

    Not the physical planet, of course.

    Earth manages to spin perfectly well on its own, without anyone buying or selling anything.

    But the monetary system is another matter.

    It depends on the continuous circulation of money through production, employment, income, and consumption. And it has grown out of hand. Literally.

    If consumption falls sharply, businesses lose revenue. Production declines. Workers lose their jobs. Purchasing power decreases. More businesses struggle, governments collect less revenue, and debts become increasingly difficult to repay.

    A sufficiently severe and prolonged contraction can trigger a cascading economic crisis.

    Even relatively modest reductions in aggregate demand can cause recessions. A sudden, sustained contraction on a much larger scale would threaten the stability of the entire financial system.

    And this creates an extraordinary predicament.

    We have created a civilization in which consuming less of the planet’s resources could trigger an economic catastrophe, even when consuming less is precisely what the planet needs.  

    Doomed to Consume

    Fossil fuels are only part of the problem.

    Even if humanity eventually replaces every coal-fired power plant, petrol engine, and oil-burning furnace with cleaner alternatives, there remains the question of how much of the planet’s resources civilization can sustainably consume.

    Renewable energy is essential, but it does not make every material resource renewable.

    Electric vehicles still require metals, batteries, roads, factories, and infrastructure.

    Buildings still require materials. Electronic devices still require minerals. Agriculture still requires land, water, and healthy ecosystems.

    And no amount of money can make a finite planet physically infinite.

    Yet our economic system continually encourages more production, more sales, and more consumption.

    Why?

    Because that is how the system sustains itself. It is how the system was meant to work.

    We are not necessarily consuming more because we need more.

    We are often consuming more because the economy needs us to.

    Products are replaced long before they have reached the end of their useful lives. Advertising continually encourages new desires. Entire industries depend on persuading people to purchase things they might otherwise never have considered necessary.

    And governments celebrate increasing consumption as evidence of economic health.

    Meanwhile, the natural systems that sustain civilization are placed under increasing pressure.

    We are doomed to consume.

    Not because humanity necessarily needs everything it produces and consumes, but because the monetary system needs continuous production, buying, selling, and consumption to remain operational.

    And that is the trap.

    We cannot simply stop consuming enormous quantities of resources without risking economic collapse.

    Yet continuing to consume those resources at an unsustainable rate risks ecological collapse.

    Ecological survival demands restraint.

    Economic survival demands consumption.

    How Much We Can Afford

    According to estimates from the Global Footprint Network, humanity currently consumes ecological resources and services at a rate equivalent to approximately 1.7 Earths.

    In other words, humanity’s ecological footprint would need to be reduced by roughly 40% just to bring it within the estimated regenerative capacity of our one planet.

    Now consider what that means for our global monetary economy.

    Even a relatively small contraction in economic activity can cause serious disruption. 

    A decline of 5–8% in aggregate demand could trigger a deep recession. 

    A 10% contraction could be devastating.

    Businesses would close. Millions would lose their jobs. Governments would lose tax revenues. Debts would become  difficult to repay, potentially triggering banking crises and widespread financial instability.

    Now imagine a contraction of 40%.

    The consequences would be catastrophic.

    Within the monetary system, humanity must continually search for ways to reduce environmental damage while keeping economic activity going.

    Production must continue. People must have jobs. Businesses must remain profitable. Governments must collect taxes. Debts must be repaid.

    Even when producing and consuming less would be environmentally beneficial, the economic consequences will make doing so extremely difficult.

    The monetary system has no simple way to reward humanity for producing and consuming dramatically less.

    And yet, the planet requires precisely that.

    But what if humanity organized its civilization in an entirely different way?

    What if our system didn’t need to generate monetary income, but existed solely to meet human needs?

    What if the objective were to provide the highest possible quality of life with the lowest sustainable consumption of natural resources?

    How much could humanity reduce its consumption then?

    Scientific research offers a remarkable glimpse of the possibilities.

    A study published in Global Environmental Change estimated that, with highly efficient technologies and major changes in how essential services are provided, humanity could provide high living standards for everyone in 2050 while using more than 60% less final energy than today’s global consumption.

    That figure concerns energy, not total resource consumption, and the study does not describe a moneyless economy. Nevertheless, it demonstrates how dramatically the relationship between resource use and human well-being could change.

    Now imagine a true global resource-based economy.

    The Paradise Planet

    A civilization in which products were designed to last for generations, materials were continuously recovered and reused, unnecessary production was eliminated, and enormous quantities of waste disappeared.

    Imagine eliminating much of the duplication, planned obsolescence, unnecessary transportation, and commercially driven overproduction that characterize the monetary economy.

    Imagine using advanced technology, automation, artificial intelligence, and global cooperation to optimize the use of Earth’s resources.

    How much less might humanity actually need to consume?

    Nobody can yet calculate an exact figure for such a civilization.

    But imagine the possibilities.

    Humanity might be able to reduce its consumption of finite resources far beyond 40%, while providing everyone with a higher quality of life than most people enjoy today.

    Not because people would be deprived of the things that make life wonderful, but because prosperity would no longer depend on how much they consume.

    It would depend on access, security, freedom, health, opportunity, and the quality of the world around them.

    And something else would happen.

    As humanity reduced its destructive consumption, nature would have the opportunity to recover.

    Forests would regenerate. Oceans would replenish. Soils would become healthier. Ecosystems would flourish.

    The renewable abundance of our planet could increase as its living systems recovered.

    And humanity could discover something truly extraordinary. We could literally create a Paradise Planet.

    The monetary system struggles to survive when consumption falls. 

    A resource-based economy could become more prosperous precisely because unnecessary consumption falls.

    The question is this:

    Why are we here?

    To keep economic transactions flowing?

    Or

    to keep life flourishing?

    And perhaps that is the most important question of all.

    And the more serious the environmental crisis becomes, the more dangerous this contradiction  become.

    What if the climate crisis eventually forces humanity to reduce its consumption so drastically that the monetary system can no longer sustain itself?

    What happens then?

    Do governments continue desperately trying to stimulate economic growth, even when further growth in resource consumption is precisely what the planet and our life on it cannot tolerate?

    Do people lose their homes, livelihoods, and access to necessities because the economy is contracting, even though the physical resources needed to support them may still exist?

    Do countries compete even more fiercely for increasingly stressed resources, creating further conflict and destruction?

    It is a frightening possibility.

    A civilization caught between two catastrophes.

    One economic.

    One ecological.

    And seemingly no way out. Except there is…

    The Way Out

    What if prosperity does not actually require perpetual monetary growth?

    What if people could have access to everything they need without having to purchase it for money?

    And what if humanity could organize its resources intelligently, cooperatively, and sustainably, without money, trading, or exclusive ownership?

    Suddenly, the seemingly impossible contradiction begins to dissolve.

    Because the purpose of civilization would no longer be to keep money circulating.

    It would be to sustain and improve life.

    The way out, not only of fossil fuels, but out of the trap of endless consumption.

    Organized Around Life

    Imagine a world in which humanity no longer organizes its activities around monetary transactions, economic competition, and the endless accumulation of wealth.

    Imagine instead a civilization based on the intelligent management of Earth’s resources, where the purpose of production is to meet human needs while maintaining the health of the planet.

    A world in which resources are managed through stewardship rather than ownership.

    Where people have access to what they need without having to earn money to purchase it.

    Where scientific knowledge, technology, automation, and artificial intelligence are used to reduce unnecessary labor, eliminate waste, restore ecosystems, and improve the quality of life for everyone.

    And where the success of civilization is no longer measured by how much money circulates through the economy, but by how well life is flourishing.

    In such a civilization, reducing unnecessary consumption would no longer threaten economic survival.

    There would be no businesses going bankrupt because people stopped buying things they did not need.

    No workers losing their incomes because fewer products were being manufactured.

    No governments worrying about declining tax revenues because economic activity had slowed.

    Instead, producing fewer unnecessary goods would free resources, energy, technology, and human effort for more valuable purposes.

    Products could be designed to last for generations rather than being replaced every few years.

    Materials could be recovered, reused, and recycled wherever practical.

    Transportation could be organized around accessibility, efficiency, and environmental sustainability rather than the commercial necessity of selling more vehicles.

    Housing could be designed to provide beautiful, comfortable, and sustainable homes for everyone rather than primarily functioning as financial assets.

    And agriculture could be organized to provide nutritious food while restoring soil, protecting biodiversity, and minimizing waste.

    The entire purpose of production would be different.

    Instead of producing goods to generate monetary income, humanity would produce what people actually need and want, within the sustainable limits of the planet.

    Reducing unnecessary consumption would no longer be an economic catastrophe. It would be progress.

    From Competition to Cooperation

    And imagine what else might become possible.

    Today, countries compete for access to energy, minerals, land, markets, and technological advantages.

    Enormous resources are devoted to protecting economic interests, securing supply chains, maintaining military power, and preparing for conflicts.

    How many wars and international confrontations have been driven, at least partly, by the desire to control valuable resources?

    Oil is perhaps one of the most obvious examples.

    But imagine a world in which nobody needs to fight for ownership of oil, minerals, land, or other resources anymore.

    A world in which the resources of Earth are understood as a shared inheritance, managed through global stewardship for the benefit of everyone.

    No more wars for oil.

    No more economic struggles over who gets to control the resources that everyone needs.

    No more need to withhold potentially life-changing technologies because they threaten someone’s profits or competitive advantage.

    Of course, humanity would still have disagreements, and removing money would not magically eliminate every possible source of conflict.

    But imagine removing some of the most powerful incentives for conflict that exist today.

    Instead of competing economically, humanity could cooperate in developing clean energy, sustainable agriculture, advanced transportation, medicine, automation, and countless other technologies.

    Scientists, engineers, researchers, and artificial intelligence systems across the planet could share discoveries and work towards common objectives.

    Not to make one country more competitive than another.

    Not to increase the market value of corporations.

    Not to generate greater profits for investors.

    But to make life better for everyone.

    Imagine what humanity might accomplish if its extraordinary scientific and technological capabilities were directed towards common goals rather than fragmented by monetary competition.

    And imagine how much easier it might become to address climate change if the question of profitability were removed from the equation.

    The planetary system already exists. It has sustained life for billions of years.

    What humanity needs is a system of civilization that works in harmony with it rather than against it.

    I call this possibility the Humanitary System.

    A World Beyond Our Wildest Dreams

    And what might such a civilization eventually become?

    Imagine that humanity actually succeeds.

    Not merely in reducing greenhouse gas emissions or replacing fossil fuels, but in fundamentally transforming the way civilization operates.

    Imagine that humanity made the choice. Not only to phase out fossil fuels, but to phase out overconsumption and develops a world in which the consumption of finite resources has been reduced to a fraction of what it once was.

    Products are designed to last. Materials are continuously recovered and reused. Waste has become  a thing of the past.

    But this is not a world of deprivation, austerity, or sacrifice.

    Quite the opposite.

    It is a world of extraordinary abundance.

    Because while the consumption of finite resources has been drastically reduced, the renewable abundance of the planet is flourishing.

    Forests have returned. Rivers run clean. Oceans are recovering, teeming with life. Ecosystems that were once pushed towards collapse are thriving again.

    Nature is no longer treated as an endless supply of commodities to be exploited, but as the magnificent living foundation of civilization itself.

    And as nature recovers, its capacity to sustain life flourishes with it.

    Clean energy flows from the sun, wind, and other renewable sources.

    Agriculture works increasingly in harmony with ecosystems, producing abundant, nutritious food while restoring the soil and protecting biodiversity.

    Scientific knowledge, automation, and artificial intelligence make it possible to provide comfortable homes, transportation, healthcare, education, and countless opportunities for everyone, while using dramatically fewer finite resources.

    People no longer spend most of their lives struggling to earn enough money to survive.

    They have time.

    Time to explore, create, learn, travel, play, love, and enjoy the extraordinary world around them.

    Beautiful cities are surrounded by thriving nature. Communities are designed around human well-being rather than commercial activity. Transportation is efficient, accessible, and environmentally sustainable.

    And the extraordinary technological achievements of humanity are available to everyone, rather than primarily to those who can afford them.

    There is no longer any need to manufacture scarcity to sustain prices, or encourage unnecessary consumption to sustain economic growth.

    The more efficiently humanity uses its resources, the more everyone benefits.

    And the healthier the planet becomes, the richer life becomes.

    Humanity has learned to consume much less while living much more.

    And perhaps most remarkably, humanity has discovered that prosperity does not require endless consumption.

    It requires intelligent organization, cooperation, access, and a healthy planet.

    The abundance was there all along, in the extraordinary regenerative powers of nature, the energy flowing through the planetary system, and the immense possibilities of human knowledge and technology.

    Humanity simply had to learn how to live with it rather than against it.

    What had once seemed like an impossible contradiction has finally been resolved.

    The monetary system demanded perpetual consumption, even at the expense of the planet that sustained it.

    But humanity found a way out.

    And the result is a world of almost unimaginable beauty, freedom, security, and opportunity.

    A world in which nature flourishes, and humanity flourishes with it.

    A world that might once have seemed like paradise.

    A New Dawn for Humanity

    Now, I am not suggesting that I have worked out every technical, political, scientific, or practical detail of how such a civilization could be established.

    Far from it.

    I don’t have a finished blueprint, but rather only pointing to a fundamentally different direction.

    A direction that no longer depends on perpetual consumption to remain operational.

    Nor am I suggesting that this transformation would be easy, or that humanity could simply abandon the monetary system overnight.

    What I am suggesting is a new way.

    A possibility worth exploring before the consequences of our present way of living become even more severe.

    Because before humanity can create a different civilization, it must first be able to imagine one.

    Money, ownership, trading, economic competition and perpetual financial growth may seem like permanent features of human existence.

    But they are human inventions.

    They are not laws of nature.

    And if humanity invented them, humanity can also imagine and develop something different.

    That does not mean abandoning everything civilization has achieved.

    Quite the opposite.

    Humanity can carry its scientific knowledge, technological achievements, creativity, compassion, and accumulated understanding into an entirely new way of living.

    There is no need to abandon progress.

    Only to redefine what progress means.

    And perhaps the most extraordinary possibility is that such a transformation would not merely allow humanity to survive the environmental crises it faces today.

    It could establish the foundations of a civilization capable of flourishing for thousands, perhaps millions, of years.

    A civilization that does not depend on consuming its own foundations to remain operational.

    One capable of continually learning, adapting, evolving, and improving while respecting the ecological systems that sustain it.

    Imagine what humanity might become after a thousand years of such development.

    Or ten thousand.

    Or a million.

    Only The Beginning

    Perhaps the civilization we know today is only the beginning.

    Perhaps the greatest discoveries, adventures, and achievements of humanity still lie unimaginably far ahead.

    But to reach them, humanity must first find a way out of the trap it has created for itself. The way out is obvious. Abandon the devastating economic system we have today in favor of a system that actually takes care of nature, the planet and the people living on it.

    Waking Up

    Now imagine suddenly waking up in such a world.

    One day, an extraordinarily wealthy billionaire named Benjamin Michaels opened his eyes.

    He had been cryonically preserved for a hundred years.

    And he had absolutely no idea what had happened to the world.

    The money he had accumulated throughout his life was gone.

    The economic system he had mastered no longer existed.

    Everything he once believed about wealth, ownership, work, and human civilization had been turned upside down.

    Benjamin was utterly bewildered.

    How could anyone possibly live without money?

    Who owned everything?

    Why would anyone work if they were not being paid?

    That is the journey explored in the novel, Waking Up – A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity.

    A story about a world that might seem impossible today.

    But perhaps not forever.

    Discover the story

  • The Global System

    The Global System

    We live on one planet. One interconnected world, with one atmosphere, one global ocean, and countless ecosystems that together sustain life on Earth.

    Yet human civilization is divided into nearly 200 countries, each with its own political system, government, economic interests, and competing priorities.

    Every few years, people are encouraged to vote for new politicians, new parties, and new governments. Red or blue. Republican or Democrat. Socialist or capitalist. Political campaigns promise change, and sometimes change does happen.

    But while politicians come and go, the fundamental structure of human civilization remains largely the same.

    And the planet doesn’t care who wins the next election.

    Climate change doesn’t recognize national borders. Neither do ocean currents, atmospheric circulation, biodiversity loss, or the consequences of environmental destruction.

    A decision made in one country can affect people on the other side of the world. One government may spend decades reducing pollution, only to see another government reverse its environmental policies after their next election.

     The American government’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement and pursue policies favoring greater fossil fuel production and consumption has consequences extending far beyond the borders of the country.

    The burning of fossil fuels releases greenhouse gases into an atmosphere shared by the entire planet. Policy changes that encourage additional fossil fuel consumption can therefore result in millions of additional tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, contributing to global warming regardless of where those emissions originate.

    The consequences are not confined to American territory. They become part of a global climate problem affecting people, ecosystems, agriculture, water supplies, and future generations throughout the world.

    And yet decisions with such far-reaching consequences can be made by a single national government, according to its own political priorities.

    How can the environmental future of the entire planet depend so heavily on the political decisions of individual countries?

    How can humanity possibly manage a single interconnected planet through hundreds of fragmented and competing political systems?

    Perhaps the problem isn’t primarily who governs each country.

    Perhaps the problem is the way human civilization itself is organized.

    The Planetary System

    Long before humanity invented countries, governments, ownership, trade, or money, there was already a global system in place:

    The planetary system.

    It consists of the atmosphere, oceans, forests, rivers, mountains, soil, climate, weather patterns, and the extraordinary diversity of life that has evolved on Earth.

    These are not separate, independent entities. They are interconnected parts of a vast and dynamic natural system.

    The oceans influence the atmosphere. Forests influence rainfall. Plants absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen. Microorganisms maintain soil fertility. Water continuously circulates through oceans, clouds, rivers, and living organisms.

    Everything is connected.

    And although this system has changed enormously throughout Earth’s history, it has sustained life for billions of years.

    Humanity is part of this system, not separate from it.

    Every breath, every meal, every drop of water, every material used to construct our homes and cities comes from this system and ultimately depends on the functioning of the natural world.

    The planetary system is therefore not merely our environment.

    It is the very foundation of our existence.

    And yet humanity has constructed a civilization that frequently behaves as though this foundation were simply a collection of commodities waiting to be exploited.

    We need a unifying global human system that recognizes and protects the planetary system.

    The Monetary System

    Interestingly, humanity has already established something resembling a global operating system:

    The monetary system.

    Despite all the political divisions, economic ideologies, national borders, and cultural differences, money connects almost every country and community on Earth.

    International trade, banking, investments, production, transportation, and distribution are all coordinated to a remarkable extent through monetary transactions.

    A product manufactured in China may contain materials extracted in Africa, components produced in Europe, and technology developed in America before being sold to someone in Australia.

    The monetary system makes this extraordinary global coordination possible.

    But there is a profound paradox.

    The system that connects humanity economically is also the system that encourages activities capable of destroying the planet and ecosystem  upon which humanity depends.

    The monetary system does not inherently recognize a forest as an essential part of the planetary ecosystem.

    It recognizes timber, land values, commercial opportunities, and potential profits.

    A river becomes a source of economic value. Land becomes property. Minerals become commodities. 

    Of course, money can also be used to protect nature to some degree. Forests can be conserved, pollution can be reduced, and renewable energy can be developed through financial investment.

    But ecological sustainability is not the fundamental organizing principle of the monetary system. It is rather financial profitability, which is a powerful driver of economic decisions, even when profitable activities create environmental damage.

    And this is where the contradiction becomes particularly serious. 

    We try to alleviate the contradiction through rules and regulations, but as long as the monetary system inherently rewards economic expansion, increasing production, growing consumption, and accumulating financial wealth, the planet and ecosystems  will always be at risk.

    The planet has physical limits.

    Natural resources cannot be extracted indefinitely at ever-increasing rates. Ecosystems cannot absorb unlimited amounts of pollution. And economic growth cannot automatically be equated with improvements in human well-being.

    A forest can contribute to economic growth when it is cut down. Pollution can create profitable industries dedicated to cleaning it up. Products can be manufactured, discarded, and replaced long before their useful lives have ended.

    All of this can generate monetary activity.

    But does it generate actual prosperity?

    Does it improve the health of the planet?

    Does it make human civilization more sustainable?

    Not necessarily.

    And beyond environmental destruction, the monetary system can intensify competition over resources, markets, territories, and economic power.

    Ownership becomes something to defend. Resources become something to control. Economic advantage becomes something to fight for.

    Money is certainly not the only cause of human conflict, but the competition surrounding ownership and economic power has played a significant role in conflicts throughout history.

    The irony is extraordinary.

    Humanity has managed to globalize its economy without globalizing its responsibility for the planet.

    The one system that connects nearly everyone on Earth and affects almost every ecosystem is not fundamentally designed to ensure that every being can continue living and thriving on Planet Earth.

    The Fragmented Civilization

    Meanwhile, humanity continues trying to solve global problems through national political systems.

    One country introduces ambitious environmental policies. Another prioritizes industrial expansion. A third withdraws from international commitments after an election.

    And every few years, the political priorities may change again.

    International agreements attempt to coordinate these efforts, but their effectiveness still depends heavily on individual governments and their willingness to cooperate.

    The result is a civilization that recognizes the existence of global problems but continues to manage them largely through fragmented national interests.

    This is not to suggest that elections are meaningless or that political decisions cannot make a difference.

    They certainly can.

    But changing politicians does not necessarily change the underlying principles upon which civilization operates.

    Whether a government calls itself socialist or capitalist, conservative or progressive, it still operates within an international economy dominated by an all encompassing devastating monetary system that perpetuates pollution and inequality. 

    The fundamental question remains largely unanswered:

    How should humanity organize its civilization to ensure that everyone can live prosperous, fulfilling lives on this planet indefinitely?

    That is not merely a national political question.

    It is a planetary question.

    And perhaps it requires an entirely different kind of global system.

    The Humanitary System

    A system in which humanity recognizes its role on Earth as its caretakers, not its exploiters.

    Imagine a global system of operations designed around the reality of the planet itself.

    A system that recognizes the atmosphere, oceans, ecosystems, climate, and natural resources as interconnected parts of the planetary foundation upon which all human life depends.

    A system that does not begin by asking who owns what, how much something costs, or how much profit can be generated.

    Instead, it begins with two fundamental questions:

    1. What do human beings need to live prosperous and fulfilling lives?

    2. And how can those needs be met while maintaining the health and sustainability of the planetary system?

    This is the foundation of what I call the Humanitary System.

    It would be a global operating principle for human civilization, based on stewardship rather than ownership, cooperation rather than economic competition, and the sustainable management of resources rather than the accumulation of monetary wealth.

    Its purpose would not be to replace hundreds of national governments with one enormous centralized authority controlling everyone’s lives.

    Quite the opposite.

    Glocal Communities

    Local communities would retain extensive autonomy, adapting their activities to their own cultures, environments, needs, and circumstances.

    But they would operate within a shared global framework that recognizes the interconnected nature of the planet.

    Climate, biodiversity, resource availability, ecological regeneration, production, transportation, agriculture, energy, and distribution would be understood as parts of one coordinated planetary operation.

    Modern science, global communications, automation, and artificial intelligence could help humanity understand these relationships and coordinate activities accordingly.

    Maximizing Life

    Instead of measuring success primarily through financial growth, civilization could measure its progress through actual human well-being, ecological health, resource availability, and long-term sustainability.

    Instead of treating nature as property to be exploited, humanity could assume responsibility for its stewardship.

    And instead of forcing people to compete financially for access to the necessities of life, resources could be managed and distributed according to genuine needs, availability, and ecological feasibility.

    This would not eliminate every problem, disagreement, or limitation.

    But it would establish a fundamentally different purpose for human civilization.

    Not to maximize financial returns, but to maximize life.

    One Planet One Civilization

    The planetary system already exists.

    It does not need to be invented, negotiated, or approved by any government.

    It is the natural reality within which humanity has evolved and upon which its continued existence depends.

    The monetary system, on the other hand, is a human invention.

    Ownership, prices, financial markets, national economies, and monetary obligations are not laws of nature. They are arrangements humanity has developed over thousands of years.

    And what humanity has invented, humanity can change.

    The purpose is not to eliminate cultural diversity, local independence, or individual freedom.

    It is to recognize that humanity shares one planet and that the organization of human civilization must reflect this fundamental reality.

    The Humanitary System is a proposal for doing precisely that.

    A global system of operations that reflects, respects, and protects the planetary system.

    A civilization that recognizes that the prosperity of humanity cannot be separated from the health of the natural world.

    A civilization in which the resources of the planet are no longer regarded primarily as commodities to be owned and traded, but as the shared foundation of life to be responsibly stewarded.

    An Extraordinary Ability

    Humanity has already demonstrated an extraordinary ability to coordinate activities across the entire planet through the monetary system.

    Imagine applying that same capacity for global coordination to a fundamentally different purpose.

    Not the endless pursuit of financial growth.

    Not the competition for ownership and economic dominance.

    But the flourishing of humanity and the protection of the planet that makes it possible.

    The planetary system sustains life.

    The monetary system sustains economic transactions.

    The Humanitary System would organize human civilization to prosper while sustaining life.

    Humanity does not need to move to a new planet.

    It needs to create a new way of living on the one it already has.

    And perhaps the first step is simply recognizing something that has

     Waking Up in a Different World

    What would life actually be like in a civilization that had replaced the monetary system with a Humanitary system? A world without money, poverty, economic competition, or the constant struggle to earn a living? A world where humanity had finally learned to live in harmony with the planet?

    Imagine falling asleep in today’s world and waking up a hundred years later to discover that everything had changed.

    That is exactly what happens to Benjamin Michaels in the novel, Waking Up: A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity.

    Through his eyes, you can explore a future in which humanity has transformed its civilization beyond anything he could have imagined.

    What would you do if you woke up in such a world?

    Discover the story

  • How to Save Our Planet

    How to Save Our Planet

    Inspired by David Attenborough’s documentary Our Planet and his vision for restoring biodiversity.

    In the documentary Our Planet, David Attenborough delivers a powerful message about the state of our world. Biodiversity is disappearing at an alarming rate, threatening the stability of the ecosystems upon which all life depends.

    But it is not too late if we don’t delay too much more.

    His message is remarkably simple: 

    humanity must reduce its impact on the natural world until everything we do can be sustained indefinitely.

    He presents four major solutions:

    1. Phase out fossil fuels and replace them with renewable energy.
    2. Transform agriculture by producing food more efficiently, reducing meat consumption, and allowing more land to return to nature.
    3. Restore our oceans through international cooperation, sustainable fishing, and marine protected areas where fish populations can recover.
    4. Rewild the planet, restoring forests, wetlands, grasslands, and other natural habitats so biodiversity can flourish again.

    These are not impossible goals. Humanity already possesses all of the knowledge, technology, and resources needed to accomplish them.

    So why haven’t we done it?

    The Invisible Obstacle – The Money Monster

    It should be obvious what we need to do, but most foundational change is effectively stopped by one entity:

    The monetary system. 

    We know what we need to do as we have done it before, but this time more groundbreaking change is needed than ever before in human history.

    The Ozone Layer

    When the world discovered that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were destroying the ozone layer, governments came together and agreed to phase them out through the Montreal Protocol in 1987. 

    It was an extraordinary example of global cooperation, and the ozone layer has been recovering ever since and is still slowly recovering.

    Fossil Fuels

    But even though fossil fuels are even more crucial as CFCs were, replacing them has proven considerably more difficult.

    Why?

    Because fossil fuels are deeply embedded in the global monetary economy. 

    Enormous corporations, investors, governments, and entire industries depend on the continued extraction and sale of oil, coal, and natural gas.

    The financial interests involved are staggering. CFCs made up a relatively small part of our economy and was thus no problem to eliminate. Fossil fuels on the other hand risks collapsing our entire economy if they are removed. But maybe that is exactly what we need. To collapse our current economic system and replace it with a sustainable one.

    Even though renewable energy technologies have advanced enormously, the fossil fuel industry continues to exert political and economic influence to protect its interests. They even influence the green energy revolution by producing such fuels as hydrogen by using the very fossil fuels we need to phase out. Hydrogen ends up being just as polluting as gasoline.

    Industrial Agriculture

    The same problem appears in agriculture. For decades, industrial agriculture has expanded vast monocultures, replacing diverse natural ecosystems with enormous fields of single crops. Forests have been cleared, habitats destroyed, and biodiversity diminished.

    Meanwhile, an enormous commercial industry has developed around pesticides, herbicides, synthetic fertilizers, patented seeds, and GMOs.

    Some of these technologies can serve useful purposes. But in a monetary economy, their development and application are heavily influenced by profitability rather than exclusively by ecological consequences and genuine human needs.

    Marine Ecosystems

    The oceans face similar pressures. Fishing companies must remain profitable, investors expect returns, and entire coastal economies depend on continued commercial activity. Protecting marine ecosystems can therefore become a financial conflict rather than simply a question of responsible stewardship. All of it resulting in over fishing, trying to extract as much profit as possible from the oceans.

     Rewilding Nature

    Land is property. 

    Forests represent timber. 

    Fields represent agricultural income. 

    Natural habitats compete with commercial development.

    Again and again, the same obstacle appears.

    Humanity is trying to save a planet within an economic system that rewards its continuous destruction.

     Overconsumption

    But the problem goes much further than fossil fuels, agriculture, and fishing.

    Consider the extraordinary quantities of resources consumed simply to keep the global monetary economy expanding.

    Products are manufactured, marketed, purchased, discarded, and replaced in an endless and increasing cycle.

    Advertising encourages people to consume things they may never have wanted otherwise. Products are oftentimes deliberately designed with limited lifespans. Perfectly functional goods become obsolete because newer models promise slightly improved features. Or because the old is out of fashion. 

    Enormous quantities of food are wasted while millions of people go hungry.

    And behind all of this lies a fundamental economic requirement: 

    businesses must generate revenue, debts must be serviced, investments must produce returns, and economic growth must continue.

    The monetary system doesn’t merely distribute the things humanity needs. It also creates an enormous additional demand for production and consumption simply to sustain itself and grow.

    Think about that. 

    The monetary system is literally a self-sustaining entity that stays alive by eating our planet. In effect, a monetary monster.

    Every additional product requires materials, energy, transportation, and often packaging. Every unnecessary replacement consumes another portion of Earth’s finite resources.

    And every forest cleared, habitat destroyed, and ecosystem disrupted comes at a cost that cannot always be expressed in money.

    What an extraordinary contradiction.

    Humanity has developed the intelligence to understand the consequences of its activities, yet continues operating an economic system that frequently rewards the very activities threatening its future.

    The Solution Was Bigger Than the Problem

    Are we doomed?

    Not according to this novel: Waking Up – A journey towards a new dawn for humanity.

    Eventually, humanity began to understand something remarkable.

    The problem wasn’t that people lacked the intelligence to save the planet.

    Nor was it that Earth lacked sufficient resources to provide everyone with a fulfilling life.

    The problem was the way civilization had organized its relationship with those resources.

    Stewardship

    For thousands of years, humanity had gradually divided the planet into billions of ownership claims. Land, forests, minerals, water, and virtually everything else had become commodities to be bought, sold, and controlled.

    And the monetary system had become so deeply embedded in human civilization that people struggled to imagine any other way of organizing their lives.

    But ownership, money and trading were human inventions.

    They were not laws of nature.

    And what humanity had invented, humanity could also change.

    Instead of continuing to fight the financial obstacles to environmental restoration one by one, humanity gradually began replacing the system that created those obstacles in the first place.

    A new understanding emerged.

    The Earth was not a collection of commodities waiting to be exploited.

    It was a living, interconnected system upon which every human being and every other living creature depended.

    And humanity’s role was not to own and consume that system, but to become its responsible steward.

     We Finally Saved Our Planet

    So how did we do it?

    We gradually abandoned the outdated monetary system and established a global resource-based economy founded on stewardship, cooperation, and intelligent resource management.

    And everything changed.

    The financial incentives that had obstructed environmental restoration disappeared along with the monetary system itself.

    There were no longer fossil fuel profits to protect, shareholders demanding continuous growth, or agricultural corporations dependent on ever-increasing sales of chemicals and patented products.

    There was no longer any economic necessity to manufacture enormous quantities of unnecessary goods or encourage people to consume much more than they needed.

    Instead, production was organized around actual needs.

    Products were designed to last, to be repaired, upgraded, reused, and eventually recycled. Resources were managed according to their availability, environmental consequences, need and usefulness to society.

    Agriculture was transformed. Vast monocultures were gradually replaced where appropriate by more diverse and regenerative systems. Food production became increasingly efficient, while unnecessary chemical use and food waste were dramatically reduced.

    Humanity could finally concentrate on feeding everyone while restoring the ecosystems upon which food production itself depended.

    The oceans were given the opportunity to recover. Extensive marine protected areas allowed fish populations and entire ecosystems to regenerate. Fishing was coordinated according to ecological knowledge rather than commercial pressure.

    Fossil fuels were progressively replaced with renewable energy, supported by improved storage, efficient infrastructure, and intelligent global coordination.

    And enormous areas of land were returned to nature.

    Forests regenerated. Wetlands were restored. Wildlife corridors reconnected fragmented habitats. Species that had been pushed toward extinction were given the opportunity to recover.

    Of course, the physical work still required enormous effort, knowledge, technology, and cooperation. Technology that we had available through AI, automation and robotics.

    But humanity was no longer fighting against its own economic incentives at every turn.

    The question was no longer whether restoring an ecosystem would be profitable.

    The question was simply whether it was beneficial to life on Earth.

    And when it was, humanity could organize the resources needed to accomplish it.

    A World That Works for All Life

    Perhaps the greatest transformation was not technological or environmental.

    It was a transformation of understanding.

    Humanity finally recognized that its own well-being could never be separated from the well-being of the natural world.

    The forests were not merely sources of timber. The oceans were not merely fishing grounds. Animals were not merely commodities. And the Earth was not merely a warehouse of resources waiting to be converted into money.

    Everything was connected.

    Biodiversity created resilience. Resilience created stability. And stability provided the foundation for a flourishing civilization.

    The extraordinary thing was that humanity did not have to sacrifice its own well-being to restore the planet.

    Quite the opposite.

    By eliminating unnecessary production, waste, competition for profit, and the enormous machinery required to maintain the monetary system, humanity could direct its intelligence and resources toward improving life for everyone.

    A world where nobody had to earn the right to exist.

    A world where technology served life rather than financial accumulation.

    A world where humanity could enjoy the extraordinary abundance of Earth without destroying the natural systems that made that abundance possible.

    David Attenborough reminded humanity that it possessed an extraordinary ability to change the world.

    And that was precisely what humanity finally did.

    But this time, instead of changing the world primarily to serve its own economic ambitions, humanity changed the way it lived so that the entire living planet could flourish.

    We stopped trying to make the Earth work for our economy.

    Instead, we created a true economy that worked for the Earth, for humanity, and for all life.

    And that was how we saved our planet.

    The Bewildered Billionaire

    In 2015, a billionaire suffering from terminal cancer chose cryogenic preservation after death in the hopes of some day waking up in a future where he would be cured and be able to expand his empire.

    Imagine his surprise when he wakes up 100 years later only to find that money, ownership and trading is a thing of the past. And not only that. He encounters both friends and foes on his journey through this strange new world.

    If you want to experience that world too, you can. Just click below.

    Discover the story of Benjamin Michaels, the bewildered billionaire

  • Power to the People

    Power to the People

    “Power to the people!”

    For generations, this famous political slogan has been a rallying cry for democracy, social justice, popular sovereignty, and collective action. It has echoed through demonstrations, political campaigns, and movements demanding freedom and equality.

    And now, with another election approaching in the United States, the struggle for political power continues. But will the people really get anymore power?

    Politicians promise change, better lives, greater freedom, and more power to ordinary people.

    But how much power do the people really have? And will ever get?

    Presidents come and go. Governments change. Political parties replace one another, promising lower taxes, higher wages, cheaper gasoline, more jobs, and greater prosperity.

    And sometimes they deliver on those promises. And sometimes not.

    But one thing remains largely unchanged, regardless of who wins the election.

    The monetary system

    And as long as that system remains in place, the extraordinary concentration of economic power in the hands of a relatively small number of people and institutions remains largely untouched.

    Who Really Holds the Power?

    We like to believe that democracy means the people are in charge. That by electing representatives, we determine the direction of our civilization.

    But consider this.

    A relatively small number of individuals, corporations, financial institutions, and investment organizations control enormous amounts of wealth, land, infrastructure, and productive resources.

    Through this control, they possess an extraordinary influence over the lives of billions of people. And nature itself.

    They don’t necessarily need to become presidents or prime ministers. They don’t even need to agree with one another. Their economic power exists independently of whoever happens to occupy political office.

    And the fascinating part is that this power doesn’t primarily depend on force.

    It depends on the system itself, and humanity’s collective belief that we cannot live without it.

    As long as most people believe that money is absolutely necessary for civilization to function, the monetary system will continue to perpetuate itself. 

    And those who control the greatest concentrations of monetary wealth and resources will continue to possess enormous power.

    No matter who wins the next election.

    No matter how many protests there are.

    The Ultimate Trap

    What makes the monetary system so extraordinarily effective is that it creates the very conditions that convince people of its necessity.

    You need money to buy food. You need money to pay your rent or mortgage. You need money for electricity, water, transportation, healthcare, and almost everything else.

    So naturally, you conclude that we need money to survive.

    And within the system we have created, you are absolutely right.

    You cannot simply decide tomorrow that money is unnecessary and stop paying your bills. Your landlord will still demand rent. Your bank will still expect mortgage payments. The supermarket will still expect money for your groceries.

    This is what makes the monetary system such an ingenious, self-perpetuating mechanism.

    We need money because the system requires money. And because we need money, we believe the system itself is necessary.

    The system becomes its own proof of necessity.

    And the trap extends far beyond everyday transactions.

    Imagine deciding to become completely self-sufficient. You acquire a piece of land, build a modest home, grow your own food, generate your own electricity, and collect your own water.

    You no longer need an employer. You hardly need to buy anything.

    Yet you may still have to pay property taxes, permits, fees, and other legally required expenses.

    Even though you provide for virtually all your physical needs, you will still be legally required to obtain money.

    The monetary system is not merely embedded in our economy. It is embedded in our laws, regulations, institutions, and, perhaps most importantly, our minds.

    We have created a civilization in which it can be extraordinarily difficult to live outside the monetary system, even when we have no practical need for most of its services.

    And because virtually everyone must participate, virtually everyone helps perpetuate it.

    Humanity has created the ultimate trap for itself.

    The Illusion of Freedom

    Most people want to be free.

    And when politicians promise greater freedom, people listen.

    Perhaps a new president promises cheaper gasoline. Another promises lower taxes. Someone else promises higher wages or more affordable housing.

    These improvements might seem good and can certainly make people’s lives easier.

    But do they fundamentally change the relationship between people and the monetary system?

    Not really.

    You might have a little more money left at the end of the month, but you still have to earn money to survive.

    You still have to pay your bills. You still have to compete for income. You still have to fulfill your financial obligations.

    You may have gained a little more freedom within the system, but you haven’t become free from the system itself.

    And that raises a fundamental question.

    How free are you when your ability to live depends on obtaining money from a system controlled disproportionately by others?

    The truth is that the people have no power as long as we are trapped in the system of money.

    A billionaire and a person struggling to pay rent may enjoy the same formal democratic rights, but their practical freedom to choose how to live is vastly different.

    One can travel, create, explore, and pursue almost any interest without worrying about survival.

    The other may spend most of their waking hours simply trying to earn enough money to remain housed and fed.

    Is that really power to the people?

    Or is it power to those who possess the money?

    The Power of Belief

    Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of this entire arrangement is that most people don’t even recognize it as an arrangement.

    Money has become so thoroughly integrated into civilization that it appears to be part of reality itself.

    People say they must earn a living.

    Think about that expression.

    Earn a living.

    As though the right to live on this planet were something that had to be earned!

    Yet the physical foundations of life have nothing to do with money.

    Food grows from soil, water, sunlight, and biological processes.

    Houses are built from materials, energy, knowledge, and human effort.

    Electricity comes from physical energy sources.

    Healthcare depends on knowledge, equipment, medicines, and people.

    None of these things fundamentally requires money to exist.

    Money is merely the mechanism humanity currently uses to organize much of their production, distribution, and access.

    A Human Invention

    And because we have organized civilization this way, we have come to believe that the mechanism itself is indispensable.

    But it isn’t a law of nature.

    It is a human invention.

    And human inventions can be changed.

    Power Without Domination

    Now, I am not suggesting that every form of currency or exchange must necessarily disappear.

    Perhaps people in a future civilization will still enjoy trading things. Perhaps some communities will use time credits or other voluntary systems for coordinating contributions and activities.

    There is nothing inherently wrong with that, even though everything is freely available.

    The crucial question is whether these arrangements allow some people to accumulate vast power over the lives of others.

    Accumulated Wealth

    In our present monetary system, accumulated wealth can be transformed into ownership of land, housing, industries, infrastructure, and essential resources.

    Ownership can then generate additional wealth, which can purchase even more ownership.

    And so the concentration of power continues.

    What if humanity designed a civilization where that mechanism no longer existed?

    Where nobody could accumulate control over the resources necessary for everyone else’s survival?

    Where the purpose of organizing resources was to satisfy human needs and preserve the natural world, rather than to continually expand financial wealth?

    This is the foundation of the global resource-based economy I envision.

    A civilization based on stewardship rather than exclusive ownership, cooperation rather than compulsory competition, and access rather than purchasing power.

    A world in which resources are managed intelligently for the benefit of humanity and the rest of nature.

    A world where people can contribute according to their interests and abilities without having to earn the right to exist.

    And most importantly, a world where nobody can use accumulated monetary wealth to exercise extraordinary power over billions of other people. Because wealth in that system cannot be accumulated with only a few people. Both because all resources are distributed according to need instead of purchasing power, and because “wealth” has a completely different meaning. Instead of personal accumulation of material wealth it can mean a wealth of time, resources and experiences for everyone.

    The Real Meaning of Power to the People

    The transformation I envision is not about taking power away from one wealthy group and handing it to another.

    Nor is it about replacing elected governments with some new authority controlling everything.

    That would simply recreate the same fundamental problem under a different name.

    It is about distributing the ability to participate in civilization so broadly that nobody needs to possess disproportionate power over anybody else.

    Imagine a World

    Imagine a world where access to food, housing, healthcare, education, transportation, energy, and the other necessities of life is no longer dependent on your financial circumstances.

    Where people can participate directly in decisions affecting their communities.

    Where knowledge, technology, automation, and intelligent resource management are used to improve life for everyone.

    Where nobody needs to become a billionaire to enjoy freedom, security, and opportunity.

    And where the extraordinary resources of this planet are understood as a shared foundation of life rather than commodities to be accumulated and controlled.

    Such a civilization would still need coordination, agreements, responsibilities, and ways to resolve disagreements.

    But it would no longer need to organize human survival around the accumulation and circulation of money.

    And perhaps most importantly, it would no longer need to concentrate economic power in a few hands.

    The Revolution of Understanding

    Of course, such a transformation cannot happen simply because someone declares the monetary system obsolete.

    People have real obligations today. They need to pay their bills, feed their families, and maintain their homes.

    The trap is real because we have made it real.

    But its necessity is not permanent.

    And that is why I believe the most important transformation must begin with understanding.

    Understanding that money is not a natural resource.

    Understanding that ownership is a human arrangement, not an immutable law of the universe.

    Understanding that humanity already possesses extraordinary knowledge, technology, productive capacity, and the ability to cooperate on a global scale.

    And understanding that the purpose of civilization should be to support life, and not to perpetuate an economic mechanism.

    As this understanding spreads, practical alternatives can begin to develop. Communities can experiment with shared resources, voluntary stewardship, cooperative production, and new ways of organizing access to what people need.

    Gradually, the necessity of money could diminish as these alternatives become more capable of meeting human needs.

    The monetary system would not need to be overthrown by force.

    It could eventually become obsolete because humanity had learned to organize civilization in a better way.

    Elections

    And that brings me back to the approaching elections.

    People will vote. Politicians will win and lose. Promises will be made, and some will be fulfilled. Others not.

    The monetary machinery will most likely continue trundling along.

    Meanwhile, here I am, sitting on the sidelines, writing articles and stories, trying to give that enormous machinery a little kick in the chin.

    Perhaps it doesn’t even notice.

    The Machine

    But I am not really trying to fight the machinery.

    I am trying to help people recognize that it is a machine humanity created, and that humanity is perfectly capable of creating something different.

    Because genuine power to the people is not about giving people a little more purchasing power, or allowing them to choose who supposedly operates the monetary machinery.

    In fact, choosing who operates that machinery is hardly an option at all. Politicians may believe they are operating it, and the people who elect them may believe so too. But the real operator is largely invisible.

    It is our collective belief in the necessity of the monetary machine itself.

    Those who possess the greatest concentrations of wealth and power within the system may understand how to use it to their advantage. But that doesn’t necessarily make them evil or part of some grand conspiracy. They are just as conditioned by the monetary mindset as everyone else. They too have grown up believing that this is simply how civilization works.

    And so they do what seems natural and necessary to protect their wealth, their interests, and the system that sustains them.

    The extraordinary irony is that even those who appear to control the monetary machinery are themselves controlled by the belief that the machinery must continue running.

    And as long as that belief prevails, the machinery will keep running, regardless of who wins the next election.

    Genuine power is about creating a civilization in which nobody needs monetary power over anybody else.

    And this is exactly what we did

    We gradually replaced the monetary system with a global resource-based economy, where the resources of our planet are managed through stewardship and cooperation rather than ownership and monetary exchange.

    We stopped organizing civilization around the accumulation of wealth and began organizing it around the needs of humanity and the natural world.

    And something extraordinary happened.

    The enormous concentration of economic power that had dominated human civilization for centuries simply lost its foundation. Nobody could accumulate billions and use that wealth to control the resources upon which others depended.

    People no longer have to earn the right to live. They are free to contribute, create, explore, learn, and enjoy life without the constant pressure of financial obligations.

    Of course, civilization still needs coordination, decisions, and responsibilities. But these are no longer dictated by the need to generate profits or protect accumulated monetary wealth.

    And perhaps the greatest revelation was that nobody had actually lost anything essential when the monetary system disappeared.

    The land was still there. The food was still growing. The buildings, technology, knowledge, and resources were still available.

    Only the artificial barriers that had prevented humanity from sharing them intelligently had been removed.

    We had finally understood that power was never something that needed to be concentrated in the hands of a few.

    And for the first time in human history, power to the people was no longer a political slogan.

    It is now a reality.

    And our new friend the bewildered billionaire Benjamin Michaels is starting to get used to it as well. And we thank him for stopping a despot we shouldn’t have awakened from trying to ruin everything.

    Discover the story

  • Integrating the Transition

    Integrating the Transition

    How do we get from the world we have today to a world where everyone has access to what they need, where humanity lives in harmony with nature, and where money, debt, and ownership no longer determine the possibilities of human life?

    This may be the most important question of all.

    It is one thing to imagine a world without money, poverty, involuntary unemployment, economic exploitation, or the constant struggle to make ends meet. It is quite another to understand how humanity might actually get there.

    For years, I have envisioned a resource-based civilization in which humanity manages Earth’s resources through cooperation, stewardship, and what I call the Natural Exchange System (NES).

    In my novel Waking Up, I describe what such a civilization might look and feel like about a century from now. It is told as a story about a contemporary man who wakes up in that world and we experience the world through his eyes.

    But a vision of the destination is not the same as a road to get there.

    And perhaps the road is not nearly as complicated as it first appears.

    Perhaps humanity does not have to abandon the existing system before beginning to build something better.

    Perhaps the new civilization can gradually grow within the old one, until the old system simply becomes unnecessary.

    Integrating the Future into the Present

    One of the greatest obstacles to fundamental social change is that people are accustomed to the systems in which they live.

    Money, employment, private ownership, markets, and competition are so deeply embedded in everyday life that imagining anything else can feel almost impossible.

    Even someone who intellectually understands the possibilities of a resource-based economy may struggle to imagine actually living in one.

    How would people contribute? How would resources be distributed? Who would maintain the infrastructure? What would happen to their homes? And how could anyone trust a system without financial obligations?

    These are reasonable questions.

    And perhaps the best way to answer them is not through arguments alone, but through experience.

    This is where I find Peter Joseph’s Integral initiative particularly interesting.

    Integral explores ways of organizing practical cooperation and access to resources within the monetary world that already exists. Contribution-based arrangements, including time-credit approaches, offer one possible bridge between familiar exchange and a different way of living.

    Instead of exchanging labor exclusively for money, people can begin contributing their time and abilities to a cooperative network and receiving access to resources and services in return.

    It is still a form of exchange. Contributions are recognized, and some form of accounting may remain.

    But the important change has already begun.

    People are learning that cooperation does not have to be organized around profit.

    They are experiencing the benefits of sharing productive resources rather than each person having to purchase everything individually.

    And, perhaps most importantly, they are beginning to experience a different relationship with one another.

    Integral invites people to begin experiencing the future today. Waking Up invites people to imagine what that future could ultimately become. Both are equally important. 

    One helps humanity practice a different way of living.

    The other helps humanity imagine where that practice could lead.

    From Money Exchange to Natural Exchange

    The Natural Exchange System I envision goes a step further.

    NES is not another currency, credit system, or alternative method of payment.

    It is the gradual abandonment of the idea that every contribution must be balanced by an individual return.

    People contribute what they can, because their abilities are useful to others. They receive what they need, because their needs are recognized as part of a shared human reality.

    No personal account needs to be settled.

    No debt needs to be created.

    No one has to earn the right to exist.

    Nature offers an interesting analogy.

    A tree does not invoice the fungi that help supply its roots with nutrients. Pollinators do not send bills to flowers. Living systems are connected through countless relationships involving exchange, dependence, feedback, and mutual benefit.

    Of course, nature also contains competition, predation, and scarcity. Humanity cannot simply assume that everything will work harmoniously without thoughtful coordination.

    But nature demonstrates that complex systems can function without money or personal financial accounting.

    Human beings have the additional ability to understand these relationships and consciously design systems that protect both human well-being and the ecosystems upon which all life depends.

    NES would require coordination, information, planning, and responsible use of resources. It would not require every human interaction to become a transaction.

    Time credits and similar arrangements might therefore serve as useful training wheels.

    They allow people accustomed to earning and spending to begin cooperating outside conventional monetary exchange.

    And as trust, access, and shared responsibility develop, those credits might gradually become unnecessary.

    We begin by learning to exchange without money. We end by learning to live without keeping score.

    Ownership and Stewardship

    But there is another obstacle that may be even more fundamental than money.

    Ownership.

    The monetary system depends upon the ability to own, buy, sell, accumulate, and transfer claims over resources.

    Land becomes property. Housing becomes an investment. Machinery becomes capital. Even the necessities of life become commodities.

    And because access to these resources depends largely on purchasing power, people must continually earn money to secure their existence.

    In the world I envision, ownership would eventually be replaced by stewardship.

    But what does that actually mean?

    Stewardship means caring for and responsibly managing resources for their intended use and for the benefit of life, rather than treating them primarily as assets from which to extract financial wealth.

    It does not mean that everybody must share everything all the time.

    A person should still be able to enjoy a private home, personal belongings, and the freedom to live without unwanted interference.

    The distinction is between secure use and tradable ownership.

    You could live in the same home for the rest of your life without needing to own its financial value. And also not need to worry about the cost of maintenance which will be taken care of through the resource based system.

    You could use a workshop, a vehicle, or a piece of land without needing to purchase it.

    And you could enjoy the security of knowing that access to life’s necessities does not depend on your bank balance. Because there is none.

    But until recently, I saw a serious problem with this transition.

    How could humanity gradually abolish ownership while the surrounding world continued to operate through private property?

    If a piece of land suddenly became ownerless, what would prevent someone from claiming it?

    Wouldn’t the transition have to occur simultaneously throughout the world?

    Perhaps not.

    Because there is a crucial distinction between legally owning something and behaving as its steward.

    Stewardship Can Begin Before Ownership Ends

    Imagine a community workshop.

    The building, machinery, and tools are legally owned by a cooperative organization.

    But instead of operating primarily to generate profit, the workshop exists to serve the community.

    People contribute their abilities voluntarily. They repair equipment, manufacture useful products, teach skills, and maintain the facilities.

    Whatever the workshop can provide to others, it shares.

    The organization may still need money to purchase materials, pay taxes, and meet obligations outside its network.

    But within the organization, a different economic reality is already emerging.

    The same principle could apply to community gardens, food production, renewable energy installations, transportation, housing, and eventually entire industries.

    These organizations would still exist within the legal framework of ownership.

    Yet they would already be practicing stewardship.

    And this is not entirely hypothetical.

    Community land trusts, tool libraries, cooperatives, charitable organizations, and various forms of shared infrastructure already demonstrate aspects of this principle.

    They are not necessarily resource-based economies, and their structures differ considerably. But they show that resources can be legally owned by an organization while being managed primarily for shared benefit rather than private accumulation.

    Now imagine more and more organizations adopting similar principles.

    One produces food.

    Another manufactures equipment.

    Another provides transportation.

    Another develops housing.

    Another produces renewable energy.

    They begin sharing resources, knowledge, and services with one another.

    Some arrangements may initially use money. Others may use contribution credits. Still others may operate through direct, non-reciprocal sharing.

    As the network grows, its dependence on the surrounding monetary economy gradually decreases.

    And something remarkable begins to happen.

    Ownership starts losing its practical purpose, even while it continues to exist legally.

    From Ownership to Access

    Consider the development of self-driving vehicles.

    The technology began developing and entering limited practical use before every relevant law had been rewritten. Regulations have been evolving alongside real-world experience.

    Perhaps stewardship could follow a similar pattern.

    Practical reality develops first, while laws and institutions gradually adapt to it.

    Imagine a community where people have reliable access to shared vehicles whenever they need transportation.

    Why would everyone need to own a car?

    Imagine a network of workshops where people can access any tool or machine they need.

    Why would every household need to purchase its own equipment?

    Now imagine that this principle expands to food, clothing, education, healthcare, communication, energy, and housing.

    The need to purchase and own resources would gradually diminish as reliable access expanded.

    And housing is particularly important.

    Suppose a nonprofit stewardship organization manages hundreds of dwellings.

    Residents receive secure, long-term rights to their homes, including privacy and the freedom to make the place their own.

    They are not tenants in the conventional commercial sense, constantly paying for the privilege of having somewhere to live.

    Nor are they required to purchase the financial value of the building.

    They simply have a home.

    The organization coordinates maintenance, construction, and the responsible use of housing resources.

    Initially, the organization might still own the properties legally. It would also need sufficient resources to maintain them, including money wherever the surrounding economy still required payment.

    But as the stewardship network expands, more of those needs could be met through cooperation.

    Eventually, a person might have secure access to everything necessary for a fulfilling life without owning significant financial assets.

    And that changes the entire meaning of ownership.

    If everyone has secure access to everything they need, why would anyone need to own the resources that provide it?

    Ownership would no longer be necessary to guarantee security.

    Accumulation would no longer be necessary to prepare for the future.

    And inheritance would no longer be necessary to protect the next generation from poverty.

    The transition would not begin by demanding that people surrender their security.

    It would begin by creating a form of security that no longer depends upon ownership.

     Homes and Inheritance

    This distinction is essential.

    People are understandably attached to their homes.

    A home is not merely a building. It contains memories, relationships, personal history, and a sense of belonging.

    Moving from ownership to stewardship should not mean that anyone can simply enter your home or that you must surrender it to someone else.

    A stewardship society could provide secure, enforceable rights of residence, potentially for an entire lifetime.

    And what about inheritance?

    Imagine parents who have lived in a home for decades. When they die, their children may wish to continue living there.

    Why shouldn’t they?

    If the children genuinely want to use the home, they could take over its stewardship, subject to fair arrangements protecting the rights of others.

    But if they already have homes elsewhere and have no intention of living there, the dwelling could become available to someone who needs it.

    The home would no longer be treated as a financial prize to be sold, rented out, or accumulated.

    And the children would not be deprived of economic security, because their own access to housing and other necessities would already be guaranteed.

    The real inheritance is a world in which nobody needs to inherit property to be secure.

    This would not require everyone to abandon their homes or possessions overnight.

    It could begin with voluntary participation, gradually expanding as people experience the advantages of secure access without financial ownership.

    A Transition That Spreads 

    And here is where the possibilities become even more interesting.

    Perhaps the transition does not even need to happen simultaneously throughout a country, let alone the entire planet.

    Imagine a community where practically all the resources necessary for everyday life are managed through stewardship.

    The land, buildings, workshops, food production, and infrastructure are protected by shared agreements.

    People understand that these resources exist for common benefit.

    Nobody feels compelled to claim every available resource as private property.

    Think of a community garden.

    People do not necessarily rush to claim ownership of every shovel, watering can, or wheelbarrow.

    They understand that the tools are there to be used, maintained, and shared.

    Now extend that understanding to an entire neighborhood.

    Then a town.

    Then a region.

    Then a continent.

    The the Earth.

    The more people become accustomed to stewardship, the less they may feel the need to acquire exclusive financial ownership.

    Eventually, some communities might develop genuinely non-proprietary forms of stewardship, while neighboring communities continue operating through conventional ownership.

    Of course, there is an important legal distinction between resources held in common and resources that are simply abandoned.

    Under today’s property laws, declaring land or infrastructure ownerless would not necessarily protect it against appropriation.

    Communities would therefore need recognized legal arrangements, enforceable use rights, and safeguards against individuals or corporations converting shared resources back into private assets.

    But those arrangements could evolve gradually.

    The transition would no longer require the entire world to change at once.

    It could spread from community to community, as people observe, experience, and voluntarily adopt a different way of living.

    We do not have to wait for the whole world to understand stewardship before anyone can fully practice it. Understanding and stewardship can spread together.

    When an Entire Country Becomes a Stewardship Society

    Now imagine that this development eventually encompasses an entire country.

    Virtually all its land, housing, infrastructure, and productive resources are managed through stewardship.

    Money has become largely unnecessary within its communities.

    People contribute according to their abilities and receive according to their needs.

    And the country has developed sufficient coordination, production, and ecological responsibility to sustain this arrangement.

    What happens to its borders?

    A national border has historically served many purposes, including defining political jurisdiction, controlling movement, providing security, and protecting territorial sovereignty.

    But one important function of territorial control has been to determine who may exploit and benefit economically from the resources within a particular area.

    What happens when the people living there no longer regard those resources as possessions to be bought, sold, or accumulated?

    The border might still exist politically, but its economic significance could begin to diminish.

    Now imagine a neighboring country gradually adopting the same stewardship principles.

    The two populations begin coordinating their resources, infrastructure, transportation, and ecological management.

    People move and cooperate freely across the border.

    Eventually, the boundary might remain primarily as a cultural or administrative distinction.

    And as more countries join, those distinctions could become increasingly flexible.

    In Waking Up, I envision a world of what I call cultries—communities of cultural identity that are no longer dependent upon the traditional concept of territorial nation-states.

    People can preserve their languages, customs, traditions, and cultural identities without requiring exclusive ownership of particular territories.

    Perhaps the gradual spread of stewardship could provide a practical pathway toward such a world.

    Not by abolishing national borders right away, but through a global decree, but by gradually making their economic function less important.

    However, there is one enormous challenge that cannot be ignored.

    Despots and Aggression

    Imagine a peaceful stewardship society existing next door to a country ruled by an authoritarian leader who wants to conquer its territory.

    The stewardship society may have abandoned the idea of owning land.

    But its neighbor may still want to control that land—and the people living upon it.

    This exposes an essential distinction.

    Eliminating the desire to own does not automatically eliminate the desire to dominate.

    The Culture

    A peaceful society cannot simply assume that every other society has become peaceful.

    It must be capable of protecting its inhabitants, their freedoms, and the living systems upon which they depend.

    Stewardship is not merely about sharing.

    It is also about caring for and protecting what has been entrusted to our responsibility.

    This reminds me of Iain M. Banks’s Culture novels.

    The Culture is an extraordinarily advanced, largely post-scarcity civilization where money and conventional ownership have little relevance.

    Yet it is not defenseless.

    It possesses tremendous technological capabilities, and Banks explores the difficult moral questions surrounding its interactions with less cooperative civilizations.

    His fictional civilization raises an important issue: how can a society devoted to peace and freedom protect itself without becoming an oppressive power in its own right?

    For a gradually emerging stewardship civilization, this would be a practical challenge.

    During the transition, participating communities and countries might need defensive capabilities, mutual protection agreements, conflict-resolution institutions, and safeguards against the concentration of power.

    They would also need ways to distinguish legitimate protection from intervention imposed upon others.

    And there is another possibility.

    As stewardship societies become more successful, people living beyond their borders may become increasingly interested in their way of life.

    They may visit, communicate, collaborate, and participate in cooperative networks that extend across national boundaries.

    The principles of stewardship could spread through human relationships even where governments remain committed to conventional political and economic structures.

    That would not guarantee peaceful change. Some governments might resist such developments, and military aggression could remain a real danger.

    But it would allow the transition to proceed without requiring every political leader to agree in advance.

    A stewardship civilization could gradually develop the means to protect itself while continuing to offer peaceful cooperation to everyone willing to participate.

    There is an enormous difference between defending land because we believe we own it and defending the people and living systems that depend upon it.

    The first is about possession.

    The second is about protection.

    The Human Transition

    Of course, none of this can be reduced to organizations, laws, or infrastructure.

    The most important transformation must take place in human understanding.

    For generations, people have been taught to regard ownership as security, money as freedom, and competition as the natural foundation of economic life.

    These ideas are deeply embedded in habits, institutions, and expectations.

    They will not disappear merely because someone presents a different economic model.

    But experience can change what people consider normal.

    When people discover that shared tools are more convenient than purchasing their own, their relationship with those tools changes.

    When they experience cooperative food production, their relationship with food changes.

    When they discover that a secure home does not require a mortgage or a landlord, their relationship with housing changes.

    And when they experience a community in which their contribution is valued without being measured against their personal financial worth, their relationship with work may change as well.

    The more reliable access becomes, the less necessary accumulation may feel.

    And the less people feel compelled to accumulate, the easier it becomes to share.

    These two developments reinforce each other.

    The external transformation from ownership to stewardship supports the internal transformation from transactional thinking to cooperation.

    And the internal transformation makes further stewardship possible.

    This is why I believe the transition must be integrated.

    Not merely implemented through new legislation.

    Not merely explained through books or lectures.

    But integrated into our minds, hearts, habits, relationships, and everyday experiences.

    The Role of Integral and Waking Up

    This brings me back to the relationship between Peter Joseph’s Integral initiative and the vision I describe in Waking Up – A journey towards a new dawn for humanity.

    I see them as complementary contributions to the same broader possibility.

    Integral offers a way to begin developing practical cooperative systems within the world as it exists today.

    It can help people experience sharing, contribution, and access through structures that remain compatible with existing economic and legal arrangements.

    My novel Waking Up offers an imaginative vision through story of what might become possible if humanity continues along such a path.

    A world where money is no longer necessary.

    Where ownership has given way to stewardship.

    Where people enjoy secure access to the necessities and possibilities of life.

    Where human creativity is directed toward improving life rather than generating financial returns.

    And where humanity has learned to manage its relationship with the planet as a responsible participant in nature rather than its proprietor.

    Between these two perspectives lies the process of integration.

    People begin by experimenting with cooperation.

    They create organizations that share resources.

    Those organizations connect and expand.

    More needs are met without conventional monetary transactions.

    Ownership becomes less important because access becomes more reliable.

    Contribution accounting gradually becomes less necessary as Natural Exchange develops.

    Communities begin functioning through stewardship.

    Regions and countries may eventually follow.

    And legal institutions adapt as the new arrangements become established.

    There need not be a single moment when the entire world abandons ownership.

    There need not be a worldwide declaration that money has ceased to exist.

    Instead, humanity could gradually create a civilization in which neither money nor ownership serves the essential purpose it once did.

    A Peaceful Revolution 

    There is one principle that must remain fundamental throughout this process.

    The transition cannot be imposed.

    It must be inspired.

    A world built upon freedom, cooperation, and mutual respect cannot be created by forcing people to accept a particular ideology.

    People must be free to explore, question, experiment, participate, and decide for themselves.

    Some communities may adopt stewardship quickly.

    Others may take much longer.

    Some may develop arrangements that nobody has yet imagined.

    That diversity of experimentation could be one of the transition’s greatest strengths.

    And as practical examples multiply, the conversation changes.

    Instead of asking people to believe that a different civilization might be possible, it becomes possible to show them functioning examples.

    Instead of demanding that they give up ownership, it becomes possible to offer them something more useful: secure access without the burden of financial possession.

    Instead of asking humanity to make an enormous leap of faith, it becomes possible to invite people to take one practical step at a time.

    Of course, the transition would not be automatic.

    It would require dependable production, ecological limits, fair access to scarce resources, maintenance, accountability, conflict resolution, and protection against exploitation.

    And the expanding stewardship network would need to remain viable while still interacting with the monetary economy.

    But these are problems of practical organization and human cooperation.

    They are problems humanity can investigate, experiment with, and progressively solve.

    The goal is not to create a perfect society overnight.

    It is to begin creating a better one today.

    Integrating the Transition

    Perhaps the greatest mistake is to imagine that humanity must first agree upon an entirely new civilization and then somehow transform the world to match that agreement.

    Perhaps the process can work in the opposite direction.

    People begin living differently.

    They discover practical advantages.

    They develop new habits.

    They create institutions that reflect those habits.

    Those institutions grow, cooperate, and gradually transform the economic reality around them.

    And eventually, laws and political structures adapt to a world that has already changed.

    Ownership may not need to be abolished before stewardship can flourish.

    Money may not need to disappear before Natural Exchange can begin.

    National borders may not need to be removed before people can cooperate across them.

    And humanity may not need to agree upon a single global transition before the new civilization can start taking shape.

    The legal transformation may follow the practical transformation, just as laws have often evolved alongside technological and social developments.

    Perhaps, one day, people will look back at the concept of owning land, accumulating houses, or charging others for access to the necessities of life and wonder why these arrangements were ever considered indispensable.

    Not because someone convinced them that ownership was morally wrong.

    But because they have experienced a world in which it is no longer necessary.

    We do not have to change the laws of ownership before we can change the way we live. We can change the way we live until the laws of ownership no longer reflect the world we have created and are thus no longer needed.

    And perhaps the transition from today’s civilization to the one I envision in Waking Up will not be remembered as a sudden revolution at all.

    Perhaps it will be remembered as a gradual awakening.

    An evolution of understanding, cooperation, and human relationships.

    A process in which the new world grew quietly within the old one, until the old structures had gradually lost their purpose.

    Not a revolution imposed upon humanity.

    Not a transformation postponed until everyone agrees.

    But a new civilization emerging through the voluntary actions of people who have already begun to live in it.

    The transition does not have to begin when humanity abandons the old world.

    It can begin when humanity starts creating the new one.

    Discover the story

  • The Trickle-Up Economy

    The Trickle-Up Economy

    What if everything we have been told about wealth trickling down is upside down?

    For decades, we have been told that when the wealthy become wealthier, everyone eventually benefits.

    Give businesses favorable conditions, reduce taxes on the rich, encourage investment, and the wealth created at the top will gradually trickle down to the rest of society.

    This is the famous concept of trickle-down economics.

    But what if the whole metaphor is upside down?

    What if wealth doesn’t primarily trickle down, but rather trickles up?

    What if the people at the bottom of the economic pyramid are actually producing much of the wealth that accumulates at the top?

    And what if the very structure of our monetary system ensures that those doing some of the hardest work receive the smallest financial rewards?

    To understand this, we need to look at how the monetary system is organized.

    The Monetary Pyramid

    Our global monetary system resembles an enormous pyramid.

    At the top are the people and corporations controlling vast amounts of capital, resources, brands, technology, and access to global markets.

    Further down are suppliers, subcontractors, smaller businesses, and distributors.

    And at the bottom are millions upon millions of workers producing the goods and services that keep the entire system functioning.

    The people at the top depend on those below them. Without the workers, the factories, the farmers, the miners, the builders, and everyone else contributing to production, there would be very little to sell.

    Yet the financial rewards are distributed extraordinarily unequally.

    Why?

    Because the pyramid is not simply a hierarchy of work.

    It is a hierarchy of ownership.

    And ownership determines who controls the productive resources, who makes the decisions, and who receives the financial rewards.

    Every Stitch Tric​kles Up

    Consider the global garment industry.

    In countries such as Myanmar, workers spend long days sewing clothes for international brands. Their wages can be extremely low, and many depend on extensive overtime to make ends meet.

    Myanmar has legally established minimum wages, but a legal minimum wage does not necessarily provide enough income to live decently.

    Imagine a worker sitting at a sewing machine, stitching garments hour after hour, day after day.

    Every stitch contributes to a product that will eventually be sold somewhere in the world.

    The factory must cover its expenses and earn money. Suppliers and intermediaries must cover theirs. Transportation companies, distributors, retailers, and brand owners all have their financial interests.

    And ultimately, the shareholders expect their returns.

    At each stage, money must be allocated to cover costs and provide financial rewards.

    But the people sewing the garments have very little influence over how the final selling price is distributed.

    The global brand may have access to hundreds of millions of potential customers. The worker has access primarily to a local labor market, where thousands of other people may be competing for the same jobs.

    And because factories compete for contracts, the pressure to reduce production costs travels down the supply chain.

    Eventually, that pressure reaches the workers.

    Every hour they work and every stitch they sew contributes to the financial rewards flowing upward. Yet their own wages may barely cover the necessities of life.

    This is trickle-up economics in practice.

    Financial Pressure Travels Down. Financial Relief Travels Up.

    There is a fundamental asymmetry in the monetary pyramid.

    At the top, businesses seek to maximize profits, investors seek higher returns, and owners seek to increase the value of their assets.

    Further down, suppliers compete to offer lower prices.

    And at the bottom, workers are pressured to produce more, work longer, and accept wages that may be barely sufficient for survival.

    Financial pressure travels down, while financial relief travels up.

    The people at the bottom are often the least financially secure, even though their labor is indispensable to the entire production process.

    Meanwhile, those at the top can accumulate enough wealth to live comfortably without ever having to work again.

    And the more wealth they accumulate, the more opportunities they have to acquire additional assets and ownership, generating still more income.

    The pyramid becomes self-reinforcing.

    Those at the bottom work to survive.

    Those at the top may eventually no longer need to work at all.

    And much of the difference comes down to one concept.

    Ownership

    Ownership is the central mechanism behind the concentration of wealth.

    A worker can sell only a limited number of hours each day. No matter how hardworking or skilled that person becomes, there are physical limits to how much labor one individual can provide.

    An owner, however, can receive income from the combined production of thousands or even millions of people.

    Consider someone who owns shares in a multinational corporation.

    That person may never have visited the factories, met the workers, operated the machinery, or participated directly in producing a single item.

    Yet the ownership of those shares entitles that person to a portion of the company’s financial success.

    Of course, building and operating businesses requires investment, organization, innovation, and expertise. These activities contribute real value.

    But the crucial distinction remains:

    Labor is limited by the hours a person can work. Income from ownership can expand with the productive capacity of an entire global enterprise.

    And this is why the people at the top can become extraordinarily wealthy while the people doing the physical production remain poor.

    The monetary system does not necessarily reward people according to how hard they work, how much they contribute to society, or how essential their work is.

    It rewards them according to market conditions, bargaining power, and, crucially, what they own.

    Money Circulates. Ownership Accumulates.

    Now consider what happens to the money that actually reaches the bottom of the pyramid.

    A worker receives a paycheck.

    But that paycheck is not something the worker can simply accumulate.

    It must immediately be used to pay for food, housing, electricity, transportation, clothing, and other necessities.

    And where does that money go?

    Back into the economy.

    To supermarkets, landlords, utility companies, transportation providers, banks, and countless other businesses.

    Those businesses, in turn, pay their suppliers, creditors, employees, and owners.

    And some of that money ultimately contributes to the profits and financial returns received by people who already own substantial assets.

    So even when money does trickle down through wages, much of it quickly begins circulating through the economy again, with much of it flowing upward as profits, interest, and rent.

    Meanwhile, those at the top possess something much more enduring than a paycheck.

    They own the factories, the land, the technology, the brands, the patents, and the distribution networks.

    These assets can continue generating income year after year.

    And that income can be used to acquire even more assets.

    At the bottom, money is spent to survive. At the top, ownership and the revenue from it can be used to accumulate even more ownership.

    The worker must return to work the next morning to earn another paycheck.

    The owner wakes up still owning the assets that generate income.

    Of course, businesses can fail, investments can lose value, and fortunes can disappear. But the structural advantage of owning productive assets remains.

    Money circulates throughout society, but ownership can remain concentrated in relatively few hands, oftentimes for generations.

    And that concentration can grow even while billions of people work continuously just to maintain their standard of living.

    This is one of the most important reasons why simply increasing the amount of money circulating through the economy does not necessarily resolve inequality.

    The money may change hands a thousand times.

    But the ownership structure remains unchanged.

    And Then There Are the Taxes

    There is another fascinating aspect of this system that rarely receives the attention it deserves.

    Consider how businesses and wage earners are taxed.

    A company earns revenue.

    Before corporate income tax is calculated, it can generally deduct legitimate business expenses such as wages, machinery, equipment, transportation, rent, maintenance, and other operating costs.

    The company pays tax on its remaining taxable profit.

    Now consider the wage earner.

    The worker earns a salary, pays applicable income taxes and social contributions, and then uses what remains to pay for food, housing, electricity, transportation, and other necessities.

    There may be personal allowances, deductions, and exemptions, of course. Tax systems vary considerably between countries. Deductions that exist almost as if to not give a too cruel impression of the monetary system itself.

    But the general distinction is remarkable.

    A business can deduct the costs of operating before calculating its taxable profit. A worker generally must cover the costs of living from income that has already been taxed.

    And isn’t that interesting?

    Because a human being has operating costs too!

    A person needs food to function, a place to sleep, clothing, healthcare, electricity, and often transportation to get to work.

    Without these things, the person cannot continue producing anything.

    Yet most ordinary living expenses are treated as personal consumption rather than deductible costs of generating income.

    And when workers spend their remaining wages, they pay additional taxes on the goods and services they purchase.

    So the money they receive is reduced by taxes, reduced again by the necessities of life, and then circulates back into an economy where ownership continues to generate more financial returns for the owners.

    Businesses and their owners pay taxes too, and taxation provides essential public services. This is not to suggest that every owner pays less tax than every worker.

    But the underlying distinction raises an important question.

    Why does the economic system recognize the necessity of maintaining a business as a cost of production, while treating the necessity of maintaining a human life so differently?

    And perhaps an even more important question:

    Is the purpose of the economy to maintain profitable businesses, or to maintain thriving human beings?

    Try Working at the Bottom

    Imagine taking a billionaire shareholder or a highly paid corporate executive and placing that person in a garment factory in Myanmar.

    Let them work the same hours, under the same conditions, for exactly the same wages as the workers beside them.

    No special privileges. No accumulated wealth to fall back on. No comfortable home waiting at the end of the day.

    Just the sewing machine, the production targets, the long hours, and the struggle to make ends meet.

    How long would they last?

    Would they even know how to operate the machinery or maintain the speed and precision required of an experienced garment worker?

    Perhaps some would learn. But the point is not whether wealthy people are capable of hard work.

    The point is that the people receiving the smallest financial rewards may be performing work that those receiving the largest rewards would find extremely difficult to endure.

    And yet society frequently treats the people at the top as the great wealth creators, while those at the bottom are regarded as inexpensive, replaceable labor.

    Something is profoundly wrong with that picture.

    The Illusion of Trickle-Down

    Now return to the promise of trickle-down economics.

    The argument is that allowing wealthy individuals and businesses to retain more money will stimulate investment, create jobs, and eventually improve living standards for everyone.

    Investment can certainly create jobs, and successful businesses can benefit entire communities.

    But the broader claim that concentrating more wealth at the top reliably produces greater prosperity for everyone is much more questionable.

    A study examining major tax reductions for the rich in 18 OECD countries over several decades found that such policies increased income inequality without producing significant improvements in economic growth or unemployment.

    And there is an even more fundamental question.

    Why should the people producing the wealth have to wait for it to trickle back down to them?

    The garment workers are already producing something valuable.

    The farmers are already growing food.

    The builders are already constructing homes.

    The nurses are already caring for patients.

    The engineers are already developing technology.

    The wealth of society does not magically originate in the bank accounts of billionaires.

    It emerges from a vast network of human effort, knowledge, natural resources, infrastructure, and technology.

    Yet the ownership structure allows a disproportionate share of the financial rewards to accumulate in relatively few hands.

    The promise is that wealth will trickle down.

    But most of the economic machinery is organized to channel profits upward.

    Those Who Control Access

    One of the most important advantages enjoyed by large corporations is access to the global market.

    A garment worker in Myanmar may produce clothes worn by people in Europe, America, Asia, and elsewhere.

    But the worker does not have direct access to all those customers.

    The international brand does.

    The brand controls the marketing, the distribution, the customer relationships, and often the intellectual property associated with the products.

    And this control gives it enormous bargaining power.

    Suppliers compete to gain access to the brand’s market. Factories compete to win contracts. Workers compete to obtain jobs in those factories.

    At every level, competition can increase the pressure on those below.

    The result is a system in which the global market generates extraordinary opportunities for some, while others struggle to earn enough to survive despite contributing directly to the products being sold.

    Those at the top compete to accumulate wealth. Those at the bottom compete for the opportunity to survive.

    And the people at the top may have almost no personal contact with those whose labor sustains their businesses.

    They see financial reports, production costs, profit margins, and shareholder returns.

    But behind those numbers are human beings with families, hopes, dreams, and lives of their own.

    And Then Come the Robots

    Now imagine what happens as artificial intelligence and robotics increasingly take over production.

    Factories become more automated. Transportation becomes autonomous. Agriculture becomes increasingly robotic. Even intellectual and administrative work can be performed by AI.

    The productive capacity of humanity could increase enormously while the amount of human labor required declines.

    This should be wonderful news.

    After all, humanity has spent thousands of years developing tools and technology to reduce the effort required to survive.

    But within an ownership-based monetary system, automation raises a crucial question:

    Who owns the machines?

    If a corporation replaces thousands of workers with robots, the corporation may reduce its production costs dramatically.

    But what happens to the workers?

    They may lose their incomes, while the owners of the automated production systems enjoy even greater profits.

    Technology that could liberate humanity from compulsory labor instead risks concentrating even more wealth among those who own it.

    And the more production becomes automated, the more decisive ownership may become in determining who benefits.

    The pyramid could become even steeper.

    Unless humanity changes the system itself.

    A Revolution of Understanding

    Now, I realize that reading about these inequalities can provoke strong feelings.

    Anger. Frustration. Resentment. Perhaps even outrage.

    Especially when considering the lives of people who work extraordinarily hard, yet struggle to provide even the most basic necessities for themselves and their families.

    But I want to make something absolutely clear.

    I am not advocating a violent revolution. I am advocating a revolution of understanding.

    I am not suggesting that humanity should rise up against the wealthy, overthrow governments, or replace one ruling elite with another.

    History has seen enough of that.

    And what would it accomplish if the underlying system still remained the same?

    Replace one group of owners with another, and the pyramid still exists.

    Replace one political leadership with another, and the competition for money, power, and resources continues.

    Even if the new leaders begin with the best intentions, they inherit a system that rewards accumulation, competition, and control.

    And sooner or later, the same patterns reappear.

    The problem is not that certain people are inherently bad.

    The problem is that humanity has based civilization on a system in which the pursuit of financial advantage can become more important than the well-being of the people the system is supposed to serve.

    And people throughout the pyramid are participating in it, often because they see no realistic alternative.

    The Right Thing

    Those at the top may genuinely believe they are doing the right thing. They are operating businesses, providing jobs, making investments, and following the rules.

    Those at the bottom are simply trying to survive.

    It is not  the people who need replacing. It is the system that needs to be replaced.

    And that transformation cannot be achieved through hatred.

    It requires understanding.

    Understanding how the monetary system works.

    Understanding how the concept of ownership concentrates access to resources.

    Understanding how financial pressure travels downward while financial rewards accumulate upward.

    And most importantly, understanding that humanity does not have to organize society this way forever.

    The Endless Attempts to Fix Money

    For generations, humanity has tried to make the monetary system more fair.

    Higher minimum wages. Progressive taxation. Wealth taxes. Labor protections. Social security. Welfare programs. Subsidies. Regulations.

    Many of these measures have improved people’s lives enormously, and they remain important for protecting people today.

    But they are still attempts to manage the consequences of a system built around money, ownership, and competition.

    Raise wages, and businesses may struggle and raise prices, reduce costs elsewhere, or seek cheaper production.

    Increase taxes, and capital may seek more favorable jurisdictions.

    Introduce new regulations, and companies may find ways to reorganize their activities around them.

    The struggle continues.

    Not because every reform is useless, but because reforms do not necessarily change the foundation on which the entire system rests.

    And that foundation is the idea that access to Earth’s resources and the products of human cooperation should be determined primarily through ownership and purchasing power.

    Perhaps the time has come to question that foundation itself.

    Perhaps humanity has reached a point where endlessly adjusting the monetary system is no longer enough.

    Instead of trying to make the pyramid a little more comfortable for those at the bottom, why not begin imagining a world without the pyramid at all?

    From Ownership to Stewardship

    What if the purpose of production were not to generate financial profits, but simply to provide what people need and want? While also protecting nature and the Earth making it possible for us to live here at all?

    What if the resources of Earth were regarded not as commodities to be owned and exploited, but as a common inheritance to be responsibly managed?

    What if factories, technology, infrastructure, and automated production systems were organized cooperatively for the benefit of everyone?

    This is the fundamental idea behind a resource-based economy.

    Instead of a monetary pyramid, humanity could develop a global cooperative network based on stewardship, intelligent resource management, and non-reciprocal sharing.

    The purpose of producing a garment would be to provide someone with clothing.

    The purpose of growing food would be to feed people.

    The purpose of building houses would be to provide comfortable places to live.

    And the purpose of developing AI and robotics would be to reduce unnecessary human labor while improving the quality of life for everyone. Not to make the top even richer.

    There would be no need to squeeze wages to increase profits.

    No need for workers to compete for the lowest acceptable pay.

    No need for shareholders to accumulate financial rewards from the labor of people they have never met.

    And no need for wealth to trickle anywhere. Because we would all be wealthy. Not in money, but in time and quality of life.

    Because access to life’s necessities would no longer depend on someone’s position in a financial hierarchy.

    Of course, developing such a society would require enormous cooperation, technological development, careful planning, and a fundamental change in how humanity understands resources and ownership.

    But the productive capacity needed to begin that transformation already exists.

    And AI and robotics may make it increasingly achievable.

    A New Foundation

    The Worth of Life Itself

    But even a resource-based economy cannot be built on technology alone.

    It needs something much more fundamental.

    A new common understanding of human worth and the worth of life itself.

    An understanding that a human being does not become more valuable by owning more land, accumulating more money, or controlling more resources.

    An understanding that a person working in a garment factory in Myanmar is no less worthy of a fulfilling life than a billionaire living in a mansion. In fact, it would be an understanding that all life is valuable and no minimum wage labor in factories are necessary. 

    An understanding that nobody should have to earn the right to exist.

    And an understanding that Earth’s resources are not here merely to enrich those who happen to control them, but to sustain the extraordinary diversity of life on this planet.

    This is the foundation I believe humanity needs to build upon.

    Not a new elite.

    Not a new ideology imposed by force.

    Not another competition for control.

    But a shared recognition that life itself has value, regardless of who you are.

    And from that understanding, an entirely different way of organizing civilization becomes possible.

    One based on cooperation rather than competition for survival.

    Stewardship rather than ownership.

    Access rather than purchasing power.

    And the well-being of all life rather than the accumulation of financial wealth.

    The End of the Pyramid

    Humanity has created an extraordinary global production system.

    Billions of people cooperate across continents to produce food, clothing, housing, medicine, transportation, communication technology, and countless other things.

    In many ways, the world already functions as an enormous cooperative network.

    But that cooperation is organized through a monetary system in which access to resources and the benefits of production depend heavily on ownership and purchasing power.

    And so the pyramid persists.

    Those at the bottom struggle to survive while contributing to the prosperity of those above.

    Those at the top accumulate wealth through a system sustained by the combined efforts of countless people below them.

    And society is told that the solution is to make the wealthy even wealthier, so that some of their prosperity might eventually trickle down.

    But perhaps humanity has been asking the wrong question all along.

    Instead of asking how to make wealth trickle down more effectively, perhaps the question should be:

    Why have a pyramid in the first place?

    Why organize the extraordinary productive capacity of an entire planet around financial accumulation when it could be organized around meeting the needs of everyone?

    Why make people compete for access to the very abundance they collectively produce?

    And why allow ownership to determine who enjoys the greatest benefits of technology that could potentially liberate all humanity?

    The future does not have to be a world where wealth trickles down—or up.

    It could be a world where resources are intelligently managed, production is cooperatively organized, and the benefits are shared by everyone.

    And getting there does not require humanity to fight another revolution against one another.

    It requires humanity to understand something new together.

    Not a revolution of weapons, but a revolution of understanding.

    A revolution that begins when enough people recognize that human worth cannot be measured in money, that the Earth belongs to no one, and that the purpose of civilization should be to allow all life to thrive.

    That is the world I envision in my novel Waking Up: A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity. 

    A world where humanity has finally moved beyond the monetary pyramid and learned to cooperate for the benefit of all life on Earth. A novel I truly think can make an impact if enough people discover it. 

    A way to create this peaceful revolution of understanding. True change always starts as an idea.

    That is why I again and again ask you to share these articles and the book if you have read and enjoyed it. 

    I thank you.

    Discover the story

  • Do You Really Want to See Change?

    Do You Really Want to See Change?

    I have a confession to make.

    I want millions of people to read my novel Waking Up: A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity. I want it to reach mainstream media, become the subject of discussions and debates around the world, and hopefully even become a major motion picture with the message eventually  reaching hundreds of millions of people.

    That might sound like hubris. Or perhaps you think I simply want to sell a lot of books.

    Probably a little bit of both.

    Yes, I would love to sell a lot of books. I’m not going to pretend otherwise.

    But there is something far more important behind my ambition.

    I genuinely, honestly, and deeply want to see change in this world.

    Not just another political reform. Not another government promising to fix what the previous government failed to fix. Not just another redistribution of wealth that leaves the detrimental structures of civilization untouched.

    I want humanity to begin questioning the very foundations upon which our civilization has been built.

    Because I truly believe that many of our greatest problems have a common denominator: 

    a system based on money, trading, and ownership of the resources upon which everyone depends.

    And I believe there is another way.

    What If We Could Actually Do This?

    Imagine a world where nobody has to worry about having enough money to survive. Where food, housing, healthcare, education, transportation, and everything else people need are available through cooperation and intelligent resource management assisted by AI.

    Imagine a world where ownership has been replaced by stewardship. Where the resources of our planet are no longer treated primarily as commodities to be bought, sold, accumulated, and exploited, but as a shared inheritance to be cared for and managed for the benefit of everyone.

    Imagine a civilization where advanced technology, artificial intelligence, robotics, and automation are used to liberate humanity from unnecessary labor rather than simply to increase profits for those who own the technology.

    A world where people are free to contribute according to their interests, talents, and passions, rather than being forced to sell their time simply to have a life.

    A world where humanity cooperates to create abundance, restore nature, eliminate poverty, and make life on Earth as wonderful as possible for everyone.

    Does that sound impossible?

    Perhaps it does.

    But what if it isn’t?

    the greatest obstacle

    What if the greatest obstacle isn’t a lack of resources, technology, or intelligence, but our inability to imagine organizing civilization differently?

    What if money, trading, and ownership are the very culprits of our problems and not indispensable foundations of civilization, but rather human inventions that have served their purposes and are now increasingly standing in the way of what humanity could become?

    What if we could actually create a world that works for everyone?

    A Novel, Not a Manifesto

    This is why I wrote Waking Up.

    Not as a political manifesto. Not as an economic textbook. And certainly not as a detailed blueprint for a new civilization.

    It’s a novel.

    A story about the bewildered billionaire Benjamin Michaels, a contemporary man who wakes up a hundred years into the future and discovers that humanity has created a civilization completely beyond his imagination.

    Money has disappeared. Trading has become obsolete. Ownership has been replaced by stewardship. Humanity has learned to organize its resources cooperatively, guided by advanced artificial intelligence and a fundamentally different understanding of what civilization is supposed to accomplish.

    Through Benjamin’s eyes, readers discover this world gradually, along with its history, its technologies, its relationships, its challenges, and its extraordinary possibilities.

    And, of course, not everyone is happy with the new world. There  is an antagonist who would prefer to return to the old system.

    Because Waking Up is, first and foremost, a story.

    But behind that story is an invitation.

    An invitation to imagine something different.

    I don’t expect readers to agree with everything in the book. I don’t expect them to believe that every technological or social development I describe will become reality.

    What I hope is that, somewhere along the journey, readers might begin to think:

    Wait a minute. This could actually work.

    And perhaps, by the time they finish the book, they might find themselves thinking:

    This is the world I want to live in. This is the future I want for my children.

    That is the seed I want to plant.

    When an Idea Takes Root

    I believe true and lasting change begins with an idea.

    And mind you, this is not my idea. I didn’t wake up one morning with a sudden eureka moment, realizing that money, trading, and ownership were at the root of so many of humanity’s problems. No, throughout my life, I had a growing feeling that something was fundamentally wrong with the way our civilization was organized. I felt that humanity could do so much better, but I couldn’t quite see how. That changed in 2008, when I discovered The Venus Project and its vision of a global resource-based economy. Suddenly, so many things fell into place. It gave shape to something I had felt for years but hadn’t been able to articulate. That discovery eventually inspired me to write Waking Up, a novel that I now genuinely believe could help change the world if enough people read it. Not because I have invented some revolutionary new idea, but because I hope to help an existing idea take root in the minds and hearts of humanity.

    Not just any idea, but an idea that makes sense to people. An idea that offers a genuinely desirable alternative to something they previously considered impossible.

    At first, a world without money, trading, and ownership probably seem absurd.

    People might laugh at the suggestion.

    They might say that human nature makes it impossible. That people are too selfish. That nobody would contribute without financial incentives. That civilization would collapse without prices, wages, profits, and ownership.

    But then perhaps they read a story that makes them reconsider.

    Perhaps they begin to see how such a civilization might function.

    And suddenly, the impossible becomes a question.

    Could this actually work?

    That question is enormously important.

    Because once people begin asking whether something is possible, they can start exploring how to make it possible.

    And when enough people begin to believe that a different civilization is not only possible but desirable, something extraordinary can happen.

    The idea Takes root

    After all, new ideas often seem to pass through three stages, as described in a famous saying commonly attributed to the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer:

    1. First, they are ridiculed as absurd or impossible.
    2. Then, as they gain traction and begin challenging established beliefs, they face fierce opposition from those defending the status quo.
    3. Finally, they become accepted as self-evident, as though everyone had known the truth all along. The attribution to Schopenhauer is disputed, but the observation is compelling. And perhaps the idea of a world without money, trading, and ownership is following a similar path.

    It spreads from person to person. From conversations between friends to discussions in families, schools, universities, workplaces, and communities.

    Scientists begin considering the technological possibilities. Engineers begin exploring practical solutions.

    Economists question old assumptions. Communities experiment with new forms of cooperation. Artificial intelligence helps people develop and evaluate ideas that might previously have been beyond their reach.

    And eventually, the conversation changes.

    Instead of asking why a different world cannot work, people begin asking:

    How can we get from here to there?

    That is when real change begins.

    Revolution by Force

    There is, however, something absolutely fundamental about how this transformation must happen.

    It cannot be imposed from above.

    Humanity has already experienced revolutions in which one ruling elite was overthrown, only to be replaced by another.

    Consider the Russian Revolution more than a hundred years ago.

    It emerged from profound dissatisfaction with inequality, exploitation, and the concentration of power. Many of those who supported it genuinely believed they were helping create a fairer society.

    But the Soviet system that followed eventually developed its own powerful ruling elite, with enormous authority concentrated in the hands of relatively few people.

    Whatever the original intentions, the promised liberation did not unfold as many had hoped.

    I don’t want humanity to repeat that mistake.

    I don’t want a new revolutionary leadership taking power and deciding how everyone else should live.

    I don’t want another ideology imposed through coercion, fear, or violence.

    And I certainly don’t want a new elite claiming ownership of a world that is supposed to be based on sharing and stewardship.

    That would defeat the entire purpose.

    We cannot force humanity into a better world. We must inspire humanity to want to create one together.

    And that is precisely why the idea must spread as far and wide as possible.

    It must take deep roots in the minds and hearts of humanity, not merely among a handful of intellectuals, politicians, or visionaries.

    It must become something people understand, believe in, and genuinely want.

    Not because somebody has told them what to think, but because they have considered the possibilities for themselves.

    Only then can a transformation of this magnitude become something fundamentally different from the revolutions of the past.

    Not a struggle for control of a new system.

    But a collective decision to create something better.

    A Transformation of Human Understanding

    Ultimately, what I envision is not merely an economic transformation.

    It is a transformation of human understanding itself.

    For thousands of years, humanity has organized much of its civilization around competition for resources, territorial control, ownership, trading, and the accumulation of wealth.

    These arrangements have become so deeply embedded in our thinking that many people regard them as natural and unavoidable.

    But they are not laws of nature.

    They are human arrangements based on ideas.

    Unfortunately these ideas has led to a lot of suffering.

    But human arrangements can change based on new ideas.

    What if people began to understand that the purpose of civilization is not to generate profits, accumulate wealth, or maintain economic growth for its own sake?

    What if the purpose of civilization were simply to make life as good as possible for everyone, while caring for the planet that makes life possible?

    That would change the questions humanity asks.

    Instead of asking whether there is enough money to feed everyone, we would ask whether there is enough food, land, water, technology, and productive capacity.

    Instead of asking whether healthcare is profitable, we would ask how to make the best possible healthcare available to everyone.

    Instead of asking how many jobs automation might eliminate, we would ask how much unnecessary labor it could relieve humanity of.

    Instead of asking who can afford a home, we would ask how to provide good homes for everyone who needs one.

    And instead of asking how to compete more effectively against other nations, we could begin asking how to cooperate more effectively across the entire planet.

    The possibilities are enormous.

    But to recognize them, we first have to change how we think.

    The Intelligence Within 

    I don’t claim to have all the answers.

    Far from it.

    I believe the answers are already embedded in humanity itself.

    In billions of minds. In our accumulated knowledge, our scientific discoveries, our creativity, our compassion, our curiosity, and our extraordinary ability to solve problems together.

    No single person could possibly design an entirely new civilization.

    Nor should anyone attempt to dictate one.

    What I envision would have to emerge through collaboration, communication, experimentation, and the collective intelligence of humanity.

    And I believe this requires something more than the short-sighted intelligence of the ego.

    The ego tends to ask: What’s in it for me? How can I win? How can I gain more power, wealth, or control?

    That way of thinking has influenced human civilization for a very long time.

    Another Kind of Intelligence

    But there is another kind of intelligence available to us.

    An intelligence rooted in love, understanding, empathy, curiosity, and the recognition that the well-being of others matters just as much as our own.

    An intelligence that asks:

    What can we create together?

    How can we make life better for everyone?

    How can we care for this extraordinary planet and all the beings living upon it?

    I believe this deeper intelligence exists within every human being.

    And perhaps the greatest challenge facing humanity is not developing more powerful technology, but learning to use our intelligence and technology together, guided by wisdom rather than fear, competition, and the desire for control.

    That is how I envision real and lasting change.

    Not through domination.

    Not through violence.

    But through love, understanding, curiosity, and cooperation.

    All the Answers

    I Don’t Have All the Answers. Humanity Does.

    This is also why I don’t consider Waking Up a finished proposal for how civilization should function.

    It’s a starting point. An inspiration. 

    A glimpse of a possible future

    I have spent many years thinking about these ideas, and I have tried to imagine what that civilization based on sharing, stewardship, and intelligent resource management might look like.

    But I am only one person.

    There are countless questions I haven’t answered. Countless challenges I haven’t considered. Countless solutions that other people might discover.

    And that’s exactly the point.

    The purpose of the book is not to provide every answer.

    It is to inspire people to start asking different questions.

    Because once enough people genuinely want to create a world that works for everyone, humanity can begin directing its collective intelligence toward that goal.

    Not following one person’s blueprint.

    Not obeying a new political elite.

    But collaborating to discover the best ways forward.

    Different communities might experiment with different approaches. Some ideas would work. Others would fail and need to be reconsidered. New technologies would open new possibilities. New insights would emerge.

    And gradually, through learning and cooperation, something extraordinary might take shape.

    What humanity needs is an idea powerful enough to inspire people to start finding those answers together.

    Why I’m Asking You to Share This

    So now, perhaps you understand why I want my book to reach as many people as possible.

    Why I hope it will attract the attention of mainstream media.

    Why I would love to see it become a major motion picture, reaching audiences around the world.

    And why I keep asking people to share my articles and recommend Waking Up to their friends.

    Yes, I want to sell books.

    Of course I do.

    But if selling books were my primary motivation, I should probably have written something entirely different.

    I wrote Waking Up because I genuinely believe humanity can create a much better world than the one we have today.

    A world without poverty, without economic exploitation, without the constant struggle for money, and without the enormous waste of human potential and resources that our current arrangements produce.

    A world where people are free to live meaningful lives, contribute according to their interests and abilities, and enjoy the extraordinary possibilities that science, technology, and human cooperation can offer.

    Our Shared Home

    A world where humanity finally begins treating planet Earth as a shared home rather than a collection of territories and resources to be owned, exploited, and fought over.

    And I believe the first step toward such a world is for enough people to begin imagining it.

    To genuinely want it.

    To believe that it might be possible.

    Because when an idea takes root deeply enough in humanity, it can become much more powerful than any individual who first expressed it.

    Think of ideas like democracy, the abolition of slavery, women’s rights, and universal human rights. All challenged deeply rooted beliefs about how society should function. They spread, inspired people, and gradually transformed the world. What once seemed impossible eventually became something billions of people considered self-evident.

    It can become a shared vision.

    And a shared vision will inspire collective action.

    That is why I am asking you to help spread the word.

    Not because I want everyone to agree with me.

    Not because I want people to follow me.

    But because I want the idea to grow beyond me, beyond my book, and beyond anything I could possibly accomplish on my own.

    I want people to question it, challenge it, improve it, and make it their own.

    I want it to take root so deeply and spread so widely that no individual, organization, government, or elite can ever claim ownership of it.

    Because the future of humanity should belong to humanity.

    Do You Really Want to See Change?

    If so, imagine a fundamental transformation of civilization itself.

    Imagine humanity finally realizing that it doesn’t have to continue organizing life around competition, trading, ownership, and  money for survival.

    Imagine billions of people beginning to ask how to create a world that truly works for everyone.

    And imagine what might happen when they start collaborating to make it real.

    I don’t know exactly how that future will unfold.

    Nobody does.

    But I believe it can begin with something remarkably simple.

    An idea.

    An idea that inspires people.

    An idea that people believe in.

    An idea that takes root.

    An idea who’s time has come.

    Benjamin Michaels wakes up to a new world. I want humanity to wake up to the possibility of creating one.

    That is why I wrote Waking Up.

    And that is why, if you’ve read the book and enjoyed it, I hope you’ll recommend it to others. And if this article resonates with you, I hope you will share it too.

    I thank you from the depth of my heart.

    Not merely to help me sell more books.

    But to help an idea take root in the world.

    Discover the story

  • Universal High Income – And Why It Will Not Work

    Universal High Income – And Why It Will Not Work

    You cannot create abundance by creating and distributing  more money. You can only create abundance by producing more of what people actually need. And distribute that.

    Elon Musk has repeatedly predicted a future in which artificial intelligence, robotics, and automation will make human labor largely unnecessary. He has even suggested that money itself may eventually become irrelevant.

    At the same time, he has introduced the idea of Universal High Income (UHI), which is a high basic income where everyone receives enough money to enjoy a high standard of living, regardless of whether they work on not.

    It sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?

    Machines do all the work, everyone receives a generous income, and humanity is finally liberated from the necessity of working for a living.

    But there is a fundamental problem with this vision.

    Universal High Income attempts to create universal abundance through a monetary system that cannot guarantee it.

    And the reasons are surprisingly simple.

    1. Resources – Money Does Not Create Resources

    Imagine that tomorrow morning, everyone on Earth wakes up to discover that one million euros has been deposited into their bank account.

    Wonderful! Everyone is suddenly a millionaire!

    But what has actually changed?

    Has a single additional house been built? Has one extra tomato been grown? Has another hospital opened? Has more electricity been generated? Are there suddenly more resources available to humanity?

    No.

    The world contains exactly the same physical resources and productive capacity as it did yesterday.

    The only difference is that everyone now has much more money with which to compete for those resources.

    Money is not food. Money is not housing. Money is not energy. Money is simply a means of gaining access to these things within the monetary system.

    Of course, additional purchasing power can stimulate production where unused capacity exists. But production still requires actual resources, energy, infrastructure, and technology.

    And if those resources are already being used to their limits, distributing more money will not magically create more of them.

    You cannot print abundance. You have to produce it.

    This is the first and most fundamental problem with Universal High Income.

    2. Prices – Supply and Demand Will Absorb the Money

    The second problem is built into the monetary system itself.

    Supply and demand.

    When more people have more money to spend, demand increases. And when demand increases faster than supply, prices tend to rise.

    Imagine a city with 10,000 available apartments and 100,000 people who would like to live in them.

    Now imagine everyone suddenly receives €10,000 per month through Universal High Income.

    Does that create another 90,000 apartments?

    Of course not.

    Instead, many more people can now afford to compete for the same limited number of apartments.

    Landlords and property owners discover that tenants can pay considerably more. Rents rise. Property prices rise.

    An apartment that previously rented for €1,000 per month might eventually cost €5,000 or more.

    And suddenly, that wonderful €10,000 monthly income doesn’t seem quite so wonderful anymore. Because prices have not only gone up on rent, but everything. When everyone suddenly have more money prices will automatically go up. That’s how our monetary system works. 

    The same principle applies to food, energy, water, land, and other necessities whenever supply cannot keep up with demand.

    Even if automation makes televisions, computers, clothing, and countless manufactured products cheaper, it does not automatically make desirable land, housing, or every essential resource equally abundant.

    And what happens when governments increase UHI to compensate for rising prices?

    More purchasing power enters the market, potentially driving prices even higher.

    Higher incomes. Higher demand. Higher prices. Another increase in income.

    Standard of Living

    The cycle can continue without necessarily improving people’s actual standard of living.

    And there is another important consideration. What constitutes a high standard of living is highly subjective.

    Some people may feel they need a luxurious mansion, several expensive cars, and countless possessions to be satisfied with their lives, while others may be perfectly happy living in a modest three-bedroom apartment with everything they need.

    There is no universal definition of how much is enough.

    And perhaps this points to something even more fundamental. Maybe humanity needs to reconsider not only its economic system, but also what it values, what it considers prosperity, and what actually makes people happy.

    Because creating a world of abundance should not mean encouraging everyone to consume as much as possible. It should mean creating a world where everyone has the opportunity to live a fulfilling life according to their own needs, interests, and preferences, while respecting the needs of others and the limits of our planet.

    Of course, prices will not rise equally everywhere. Where production can expand rapidly enough, additional supply can satisfy increased demand without major price increases.

    But this only reinforces the central point.

    It is the availability of actual goods and resources, not the amount of money people receive, that ultimately determines their material standard of living.

    Universal High Income does not guarantee universal high purchasing power.

    And a world full of millionaires is not necessarily a world full of abundance.

    3. Eroded taxes – Who Will Pay for the Universal High Income?

    There is another problem that becomes particularly interesting when considering the future Musk describes.

    Where will the money come from?

    Today, governments collect taxes from employment income, business profits, consumption, property, and other economic activities.

    But what happens when AI and robotics replace an enormous proportion of human employment?

    If millions or billions of people no longer receive wages, governments will lose a substantial part of their traditional income-tax and payroll-tax revenues.

    At the very moment when they would need enormous amounts of money to finance Universal High Income, one of their major sources of revenue could be disappearing.

    Of course, governments could tax the corporations that own the robots and automated factories instead.

    But consider what that means.

    The corporations produce the goods and services. People receive money from the government to purchase those same goods and services. The corporations receive that money, and the government then taxes the corporations to finance the next round of payments.

    Money circulates from governments to consumers, from consumers to corporations, and from corporations back to governments.

    Such a system is not mathematically impossible. Governments already redistribute money through taxation and public spending.

    But why preserve this elaborate financial arrangement if the machines are already capable of producing what everyone needs?

    Why not concentrate on making the actual goods and services available instead?

    And there is another important question.

    Who owns those machines?

    4. The Owners Will Still Own Everything

    Universal High Income does not fundamentally change the ownership structure of the monetary system.

    Far from it. If anything, it reenforces it.

    Land still belongs to landowners. Factories still belong to corporations. Automated production systems still belong to whoever owns them.

    And everyone else still needs money to access what those owners control.

    As long as there are still owners there will be rich and poor.

    Imagine a future in which millions of humanoid robots produce food, construct buildings, manufacture products, and provide services.

    Human labor has become largely unnecessary.

    But if the robots, factories, land, and resources remain concentrated in relatively few hands, everyone else remains dependent on purchasing access to their output.

    Universal High Income could then become a mechanism for distributing purchasing power to the population while preserving the existing concentration of productive ownership.

    The owners receive money from consumers, while consumers depend on governments to provide that money.

    Even if everyone receives a generous income, the underlying relationship remains.

    Some own the productive resources. Others pay to access them.

    The technology has changed, but the economic structure has not.

    Why would we want such a world?

    Where a tiny elite owns most everything while the rest are dependent on government payouts?

    And this brings us to an interesting contradiction in Musk’s vision.

    5. Elon Musk’s Contradiction

    Elon Musk is working tirelessly to develop technologies that could eventually eliminate the necessity for much of human labor.

    Through artificial intelligence, robotics, and automation, he is helping create the technological foundation for a world in which machines could perform an extraordinary proportion of the tasks necessary to sustain human civilization.

    He has also suggested that money may eventually become irrelevant.

    Yet he continues to describe the future in terms of Universal High Income.

    But why?

    If AI and robotics can produce practically everything humanity needs, why should everyone need a high income to purchase those things?

    If money is becoming irrelevant, why introduce another mechanism that makes everyone dependent on receiving it?

    Why keep money at all??

    And perhaps most importantly, why is the discussion so focused on how much money people might receive rather than who will own and control the automated production systems?

    As long as there are owners of the world’s resources and productive systems there will always be an imbalance in our world. An imbalance that historically has led to countless conflicts and wars.

    Sensational Predictions

    I sometimes wonder whether all these sensational predictions about Universal High Income, the end of work, and the disappearance of money are mostly meant to distract from the much more fundamental questions:

    Who will own the robots and factories? Who will control the resources? Who will decide what gets produced? And who will benefit from the extraordinary abundance these technologies could make possible?

    I cannot know Musk’s true intentions. But I would certainly like to hear him address these questions more directly.

    Because the future of humanity is not fundamentally about how much money everyone will receive.

    It is about what humanity can produce sustainably, how those resources are managed, and whether everyone can benefit.

    6. The Real Opportunity of AI and Robotics

    Here is where the discussion becomes truly exciting.

    For most of human history, producing the necessities of life has required enormous amounts of human labor.

    People had to cultivate fields, build houses, manufacture products, transport goods, and perform countless other tasks.

    The monetary system developed around this world of human labor, exchange, ownership, and scarcity.

    But what happens when technology changes the fundamental conditions?

    What happens when automated systems can grow food, construct buildings, manufacture goods, transport resources, maintain infrastructure, and perform most of the work necessary to sustain civilization?

    For the first time in history, humanity may be approaching the technological capacity to provide an abundant standard of living for everyone without requiring everyone to work for it.

    That is an extraordinary opportunity.

    But instead of asking how to distribute enough money for everyone to purchase this abundance, shouldn’t the question be how to organize the production and distribution of the abundance itself?

    We have established that more money does not lead to more resources.

    The Real Questions

    These are the real questions we must ask:

    What resources are available?

    How can we optimize them?

    What does everyone need?

    How much can be produced sustainably?

    How can technology coordinate production and distribution so that everyone’s needs can be met while preserving the planet’s ecosystems?

    These are questions AI could help humanity answer.

    And they lead directly toward a resource-based economy.

    7. From Universal High Income to Universal High Living Standards

    Imagine a world where housing, food, energy, transportation, healthcare, education, and communication are available to everyone without monetary transactions.

    Not because everything is infinitely abundant, but because humanity has organized its resources and productive capacity around meeting people’s needs rather than generating financial returns.

    In such a world, AI and robotics would continuously monitor available resources, production capacity, environmental conditions, and actual demand.

    Production could be adjusted according to what people need and what the planet can sustainably provide.

    Resources that remain scarce would still require responsible allocation. Technology cannot create unlimited land, water, or raw materials. But it can help optimize and maximize what we have.

    But scarcity would no longer automatically mean that those with the most money receive the most.

    Instead of ownership, humanity could develop a system of stewardship, where the Earth’s resources are managed for the benefit of everyone. 

    We would be stewards of Earth instead of owners.

    And instead of measuring prosperity through income, it could be measured through actual living standards, access to necessities, personal freedom, health, well-being, and environmental sustainability.

    Nobody would need to become a millionaire to live an abundant life.

    Nobody would need to receive Universal High Income to access the products of automated production.

    The objective would no longer be universal financial wealth.

    It would be universal real wealth.

    8. Why Preserve the Bottleneck?

    Money is an intermediary bottleneck between human needs and the resources required to satisfy them.

    Today, someone can be hungry while food is available, homeless while houses stand empty, or unable to obtain medical treatment even though the necessary technology and expertise exist.

    Not necessarily because the resources are unavailable, but because access to them depends on money.

    Universal High Income attempts to address this problem by giving everyone more money.

    But it leaves the bottleneck in place.

    It leaves prices in place.

    It leaves competition for purchasing power in place.

    And it leaves the concentration of ownership completely untouched.

    If AI and robotics eventually provide humanity with the productive capacity to satisfy everyone’s needs, why should access to that production continue to depend on a financial mechanism?

    Why should people need money to obtain what society is technologically capable of providing?

    The question is no longer simply how to make everyone rich.

    It is how to create a world in which everyone can live richly, regardless of money.

    Conclusion: 

    Abundance Is Not a Number in a Bank Account

    Universal High Income is an understandable response to a future in which AI and robotics may eliminate enormous amounts of human employment.

    And as a transitional measure, income guarantees could help protect people from poverty and economic disruption in the transition to a world of real wealth.

    You cannot print money and think it is abundance.

    You have to produce it. And once you can produce it for everyone, why should anyone need money to access it?

    This is the future I explore in the novel Waking Up: A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity, where a the bewildered billionaire Benjamin Michaels  awakens a century from now to discover that humanity has moved beyond money, trade, and ownership toward a cooperative, resource-based civilization.

    Discover the story

  • The Hunger of Humanity

    The Hunger of Humanity

    Why are people dying from hunger in a world capable of feeding everyone?

    The Starvation Death

    Starvation is not a quick death. It is a slow process in which the body gradually consumes itself in a desperate attempt to survive.

    At first, hunger can be overwhelming. The stomach aches, the mind becomes obsessed with food, and weakness begins to set in. But as starvation continues, something strange happens. The sensation of hunger may actually diminish, even as the body deteriorates.

    Muscles waste away. The immune system weakens. Walking becomes difficult, then impossible. Eventually, vital organs begin to fail. You may become confused, apathetic, and increasingly unconscious until death finally arrives.

    Imagine experiencing this yourself. 

    Or worse, watching your own child slowly starve, knowing there is nothing you can do.

    And now consider the most horrifying part:

    This is actually happening in a world that already produces more than enough food to feed everyone.

    People are not necessarily starving because there is no food. They are starving because they cannot access it.

    What kind of civilization allows human beings to die from hunger when we have an abundance of food?

    Too Much Food 

    Every year, approximately 2 billion tonnes of food are lost or wasted globally. This includes food deliberately destroyed, left unharvested, or withheld from sale for economic reasons, including market mechanisms that make surplus production unprofitable. We simply have too much food. According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), approximately 1.05 billion tonnes are wasted annually by households, restaurants, and retailers alone, while another 931 million tonnes are lost earlier in the supply chain. Together, that’s more than 5 million tonnes of food every single day. In a world where people are dying from hunger, we are not only producing enough food to feed everyone, but losing and throwing away staggering amounts of it because of how our money based food system operates.

    5 million tonnes of food.

    Every single day.

    Wasted.

    The Food  We Actually Produce

    Humanity produces an extraordinary amount of food every year, whereof much is wasted as we see.

    According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), global agricultural production amounts to approximately 10 billion tonnes of crops annually, in addition to hundreds of millions of tonnes of meat, milk, eggs, and seafood.

    Divided among the world’s roughly 8.3 billion people, the crop production alone represents approximately 3.3 kilograms per person every single day, or around 1,200 kilograms per person annually.

    Of course, not all these crops are destined for human consumption. Some are used as animal feed, biofuels, and industrial materials. But even after accounting for these uses, FAO’s latest comprehensive food-balance statistics show that the global food supply provides more than 3,000 calories per person per day.

    We Have Enough

    In other words, we already produce more than enough dietary energy to nourish every human being on Earth, if everyone had adequate access to the food we actually produce.

    We are producing food on an enormous scale, yet we have created a system in which millions of people cannot obtain enough to survive.

    Surely, humanity can do better than that.

    As I was reading the book Why Money is killing us and what we can do about it by Richard Arthur I came across this number:

    9 million people die every year because of hunger. I had to check this and Google confirmed it:

    An estimated nearly 25,000 people die from hunger and malnutrition-related causes each day globally. This calculation is based on mainstream humanitarian figures—such as those from Concern Worldwide and international food monitors—stating that approximately 9 million people lose their lives to hunger-related complications every year. [1, 2]

    Read that again. 

    On average almost 25000 people. 25000. Die. Every day. From hunger. In 2026.

    I felt  physically ill reading these numbers. Honestly, I didn’t know it was that bad.

    That’s approximately 1,000 people every hour.

    About 17 people every minute.

    One human being every four seconds.

    And among them are children. 

    Children who will never grow up, never discover their potential, never experience all the wonderful things life could have offered them.

    Every single day.

    Not because humanity has forgotten how to grow food.

    Not because we lack the technology to transport it.

    Not because we lack the knowledge to nourish every human being on Earth.

    But because we have created a civilization in which access to the necessities of life depends on money.

    And if you don’t have money, you might die.

    The World We Have Learned to Ignore

    The precise number is uncertain, and it isn’t a verified annual death count, but the scale of the tragedy is horrifying no matter what.

    Here I am, sitting comfortably in my home, with a roof over my head and enough nutritious food to eat until I am satisfied.

    I can choose what I want for dinner. I can prepare a delicious dinner with fresh vegetables, herbs, and a variety of ingredients. I can enjoy my meals without worrying about whether I will have anything to eat tomorrow.

    And millions upon millions of people enjoy the same security.

    Meanwhile, elsewhere on this very same planet, people are struggling to find enough food to survive.

    Children are going to bed hungry. Parents are watching their children become weaker, knowing they cannot provide what they desperately need.

    And some of them will die.

    Not because they have done anything wrong.

    Not because they are less deserving of life.

    But because they were born into circumstances that deny them access to the necessities of survival.

    Perhaps the most disturbing thing is that we have learned to live with knowing this.

    Disaster Headlines

    When a disaster kills a thousand people, the world is shocked. Headlines appear everywhere. Governments respond. Aid organizations mobilize.

    But the ongoing tragedy of hunger has become part of the background noise of civilization.

    We cannot bear to think about it for too long.

    So we push it out of our minds.

    And life goes on.

     Abundance with (Artificial) Scarcity

    What makes this tragedy so extraordinary is that humanity already possesses enormous capabilities to produce, preserve, and distribute food.

    We have sophisticated agricultural technology, global transportation networks, refrigeration, automated production, and an extraordinary understanding of nutrition.

    Yet hundreds of millions of people still experience hunger.

    According to the United Nations, approximately 673 million people experienced hunger in 2024.

    How can this be?

    The answer is not simply that humanity lacks food. We don’t.

    Hunger results from poverty, conflict, displacement, failing infrastructure, environmental disasters, and unequal access to resources.

    But there is a fundamental contradiction at the heart of our civilization.

    We have made access to the necessities of life dependent on purchasing power.

    A supermarket can be filled with nutritious food while someone right outside is starving.

    The food exists.

    The hungry person exists.

    The need is undeniable.

    But the person has not enough  money.

    And therefore, the food remains inaccessible.

    We have somehow come to accept financial scarcity as though it were the same thing as physical scarcity.

    It isn’t.

    A lack of money does not necessarily mean a lack of resources.

    It means a lack of permission, within our economic arrangements, to access those resources.

    And when that distinction determines whether someone eats or starves, surely something is fundamentally wrong.

    The Other Hunger

    But humanity also suffers from another kind of hunger.

    A hunger for money. For property. For power. For more more more.

    And unlike the hunger for food, this hunger often seems impossible to satisfy.

    A hungry person needs enough nutritious food to live a healthy life.

    But how much money does a billionaire need?

    How many houses? How much land? How much power?

    There seems to be no natural point at which the hunger for accumulation is satisfied.

    And while some people accumulate far more than they could ever personally use, others struggle to obtain the most basic necessities of life.

    One kind of hunger can be satisfied with a good meal. The other can consume an entire planet without ever being satisfied.

    Human Conscience

    Of course, humanity does have a conscience.

    We send emergency food supplies to famine-stricken regions. Governments contribute aid. Charitable organizations raise funds. Volunteers dedicate their lives to helping those in need.

    And thank goodness they do.

    These efforts save lives.

    But consider what we are actually doing.

    We send bags of fortified flour, emergency porridge, and therapeutic food to people who are starving.

    And while such food can be essential for survival, why should survival be the limit of our ambitions?

    Why should some human beings enjoy fresh, varied, delicious meals every day, while others must depend on emergency rations?

    Why shouldn’t everyone have access to nutritious food that is also enjoyable?

    Food is not merely fuel.

    It is pleasure. Culture. Community. Celebration. Life.

    There are wonderful initiatives, including those led by chefs who prepare freshly cooked meals for people in crisis.

    But even these initiatives face the same fundamental obstacle.

    They need money.

    Money to purchase ingredients. Money to pay for transportation. Money to operate kitchens. Money to maintain their organizations.

    And when the funding runs out, their ability to help is threatened.

    Think about the absurdity.

    We have created a civilization in which people must beg for money to feed the hungry.

    Not necessarily beg for food.

    Beg for money.

    The fertile land is there.

    The farmers may be ready to grow it. The chefs may be ready to prepare it. The volunteers may be willing to help. The trucks may be available to transport it.

    But somewhere between the food and the hungry person stands an invisible barrier.

    A price tag.

    And until someone pays it, the hungry person may remain hungry.

    Conditional Compassion

    I don’t believe that most human beings are indifferent to the suffering of others.

    Quite the opposite.

    Whenever a catastrophe occurs, people demonstrate extraordinary generosity. They donate money, volunteer their time, open their homes, and share what they have.

    Humanity is capable of tremendous compassion.

    But we have organized our civilization around an economic system in which survival, security, and prosperity are tied to financial resources.

    Businesses must remain profitable.

    Governments must balance competing financial demands.

    Organizations must secure funding.

    Individuals must earn enough money to survive.

    And those who accumulate wealth gain greater control over resources and opportunities.

    Even people who desperately want to help others must operate within these financial constraints.

    This is what I have repeatedly described as the invisible logic of the monetary system.

    It doesn’t require everyone to be selfish.

    It simply makes financial considerations central to almost everything we do.

    And oftentimes, those considerations stand directly between a human being and the necessities of life.

    What If We Changed the Question?

    Imagine, for a moment, that humanity decided to organize civilization around a completely different principle.

    Need. 

    Instead of money.

    Instead of asking:

    Can people afford the food they need?

    We ask:

    Do we have the resources and capabilities to feed everyone?

    And if the answer is yes, we organize those resources accordingly.

    No prices. No purchasing power requirements. 

    No need to earn the right to eat.

    Food would be produced, transported, and distributed according to human needs and ecological possibilities.

    Of course, we would still need farmers, scientists, engineers, transportation networks, distribution systems, and people willing to contribute.

    We would still need to deal with droughts, crop failures, damaged infrastructure, and other genuine physical challenges.

    But these would be problems of resources, organization, and technology.

    Not problems of money.

    Imagine what humanity could accomplish if the goal of our food system were simply to provide the best possible nutrition and food experiences for everyone, while protecting the ecosystems that sustain us.

    Not maximizing profit.

    Not increasing market share.

    Not generating financial returns.

    Feeding Humanity

    Surely that should be the primary purpose of a food system.

    Survival Is Not Enough

    And I want to emphasize something important.

    The goal should not merely be to eliminate starvation.

    That is the absolute minimum.

    We should aim much higher.

    Every human being should have the opportunity to enjoy healthy, delicious, varied food.

    Every child should have the nourishment needed to develop fully.

    Every family should be able to sit down together and enjoy a meal without worrying about how to pay for the next one.

    Nobody should have to choose between food, housing, medicine, or other necessities.

    We should not be trying merely to keep people alive.

    We should be creating the conditions for everyone to enjoy being alive.

    That is what true prosperity means.

    Not the accumulation of money and property.

    But the abundance of life itself.

    A Different Future Is Possible

    The novel Waking Up: A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity  describes a future civilization that has managed to create a world where everyone are fed and live healthy happy lives.

    It is not a manifesto. Nor is it a detailed blueprint explaining every step of how to get there or precisely how everything would work.

    It is a story meant to inspire humanity to imagine something fundamentally different.

    People no longer have to purchase the right to survive.

    They are free to contribute according to their abilities, interests, and willingness, while advanced technology helps provide the necessities of life.

    It is a vision of a world where nobody needs to be poor for somebody else to be rich.

    Where prosperity is measured by well-being rather than monetary wealth.

    And where sharing is not considered charity, but a natural part of belonging to one human family.

    I am not suggesting that such a transformation would be effortless.

    But I believe it is something humanity can choose to work toward.

    Because the obstacles are not merely technological.

    They are also embedded in how we think about resources, property, entitlement, and our responsibilities toward one another.

    And those are things we can change.

    The Hunger of Humanity

    We are more than eight billion human beings sharing one extraordinary planet.

    We have developed technologies that would have seemed miraculous only a century ago.

    We can communicate instantly across continents. We can explore other planets. We can automate increasingly complex tasks.

    Yet we have still not ensured that every human being has enough nutritious food to eat.

    What does that say about our priorities?

    Perhaps the greatest tragedy isn’t only that people are dying from hunger.

    It’s that the rest of us have learned to live with knowing it.

    But we don’t have to accept this as inevitable.

    We can imagine a different civilization.

    We can begin to build it.

    And we can recognize that nobody should have to earn the right to eat, drink clean water, or have a safe place to sleep.

    These should be unconditional foundations of human life.

    Because ultimately, the purpose of civilization should not be to maximize financial wealth.

    It should be to maximize life.

    A world without money that is not only possible to live in, but genuinely wonderful to live in. A world we might discover is the one we have wanted all along.

    And I don’t mean a moneyless society for a privileged few, while the rest of humanity continues struggling with poverty and financial insecurity.

    I mean a world without money for absolutely everyone.

    Because if we create abundance for some while leaving others behind, we have merely recreated the inequality we were trying to escape.

    The goal is not to build a paradise for a few.

    It is to make the whole Earth a paradise for everyone.

    Discover the story