Category: Book

  • 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

  • We Have Finally Agreed

    We Have Finally Agreed

    For thousands of years, humanity fought over the planet we inhabit.

    Kings, emperors, dictators, despots and governments tried to conquer as much territory as possible. Nations formed alliances, broke alliances, invaded their neighbors, defended their borders, and sacrificed millions of lives in the pursuit of power, territory, resources, and security.

    And what did we achieve?

    War after war after war. Death after death. Destruction after destruction.

    We built civilizations, destroyed them, and built them again. We conquered territories, lost them, and fought to regain them. We drew borders across the planet, moved them through violence, and defended them with ever more sophisticated weapons.

    And for a very long time, we believed this was simply the way the world had to be.

    Until, at long last, we agreed.

    Enough was enough.

    The Fatigue of War

    Looking back at the early twenty-first century, the pattern was painfully familiar.

    Russia and Ukraine. Israel and Palestine. And countless other conflicts, large and small, across the planet.

    People killing people. Homes destroyed. Families torn apart. Children growing up without parents. Parents burying their children. Millions displaced, injured, traumatized, or permanently disabled.

    And for what?

    Territory? Resources? Political power? National pride? Security?

    War had become so familiar that many people regarded it as an inevitable part of human civilization.

    Every generation inherited the fears, resentments, territorial claims, and unfinished conflicts of previous generations.

    When one war ended, another seemed to begin. Sometimes the same conflict erupted again decades later, with new weapons, new leaders, and new generations of young people sent to fight.

    And when the fighting stopped, we rebuilt what we had destroyed.

    We buried our dead, cared for the wounded, negotiated new agreements, and prepared ourselves for the possibility of doing it all again.

    What an astonishing waste of human life, intelligence, energy, and resources.

    But perhaps the greatest tragedy was that we rarely questioned the foundation upon which this endless cycle rested.

    We argued about who was right and who was wrong, who had the legitimate claim, who had attacked first, and who had the right to defend themselves.

    And while these questions certainly mattered to those involved, they seldom brought us any closer to eliminating the underlying problem.

    The Illusion of Security

    For millennia, humanity pursued security through control.

    A ruler conquered territory to secure resources for his people. A nation expanded its borders to protect itself from potential enemies. Governments built armies, fortifications, and increasingly powerful weapons to defend what they considered theirs.

    But there was a fundamental contradiction in this approach.

    Whatever we conquered, we had to defend. And whatever we defended, someone else might eventually try to conquer.

    The more territory and resources we controlled, the more we had to protect.

    And when our neighbors saw us strengthening our defenses, they often perceived us as a threat. So they strengthened theirs.

    We responded by strengthening ours even further.

    And the cycle continued.

    This was known as the security dilemma.

    One nation’s attempt to increase its security could make another nation feel less secure, creating an escalating cycle of fear, competition, and military preparation.

    The tragedy was that both sides could genuinely believe they were acting defensively.

    Yet their combined actions made everyone less secure.

    We had mistaken control for security.

    And for thousands of years, we tried to solve the insecurity created by this arrangement through even greater control.

    We invented increasingly sophisticated weapons, established military alliances, built enormous defense industries, and devoted extraordinary amounts of human ingenuity to preparing for conflicts we hoped would never happen.

    But the underlying problem remained.

    We had divided the planet into possessions, and every possession represented something that might be taken away.

    Who Owned the Earth?

    There was a question we should have asked ourselves much earlier.

    Who actually owned the Earth?

    Who created the continents, the oceans, the mountains, the forests, the rivers, and the fertile soil?

    Certainly not the kings, emperors, governments, corporations, or individuals who claimed ownership of them throughout history.

    The Earth had existed for billions of years before humanity appeared.

    Yet we divided it into territories and declared that this piece belonged to one nation, that piece belonged to another, and countless smaller pieces belonged to individuals, corporations, and institutions.

    We turned the surface of our common home into a gigantic collection of possessions.

    And then we spent thousands of years fighting over those possessions.

    We even developed elaborate legal systems to determine who owned which pieces of land, who could extract which resources, and who had the right to exclude everyone else.

    A person could be born on Earth and still have no right to occupy a tiny piece of it without paying someone else.

    An entire nation could lack access to resources that existed abundantly elsewhere on the same planet.

    And people could become extraordinarily wealthy simply by controlling access to things that nature had provided.

    All because we had accepted the idea that the Earth could be owned.

    But was that ever anything more than a human agreement?

    And if we had agreed to divide the planet into possessions, couldn’t we simply agree to stop?

    We Finally Grew Up

    So, this was how we lived for millennia.

    We conquered, defended, competed, accumulated, threatened, negotiated, and fought.

    We called it civilization.

    We called it national security.

    We called it the natural order of things.

    But eventually, something changed.

    We began to recognize that our extraordinary technological development had not been accompanied by an equally extraordinary development in how we organized our lives together.

    We could explore other planets, manipulate matter at microscopic scales, develop artificial intelligence, and automate increasingly complex tasks.

    Yet we continued fighting over ownership of the planet on which we were born.

    And finally, humanity had enough.

    We grew up.

    Not because everyone suddenly became wise as God, infinitely generous, or free from disagreement.

    But because we finally recognized that we could not continue trying to solve the same fundamental problem with the same fundamental thinking.

    We needed to change the foundation itself.

    And so we did.

    We drew a line through history.

    Not to erase what had happened, or forget those who had suffered, but to declare that the old claims of ownership would no longer determine humanity’s future.

    We nullified the ancient assumption that land and natural resources could belong exclusively to nations, corporations, or individuals.

    We started again.

    As adults.

    We finally agreed.

    The Declaration of Earth

    The declaration was remarkably simple.

    Planet Earth, including all its land, waters, atmosphere, and natural resources, was declared unowned and recognized as the common heritage of all humanity.

    No nation could claim exclusive ownership of a territory.

    No corporation could claim ownership of the planet’s natural resources.

    No individual could claim a piece of Earth as private property to be sold  and traded. Instead, we agreed on becoming stewards of Earth, caring for the land we live on.

    We had already established a similar principle for the Moon decades earlier, when humanity agreed that no nation could appropriate it through claims of sovereignty.

    Now we extended that principle to our own planet.

    Earth was not something to be possessed owned.

    It was our common home.

    And with that declaration came a new responsibility.

    We were no longer competing owners of separate pieces of a planet.

    We became its collective stewards.

    Of course, the declaration did not instantly transform every aspect of civilization. There were enormous practical questions to resolve, existing systems to reorganize, and centuries of habits and assumptions to overcome.

    But the fundamental decision had been made.

    We were no longer working toward a world in which everyone could never own enough.

    We were creating a world in which nobody needed to own anything in order to live well.

    And that changed everything.

    From Ownership to Stewardship

    One of the first things we changed was our relationship with the natural world.

    Forests were no longer regarded as somebody’s property from which financial profit could be extracted. They were recognized as living ecosystems providing countless benefits to the planet.

    Agricultural land was cultivated to provide nutritious food while maintaining the health of the soil.

    Homes were provided for people to live in, rather than treated as financial assets to be accumulated.

    Minerals, energy, water, and other resources were managed intelligently, sustainably, and cooperatively.

    We no longer asked how much money could be made from a particular resource. Money ceased to exist.

    We asked what it could contribute to the well-being of life on Earth.

    And because ownership had been replaced by stewardship, the responsibility for managing resources was based on knowledge, competence, ecological understanding, and the needs of the communities they served.

    We developed cooperative councils at different levels, from local communities to global coordination, helping ensure that decisions reflected both local circumstances and the needs of the planet as a whole.

    No single person, government, corporation, or artificial intelligence was granted ownership or absolute authority over Earth’s resources.

    We had learned enough from our history to understand the dangers of concentrating power.

    The End of the Monetary System

    Once we had abandoned ownership, another ancient institution lost its purpose.

    Money.

    For thousands of years, money had been the principal mechanism through which we distributed access to resources.

    Those with the greatest purchasing power could obtain the most, while those with little or no money often struggled to acquire even the necessities of life.

    This had produced a civilization in which enormous quantities of useful resources remained inaccessible to people who needed them, simply because they could not afford to pay.

    But now we had changed the underlying principle.

    Resources were no longer commodities to be owned and traded.

    They were part of our common inheritance, managed for the benefit of everyone.

    So we reorganized production and distribution around actual needs, available resources, ecological limits, and human preferences.

    Advanced artificial intelligence helped us understand resource availability, forecast demand, coordinate production, and minimize waste.

    Robotics and automation took over much of the repetitive, dangerous, and physically demanding work that humans had previously performed.

    And instead of competing to sell more and more products, we cooperated to produce what people actually needed and wanted, as sustainably and efficiently as possible.

    We no longer had to ask whether providing something was financially profitable.

    We asked whether it was useful, desirable, and physically possible.

    And as our productive capabilities expanded, we were able to provide increasingly abundant access to housing, nutritious food, clean water, energy, healthcare, education, transportation, communication, and countless other goods and services.

    Money and trading gradually became obsolete.

    Not because we had outlawed generosity or exchange between people, but because we had developed a far more direct way of sharing the abundance of our planet.

    What Happened to Security?

    Perhaps the most extraordinary transformation was in our understanding of security.

    Remember the security dilemma?

    For thousands of years, nations had tried to protect themselves by accumulating military power and controlling territory.

    But now the foundation of that dilemma had changed.

    Why would one community invade another to secure resources when those resources were already part of a globally coordinated system serving everyone?

    Why fight to control fertile land when food production was optimized and organized cooperatively?

    Why conquer territory when everyone had access to housing, healthcare, education, energy, and the necessities of life, regardless of where they were born?

    Human Disagreements

    The old incentives for territorial conquest had largely disappeared.

    Of course, human disagreements did not vanish.

    We still had different opinions, personalities, desires, traditions, and ways of life.

    And we still needed ways to resolve conflicts, protect people from harm, and address destructive behavior.

    But we no longer organized entire societies around the expectation that other societies might try to seize their possessions.

    The enormous military establishments of the past gave way to cooperative systems of protection, emergency response, disaster prevention, and peaceful conflict resolution.

    The human ingenuity once devoted to developing increasingly destructive weapons was redirected toward preserving and improving life.

    And we discovered something remarkable.

    Security no longer depended on how much of the Earth we could control. It depended on how well we could care for one another.

    Instead of securing the Earth against one another, we secured the Earth for one another.

    What Did We Achieve?

    Peace.

    Not the fragile peace that had once depended on military deterrence, political alliances, and the constant threat of retaliation or invasion.

    But a far more durable peace built upon shared access, cooperation, and the removal of many of the incentives that had driven humanity into conflict.

    Global Prosperity

    Not the prosperity of a wealthy minority surrounded by people struggling to survive, but a civilization in which everyone could benefit from global resources, humanity’s collective knowledge, technology, and productive capacity.

    Freedom

    Not merely the freedom to compete for money and possessions, but the freedom to live without the constant fear of poverty, unemployment, homelessness, or financial ruin.

    And perhaps most importantly, we gained something that had been extraordinarily difficult to achieve in the old world.

    A Common Purpose

    Instead of competing to maximize the wealth and power of separate nations, corporations, and individuals, we worked together to improve the conditions for life on Earth.

    We restored damaged ecosystems, regenerated forests, cleaned polluted rivers and oceans, and developed more sustainable ways of producing everything we needed.

    We designed cities around the well-being of their inhabitants rather than the profitability of real estate.

    We created communities where people could contribute according to their abilities, interests, and passions, without having to sell their labor merely to survive.

    And we began to measure our progress not by financial growth, but by the actual quality of life we were creating.

    How healthy were our ecosystems?

    How well were people living?

    How much freedom did they have to pursue their interests?

    How effectively were we using our resources?

    How much suffering could we prevent?

    How much beauty, knowledge, creativity, and joy could we bring into the world?

    These became the questions that guided our civilization.

    And the answers continued to improve.

    Welcome to the New World

    Looking back now, it seems almost incredible that it took humanity so long to arrive at such a simple realization.

    We did not need to own the Earth in order to enjoy everything it had to offer.

    We did not need to compete for its resources when we could cooperate in managing them.

    And we did not need to fight over the planet when we could share it.

    We had spent thousands of years trying to conquer the world.

    But our greatest achievement came when we finally stopped trying.

    We did not unite Earth under a single ruler or empire.

    We simply recognized that it was our common home, and that everyone deserved to benefit from it.

    It took us a few thousand years to grow up. 

    But we finally did.

    Our New Friend

    And now, we have a rather unusual new friend among us.

    Mr. Benjamin Michaels.

    Our bewildered billionaire, who recently woke up after spending a hundred years in cryonic preservation!

    As you can imagine, it has been quite a shock for him.

    In his former world, ownership was everything. The more you owned, the more powerful and secure you were considered to be.

    Benjamin was very good at that game. In fact, he was one of the richest people on the planet.

    And now?

    Well, now he has awakened in a world where nobody owns anything!

    No money. No buying or selling. No financial empires to build or protect.

    Everything is shared, and everyone has access to what they need.

    You can probably imagine his confusion.

    For him, it is almost as though the entire world has gone mad.

    For us, of course, it is simply normal life.

    But we understand him.

    After all, he spent his entire previous life learning how to succeed in a system that no longer exists.

    It takes time to adjust to something like that.

    Fortunately, he has me.

    Aweena.

    His personal guide, showing him all the ins and outs of this new world.

    And believe me, there is quite a lot to show him!

    He has been here for a while now, and I think he is finally beginning to adjust.

    We are all cheering for him, doing whatever we can to help.

    After all, imagine falling asleep as a billionaire and waking up in a world where nobody owns anything!

    Welcome to the New World, Benjamin!

    Oh, and one more thing.

    If you like, I can give you a guided tour as well.

    Just read Waking Up: A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity, a book written about our world a hundred years ago.

    You can find it HERE.

    I’ll be waiting for you!

    — Aweena, 2115

  • The Master of Disguise

    The Master of Disguise

    Politics here. Climate change there. Poverty, inequality, corruption, unemployment, immigration, taxation, and war. Everywhere we look, people are arguing about the problems of our world. And almost everywhere, money is involved.

    Money here. Money there. Taxes. Not enough money. Too much money. Money in the wrong hands. Money that must be raised, borrowed, invested, redistributed, or saved.

    For thousands of years, humanity has become so accustomed to money that we barely notice its presence anymore.

    But what if we have been looking at our problems from the wrong perspective all along?

    What if the greatest problem is something so familiar that we have become almost incapable of recognizing it?

    The Surface

    Every day, millions of people discuss the problems of our civilization. On television, in newspapers, on social media, and around dinner tables, we argue about what is wrong with the world and who is responsible.

    And there is certainly no shortage of people to blame.

    Politicians. Billionaires. Corporations. Governments. Immigrants. Environmentalists. Capitalists. Socialists. The rich. The poor.

    Everyone seems to have an explanation, and many explanations are remarkably simple.

    The politicians are corrupt. The billionaires are greedy. Climate change is a hoax designed to collect more taxes. Immigrants are taking our jobs. The poor are lazy. The rich are exploiting everyone else.

    Simple explanations for enormously complicated problems.

    And people love them.

    Why? Because they are easy to understand. They require very little investigation, and they often confirm something we already believe.

    We read a headline, recognize something that fits our worldview, and conclude that we have understood the issue.

    Why bother digging any deeper?

    The Simplification

    Recently, I came across a discussion on social media about climate change. The original newspaper article was considerably more nuanced than the dramatic headline being shared.

    THE CLIMATE FIGHT IS DEAD

    But the headline was enough.

    People immediately began arguing about taxation, political agendas, and whether climate change was even real.

    The complexity of the original article had largely disappeared. What remained was a collection of simplified arguments, many of which seemed to have little to do with the actual condition of our planet.

    And this is hardly unique to climate change.

    We see it everywhere.

    Complicated economic and social problems are reduced to slogans, accusations, and convenient explanations. The easier an argument is to understand, the easier it becomes to repeat.

    And repetition can make an argument feel true, even when the evidence is weak.

    This doesn’t necessarily mean people are unintelligent. Sometimes they simply don’t want to spend the time and effort required to investigate something more deeply.

    After all, if an explanation already seems convincing, why question it?

    But perhaps we should.

    Digging Deeper

    Fortunately, some people do investigate.

    Journalists, researchers, whistleblowers, and ordinary citizens sometimes refuse to accept the explanations presented to them.

    They dig.

    And occasionally, they uncover something spectacular.

    Corruption. Fraud. Bribery. Embezzlement. Tax evasion. Secret financial arrangements. Politicians accepting money in exchange for favors. Corporations deliberately deceiving the public to protect their profits.

    And people love these revelations!

    Another scandal! Another corrupt politician exposed! Another billionaire caught cheating! Another corporation forced to pay an enormous fine!

    The newspapers have a field day. Social media explodes with outrage. People demand justice.

    And sometimes justice is served.

    The guilty are punished, new regulations are introduced, and everyone congratulates themselves on having uncovered yet another rotten part of society.

    But have we really reached the bottom?

    Or have we merely discovered another layer?

    The Wrongdoing

    Notice something interesting about most financial scandals.

    The outrage is generally directed at people who have used money in the wrong way.

    They have broken the rules of the monetary system.

    They have stolen money, hidden money, manipulated money, or used money to gain influence they were not supposed to have.

    And naturally, we want them stopped and punished.

    But what happens next?

    We introduce new laws, stricter regulations, greater transparency, and stronger enforcement.

    In other words, we try to prevent people from misusing money so that the monetary system can continue functioning as intended.

    We investigate the people who break the rules of the system, but rarely question the system itself.

    And even when nobody breaks the law, the system can still reward activities that damage the environment, encourage  overconsumption, or place financial interests ahead of human needs.

    Perfectly Legal

    An activity can be perfectly legal, highly profitable, and socially and environmentally destructive at the same time.

    This is where the investigation becomes particularly interesting.

    Because perhaps the greatest problem isn’t how certain people misuse money.

    Perhaps it is what money makes us do even when we use it exactly as intended.

    The Political Circus

    And then, of course, we have the politicians.

    The stars of the greatest show on Earth.

    Every day, they provide us with something new to discuss. Another outrageous statement. Another political scandal. Another broken promise. Another election. Another politician who supposedly knows how to fix everything.

    And the audience is captivated.

    We cheer for our favorites, ridicule their opponents, argue with friends and strangers, and convince ourselves that everything will be better once the right people are in charge.

    But in charge of what, exactly?

    The monetary system.

    Regardless of which political party wins an election, the fundamental structure generally remains the same. Governments must balance budgets, stimulate economic growth, attract investments, create jobs, collect taxes, and manage public debt.

    Some politicians want higher taxes. Others want lower taxes. Some want more government spending. Others want less. Some want to redistribute wealth, while others want to encourage its accumulation.

    And these differences can have very real consequences for people’s lives.

    But notice what they have in common.

    They are all arguing about how to operate the same underlying system.

    Almost nobody is questioning whether we need that system in the first place. And whether it is actually serving humanity and Earth towards the best possible civilization we can have.

    And this is where the political circus becomes such a convenient distraction.

    While millions of people argue about the performers on the stage, the machinery behind the stage continues operating.

    The audience becomes so preoccupied with deciding which politician is the hero and which is the villain that it rarely questions the theater itself.

    And perhaps that is the greatest irony of modern politics.

    We believe we are deciding the future of civilization by choosing who should manage the monetary system, while the possibility of replacing that system remains almost entirely outside the discussion.

    The politicians don’t even need to be consciously distracting us.

    The spectacle does that perfectly well on its own.

    The Demon

    And somewhere beneath the stage, our little demon is smiling.

    “Wonderful! Keep watching the clowns. Don’t look behind the curtain.”

    The Invisible Master

    Imagine a master of disguise who has been living among us for thousands of years.

    He has become so familiar that nobody suspects him anymore.

    He is everywhere.

    In our homes, our workplaces, our minds, our governments, our schools, our hospitals, and our relationships.

    He influences what we produce, what we consume, where we live, what we do for a living, and what opportunities we have.

    He determines which projects are considered viable and which are abandoned.

    He can make destroying a forest seem perfectly sane in the light of profit while protecting it is considered too expensive.

    He can make food inaccessible to hungry people, even when an abundance of food exists.

    He can leave houses empty while people sleep on the streets.

    And he can make technological advancements that should liberate humanity appear threatening because they might eliminate people’s jobs and incomes.

    Yet almost nobody recognizes him as the underlying problem.

    Because he has disguised himself as something indispensable.

    Something natural.

    Something civilization supposedly cannot function without.

    His name?

    The Monetary System.

    The Perfect Disguise

    The monetary system has accomplished something extraordinary.

    It has convinced us that we need money to solve problems that was created by money in the first place.

    We need money to fight poverty.

    We need money to protect the environment.

    We need money to feed the hungry.

    We need money to provide housing.

    We need money to develop technology that could make all these things easier.

    And when there isn’t enough money, we conclude that these things simply cannot be done.

    But consider what this actually means.

    We live on a planet with an abundance of physical resources, knowledge, technology, and billions of capable human beings.

    The planet doesn’t demand payment for any of its resources. Nature doesn’t issue invoices.

    We have created the prices, the financial obligations, the ownership structures, and the rules governing access.

    And then we have become so accustomed to those arrangements that we confuse them with reality itself.

    A shortage of money is not necessarily a shortage of resources.

    A lack of profitability is not necessarily a lack of usefulness.

    And something that cannot be afforded is not necessarily something that cannot be accomplished.

    These are fundamentally different things.

    Yet we routinely treat them as though they were the same.

    That is the disguise.

    The Smiling Demon

    Now imagine our master of disguise as a little demon sitting far beneath the surface of civilization.

    Above him, humanity is arguing furiously.

    Politicians are blaming other politicians. Billionaires are blaming governments. Governments are blaming economic circumstances. Citizens are blaming corporations. Corporations are blaming regulations.

    Investigators are digging everywhere, exposing corruption and wrongdoing.

    And every time someone uncovers another scandal, the demon smiles.

    “Excellent! They’ve found another villain.”

    The public becomes outraged. The guilty are condemned. New laws are passed.

    And the demon smiles again.

    “Wonderful! They’re fixing my rules.”

    Then everyone returns to arguing about taxes, budgets, prices, profits, and economic growth.

    And the demon laughs.

    “They’ll never think to question me.”

    Of course, there is no actual demon.

    The monetary system has no consciousness, no evil intentions, and no secret plan.

    It is a human invention.

    And that is precisely what makes the disguise so remarkable.

    We have created a system that now appears to govern its creators.

    The Real Question

    What would happen if we continued digging?

    Not merely into the corruption, the greed, the inequality, or the environmental destruction, but into the economic structure that influences so much of human behavior?

    What if we stopped asking only how money should be distributed and started asking why we need money to distribute resources at all?

    What if we stopped asking how to create enough jobs and started asking how technology could free us from the necessity of working for survival?

    What if we stopped asking how to make environmental protection profitable and started organizing production and consumption according to ecological reality?

    What if we stopped treating the Earth as property to be bought and sold, and started treating it as a shared home to be cared for?

    These questions lead somewhere very different from the usual political arguments.

    They lead toward a resource-based civilization organized around collaboration, sharing, and stewardship rather than money, trading, and ownership.

    A civilization in which access to goods and services is based on needs and available resources rather than purchasing power.

    A civilization in which artificial intelligence and automation help humanity manage resources intelligently, reduce waste, and provide a high standard of living for everyone.

    Not a world without challenges, disagreements, or difficult decisions.

    But a world in which we no longer have to make everything financially profitable before we consider it worth doing.

    The Unmasking

    For thousands of years, humanity has lived with monetary systems in one form or another.

    We have changed currencies, governments, laws, institutions, and economic policies.

    We have overthrown rulers, fought revolutions, exposed corruption, and demanded fairer distributions of wealth.

    Yet the fundamental assumption has largely survived.

    That money is necessary.

    That trading is necessary.

    That ownership of the Earth’s resources is necessary.

    But what if these are not eternal truths?

    What if they are merely conventions that humanity has become accustomed to?

    And what if our rapidly advancing technology is finally making it possible to organize civilization in an entirely different way?

    Perhaps the master of disguise is not quite as invisible as he once was.

    Perhaps some people have begun to recognize him.

    Perhaps they have started asking questions that go deeper than the familiar arguments about who should have more money, who should pay more taxes, and who should control the economy.

    And perhaps, for the first time in human history, we are approaching a point where we have the technological capacity to seriously consider leaving the monetary system behind.

    Deeply Embedded

    The greatest disguise is not one that makes something disappear.

    It is one that makes something so familiar that nobody thinks to question its existence.

    Money has become so deeply embedded in our understanding of civilization that we struggle to imagine civilization without it.

    We see the corruption. We see the inequality. We see the environmental destruction. We see the poverty, the competition, and the conflicts.

    And we keep trying to solve these problems within the very structure that helps perpetuate them.

    But perhaps the time has come to look beneath the surface.

    To question not merely the people who operate the system, but the system itself.

    Because the monetary system is not a law of nature.

    We invented it.

    And we can choose to replace it.

    The master of disguise has been hiding in plain sight all along.

    But a disguise only works as long as nobody recognizes it.

    ⸻

    What might happen when humanity finally begins to see beyond money?

    The novel, Waking Up: A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity, explores precisely that possibility through the story of Benjamin Michaels, a bewildered billionaire who awakens after a hundred years to discover a civilization that has abandoned money, trading, and ownership in favor of collaboration, sharing, and stewardship.

    Discover the story

  • The Starting Point

    The Starting Point

    What is the price of a sunrise?

    With the rapid development of AI, robotics and automation, we may be approaching a transition to a moneyless, resource-based world much faster than we think. 

    That makes it increasingly important to understand how we would relate to value without money and prices. Because if we are to embrace such a future, we must first question some of the assumptions we have grown up with.

    So.

    How do we teach children the real value of things without money?

    An old friend asked me this recently.

    He is genuinely interested in the kind of moneyless, resource-based world I describe in Waking Up, but this question bothered him.

    Without money, how will children understand what things are really worth?

    It sounds like an obvious problem.

    Until we go back to the starting point.

    Before Price

    Long before there were humans, there was Earth.

    There were forests, rivers, oceans, fertile soil, minerals, animals, plants, sunlight and rain.

    Were they valuable?

    Of course.

    But none of them had a price.

    There was no price attached to a river. No monetary value printed on an apple. No deed declaring who owned a mountain. No border drawn across the landscape. No currency with which one animal could purchase access to water from another.

    The world had value before it had prices.

    Value Precedes Price

    Then humans arrived.

    Over thousands of years, we developed increasingly sophisticated systems of territory, ownership, trade, accounting and money. We measured the land, divided it into pieces, established ownership claims and eventually attached monetary values to almost everything that could be bought and sold.

    And because every one of us is now born into that world, it feels like the natural starting point.

    But it isn’t.

    It is the starting point we inherited.

    The Child

    Now consider another starting point.

    A child is born.

    What does that child know about money?

    Nothing.

    What does it know about price?

    Nothing.

    What does it know about ownership, wages, markets, profit, debt or trade?

    Nothing.

    And yet almost immediately the child experiences value.

    The child becomes hungry.

    Mother’s milk has value.

    The child becomes cold.

    Warmth has value.

    The child becomes frightened.

    The embrace of a parent has value.

    Attention has value. Sleep has value. Safety has value.

    Later, play has value. Friendship has value. Exploration has value. Particular foods have value. Particular people have value.

    None of this has to be measured.

    The child experiences it.

    Perhaps this is what value fundamentally is at the human level:

    appreciation.

    The Kitten

    We can see something similar throughout nature.

    A kitten doesn’t know the price of its mother’s milk.

    It doesn’t need to.

    It becomes hungry, suckles, and its hunger is satisfied.

    Later its mother may take it into the world where it gradually learns how to hunt, where to find safety, what represents danger and what satisfies its needs.

    A mouse has value to the cat.

    Water has value.

    Shelter has value.

    The mother’s presence has value.

    But the cat doesn’t need to decide that one mouse is worth ten dollars while a rat is worth twenty.

    Its world contains value without monetary valuation. Just like with a human child.

    Humans have an extraordinary capacity that the cat does not possess to anything like the same degree. We can abstract, count, categorize and measure the world around us.

    That ability is enormously useful.

    But somewhere along the way, measurement became intertwined with ownership, exchange and money.

    We began confusing the measurement with the value itself.

    Appreciation

    Imagine that you love strawberries but haven’t tasted one for six months.

    Someone offers you one.

    You smell it. You bite into it. It is perfectly ripe and tastes absolutely wonderful.

    You appreciate that strawberry enormously.

    How much?

    Five euros?

    Fifty?

    Five hundred?

    The question quickly becomes absurd.

    The strawberry might have a market price, but the price cannot measure your appreciation of eating it. Value is not price.

    And if somebody gave you the strawberry for free, its price to you was zero.

    Was its value therefore zero?

    Obviously not.

    Now imagine that you are completely stuffed after a huge meal and someone offers you another strawberry.

    You might not want it at all.

    Same strawberry.

    Same market price.

    Completely different value to you.

    Or imagine that strawberries and pears are both freely available.

    You love strawberries and hate pears.

    Both have a price of zero.

    Are they therefore equally valuable to you?

    Of course not.

    You walk past the pears and take the strawberries.

    Value is still there.

    No price is required.

    Our appreciation depends upon our needs, preferences, circumstances and experiences. It cannot be adequately expressed by attaching a monetary number to the object.

    The Rag Doll

    Perhaps children demonstrate this better than anyone.

    Imagine a child has an old rag doll.

    It is faded and worn. One eye is missing. It has been repaired several times. Nobody would pay much for it. If anything.

    But the child has slept with that doll every night for five years.

    It has been there when the child was frightened. It came along on holidays. It has a name. Memories are attached to it.

    To the market, the doll may be almost worthless.

    To the child, it may be irreplaceable. If lost it may be a crisis for the child.

    Then an adult says:

    “Why are you so upset? It’s only a cheap old doll. We’ll buy you a new one.”

    Only a Cheap Toy

    Think about what we have just done.

    We have taken the child’s immense experienced appreciation and placed our monetary measurement above it.

    The new doll might cost €20.

    The old one might be worth €1 on a market.

    But which one has greater value to the child?

    The child already knows.

    We are the ones confusing the issue. Not the child. 

    Learning Price

    Children don’t have to be taught value.

    They have to be taught price.

    And why do we teach them price?

    Because we have created a monetary society in which they need to understand it.

    They have to learn that €100 provides more purchasing power than €10. They have to learn that their parents cannot necessarily afford something. Eventually they have to understand wages, bills, rent, bank accounts, debt and all the other rules required to function within the system they were born into.

    Price is therefore useful information inside a monetary system.

    But that doesn’t make price the same thing as value.

    When we tell a child:

    “Be careful with that. It was expensive.”

    we are teaching something subtly different from:

    “Be careful with that. Appreciate it and take care of it.”

    And when we say:

    “It’s only a cheap toy.”

    we may be teaching something worse:

    that low price means low value.

    But the child with the rag doll knows that isn’t true.

    Real Value

    Many of the greatest values in a child’s life are already priceless.

    The attention of a parent.

    Friendship.

    Feeling safe.

    Being loved.

    Playing.

    Learning.

    Belonging.

    Nature.

    A favorite toy.

    A bedtime story.

    We don’t need to tell a child the monetary price of a parent’s attention for the child to appreciate it.

    There isn’t one.

    We even say that we pay attention, but no money changes hands.

    The experience itself has value.

    So perhaps the question is not:

    “How will we teach children value without money?”

    Perhaps it is:

    Why did we begin teaching children that price tells them value?

    Maybe we should rather ask:

    Why did we invent money at all and then tell our children money is value?

    What We Measure

    A resource-based economy would not mean that humanity suddenly stopped measuring things.

    Quite the opposite.

    We would still use calculation in kind.

    We would measure how much water we have.

    How much grain.

    How much electricity.

    How many homes.

    How much steel.

    How many strawberries.

    We could measure soil health, ecological regeneration, production capacity, consumption and demand with extraordinary precision.

    Suppose we have 100 strawberries and 100 people would like strawberries.

    That is useful information.

    There is temporary scarcity, and we may have to share them fairly.

    But why must we conclude that scarcity means the strawberries now have to cost €10 each?

    We don’t need a price to understand the physical situation.

    We need to know:

    How many strawberries do we have?

    How many people want them?

    Can we sustainably grow more?

    If demand is consistently greater than supply, we can increase production where resources and ecological conditions allow.

    If there is a temporary shortage, we can share what is available fairly.

    Scarcity requires intelligent allocation.

    It does not require a price.

    Shared Access

    This is where the starting point matters again.

    Today, the strawberry field probably belongs to somebody.

    The land belongs to somebody.

    The equipment belongs to somebody.

    The harvest belongs to somebody.

    Other people gain access through money.

    Now imagine starting somewhere else.

    Ownership has been transformed into stewardship.

    The resources of Earth are regarded as our common inheritance rather than enormous unequal pieces belonging exclusively to different individuals and institutions.

    We still measure everything necessary to manage those resources intelligently.

    But we begin with a different question.

    Not:

    Who owns the strawberries and what can they be sold for?

    But:

    How many strawberries do we have, how many do people want, and how can we sustainably provide enough?

    If there is abundance, take what you need and want.

    If there is scarcity, share fairly while addressing the physical reason for the shortage.

    The objective is not to produce the maximum possible amount of everything regardless of how much we destroy in the process.

    It is to produce enough to satisfy human needs and reasonable wants, maintain appropriate reserves, minimize waste and remain within ecological limits.

    Enough For All

    Imagine again those 100 strawberries and 100 people.

    If everyone wants one, everyone can have one.

    If twenty people don’t like strawberries, there may be more for those who do.

    If demand rises dramatically, the system detects it and, where sustainable, grows more. After all, we don’t absolutely need strawberries to survive. 

    We should be able to adapt and share what we have until more strawberries are ripe.

    Nobody gains a greater right to the strawberries merely because they have more money.

    Nobody owns the field and can withhold its harvest simply because it is their property.

    Everyone begins with an equal right of access, while actual distribution responds intelligently to need, preference and availability.

    That requires measurement.

    But it doesn’t require monetary valuation.

    Measure the resource, not the appreciation.

    We can measure that you ate 300 grams of strawberries.

    We cannot meaningfully measure how wonderful they tasted to you.

    We can measure how much food a child needs.

    We cannot put a price on the satisfaction of hunger.

    We can measure the materials in a rag doll.

    We cannot measure the child’s love for it.

    Two Worlds

    And so we arrive at two starting points.

    The first is the planet itself.

    Earth existed before ownership, money and prices.

    Its resources already had value because they supported life.

    Then humans created an abstract layer of ownership, trade and monetary valuation and eventually began treating that layer as though it were reality itself.

    The second starting point is every child.

    A child enters the world without understanding money or price.

    But the child already experiences value.

    Then we teach the child our abstract layer.

    And eventually the child may begin to see the world through the same monetary lens that we do.

    Starting Again

    What if we didn’t?

    What if we taught children appreciation instead of price?

    Where does your food come from?

    What did nature require to produce it?

    How much of it do we have?

    Does somebody else need some too?

    Can it be repaired rather than thrown away?

    Can somebody else use it when you no longer need it?

    What happens to the environment when we produce it?

    How can we care for it?

    These are lessons about value.

    A child doesn’t need to hear:

    “Don’t waste those strawberries. They were expensive.”

    The child can learn:

    “Don’t waste those strawberries. They required soil, water, sunlight, nutrients, pollination and care to grow. Other people would like some too. Take what you want, enjoy them, and don’t take more than you’ll use.”

    That is not a world without value.

    It may be a world with a much deeper understanding of it.

    The Starting Point

    My friend’s question was:

    How do we teach children the real value of things without money?

    Perhaps the answer is that we don’t need money to do it at all.

    Children experience value before they understand price.

    Human beings experienced value before we invented money.

    And we still do. There are many things we value because they are priceless. A sunrise. A sunset. The beauty of nature. The love of our children. 

    Life itself experienced value, in the form of needs, preferences and survival, long before humans existed.

    The world was valuable before we priced it.

    And a child knows that a beloved rag doll is valuable before an adult tells them it is cheap.

    Maybe we have had the question backwards.

    Perhaps our task is not to teach children value.

    Perhaps our task is to avoid teaching them not to confuse value with price.

    We still need measurement.

    We still need calculation.

    We still need to know what resources exist, where they are, how quickly they regenerate, how much people need and want, and how we can distribute them sustainably and fairly.

    But none of that requires us to put a monetary price on the experience of being alive.

    Value precedes price.

    It always did.

    And perhaps if we want to build a world based on stewardship, abundance, sharing and intelligent resource management, that is where we should start again.

    At the starting point. 

    A Unique Opportunity

    The bewildered billionaire Benjamin Michaels is given a unique opportunity to experience this value when he wakes up again after 100 years of cryonic sleep trying to escape his cancer in the novel 

    Waking Up: A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity, whichis a novel that explores a future in which trade and ownership have given way to stewardship, shared abundance and intelligent resource management. And where value is no longer quantified in the form of money. He hoped to wake up again to expand his empire, but instead he have to learn the real value of the world…

    Discover the story

  • The Constitutional Contradiction

    The Constitutional Contradiction

    The monetary system may be digging its own grave.

    Recently, Elon Musk responded to a post about wealth creation(eat the rich) with a simple warning:

    “The problem is that after they ‘eat the rich’, they will starve.”

    Someone responded by turning his argument around: the rich do not feed society. Workers do. If the rich vanished, work would continue. But without workers, what exactly would the rich have left to profit from?

    There is an extraordinary irony here.

    Elon Musk is building the technology that may actually make the workers vanish.

    Not the people themselves.

    But the need for their labor.

    The Workers

    For centuries, workers have been at the center of the monetary economy.

    They work.

    They receive wages.

    They spend those wages.

    Companies receive that money as revenue.

    Governments tax wages, employment and consumption and use that revenue to finance society.

    Then the cycle begins again.

    Workers are therefore not merely a cost to businesses. They are also the customers who buy what businesses produce and an important part of the tax base supporting governments.

    The OECD describes labor taxes—including income taxes, social-security contributions and payroll taxes—as a significant source of government revenue across its member countries. It also explicitly recognizes automation and AI as structural changes that may affect those tax bases. The system rewards efficiency. 

    Now introduce the robot.

    The Robot

    The robot doesn’t need a salary.

    It doesn’t pay personal income tax.

    It doesn’t need a pension.

    It doesn’t go shopping after work.

    It doesn’t take its family to a restaurant.

    It doesn’t buy a Tesla.

    Yet the company replacing the worker with that robot has a perfectly rational reason for doing so.

    The robot can potentially work longer, produce more, make fewer mistakes and become cheaper over time.

    From the perspective of an individual company, this can make perfect economic sense:

    Reduce labor. Reduce costs. Increase productivity. Increase profit.

    But what happens when everybody does it?

    Suddenly we encounter something much bigger than unemployment.

    We encounter a contradiction within the structure of the monetary system itself.

    The Contradiction

    The system itself rewards companies for eliminating human labor while simultaneously depending heavily on income generated through human labor to maintain purchasing power in order to keep the system running.

    That is the constitutional contradiction.

    Not constitutional in the political sense, but in the deeper meaning of the word: a contradiction in how the system itself is constituted.

    Every individual company has an incentive to be more efficient: to automate.

    But if automation eventually succeeds beyond our wildest dreams, who buys everything?

    The machines can produce a million cars.

    Wonderful.

    Who buys them?

    The machines can build houses.

    Fantastic.

    Who pays for them?

    The machines can grow food, manufacture clothes, transport products, construct infrastructure and provide services.

    Amazing.

    But robots don’t receive wages.

    And robots don’t go shopping.

    The Taxes

    Then there is another problem.

    Governments are deeply connected to the same employment structure.

    Workers pay income taxes and social-security contributions. Employers make employment-related contributions. Workers then spend their remaining income, generating VAT and other consumption taxes.

    Remove enough paid human labor and governments may have to rethink where a substantial part of their revenue comes from.

    Government Revenues

    This isn’t merely speculation about an obscure tax problem. The OECD has specifically warned that automation could affect government revenues if labor-tax bases erode, particularly because many countries rely heavily on taxes connected to labor.

    Of course governments can respond.

    Tax corporations more.

    Tax capital.

    Tax automated production.

    Create new forms of taxation.

    Redistribute the proceeds.

    Perhaps use some of that revenue to finance Universal Basic Income, which ironically is used to pay for products produced by the machines that made them unemployed in the first place.

    Or, as Elon Musk prefers to call his envisioned future, Universal High Income. Musk has repeatedly argued that AI and robotics could eventually create enormous abundance while making conventional work optional.

    But this raises another problem.

    If human employment keeps disappearing, governments lose much of the very tax revenues upon which redistribution currently depends. Taxes would increasingly have to be shifted toward the companies, capital and automated productive systems where the remaining monetary income accumulates.

    We would then be taxing the automated economy in order to give people money so that they could buy what the automated economy produced without them. Money itself becomes eroded and more and more pointless.

    At some point we might reasonably ask:

    Why are we keeping the money in the middle at all?

    The Grave

    This is what makes the present moment in human history so fascinating.

    The monetary system is not necessarily being destroyed by revolutionaries standing outside the gates.

    It may be undermining  its own foundation by following its internal logic:

    • Competition demands greater efficiency
    • Greater efficiency demands automation
    • Automation reduces the need for labor
    • Reduced labor can reduce wage income
    • Reduced wage income can reduce purchasing power

    And reduced employment can weaken traditional tax bases.

    The system is, in a sense, digging its own grave.

    Not because somebody planned it.

    Because everybody is doing exactly what the system tells them to do. 

    Increase efficiency.

    The Fear

    And yet, for many people, this doesn’t feel like liberation. 

    It feels terrifying.

    If AI and robots takes our jobs, we may lose our income, our security and the system we have depended upon all our lives. Money has become so deeply connected to our existence that imagining a world without it can feel like imagining a world without security itself.

    But does money actually secure our existence?

    Money doesn’t feed us. Food does. Money doesn’t shelter us. Homes do. Money doesn’t produce the things we need. Resources, knowledge, technology and human ingenuity do.

    Money is the system we currently use to gain access to them.

    Perhaps the fear is understandable precisely because we have confused the two for so long. Resources and money. They are not the same.

    And perhaps it is finally time to wean ourselves from that misconception.

    Liberation

    We’ve seen technological revolutions before.

    Again and again, machines have replaced human labor.

    And every time, we have celebrated increased productivity.

    We call machines labor-saving devices.

    But there has always been something strange about that expression.

    Whose labor did they save?

    If a machine eliminated your exhausting repetitive job but your survival depended upon the wage from that job, the machine didn’t necessarily make you feel liberated.

    You lost your income.

    You had to find another job.

    Technology liberated humanity from one form of work while the economic system continued requiring us to work with something else.

    Perhaps AI and robotics are finally bringing that contradiction to its conclusion.

    Perhaps the ultimate purpose of labor-saving technology is not simply to save labor.

    Perhaps it is to save all humans from compulsory labor.

    True Freedom

    Imagine that machines really can do most of the work we don’t want to do.

    They grow the food.

    Build the houses.

    Manufacture the products.

    Maintain infrastructure.

    Transport resources.

    Recycle materials.

    AI helps coordinate production and distribution according to real human needs and real available resources.

    What exactly have we lost?

    Jobs?

    Or have we gained something extraordinary?

    Freedom.

    Not the freedom to choose which employer we sell our time to.

    Not the freedom to compete for enough money to survive.

    Not the freedom to spend our lives earning access to the products our machines can already produce.

    Something much more fundamental.

    The freedom to live.

    The freedom to create.

    The freedom to learn.

    The freedom to care for others.

    The freedom to explore.

    The freedom to contribute because we want to contribute.

    The freedom to ask, perhaps for the first time:

    What would I actually like to do with my life?

    The Choice

    And that brings us back to Elon Musk.

    He warns that if we “eat the rich,” we may eventually starve.

    But perhaps that is asking the wrong question.

    What happens when nobody needs to eat anybody?

    What happens when machines can produce enough food for everyone?

    When robots can build enough homes?

    When automated systems can manufacture what we need?

    When AI can help us manage resources intelligently?

    What happens when human labor is no longer the foundation upon which material abundance depends?

    Humanity hasn’t suddenly become poor.

    Quite the opposite.

    We may have become richer than at any point in history.

    Yet if access to that abundance still depends upon obtaining money through work that society no longer needs us to perform, we will have created one of the strangest situations imaginable.

    We will have developed the technology to liberate humanity while maintaining an economic structure that prevents us from experiencing the liberation.

    Maybe AI and robotics aren’t merely threatening the monetary system.

    Maybe they are revealing that we are beginning to outgrow it.

    Earth Constitution

    But technology will not make the final decision for us.

    However far AI and robotics advance, humanity will still have to decide what kind of civilization we want to create with them.

    Perhaps nations could eventually come together and create a new Constitution of Earth, based upon global cooperation, stewardship of our common resources and freedom from economic coercion.

    Not freedom to consume infinitely. We still live on a finite planet.

    Not freedom to do anything regardless of its consequences for others.

    But freedom from having to sell our labor simply to earn the right to live.

    A world in which technology finally fulfills its greatest promise: not merely producing more for us, but setting us free.

    Waking Up

    How exactly do we get from here to there?

    I don’t pretend to have a blueprint.

    Waking Up: A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity is not a manifesto detailing every step of the transition or every mechanism of a future civilization.

    It is something much simpler.

    A glimpse of what might be possible.

    The story begins in 2015 with Benjamin Michaels, a billionaire facing terminal cancer. Desperate to escape death, he chooses cryonic preservation, hoping that future medicine will eventually cure him so he can wake up and continue expanding his empire.

    He gets his wish.

    Benjamin wakes up a century later.

    His cancer is cured.

    There is only one small problem.

    His empire no longer exists.

    Neither does his money.

    Neither does anyone else’s.

    The concepts upon which his entire life was built—money, trade and ownership—have disappeared.

    Benjamin expected to wake up in the future and reclaim his wealth.

    Instead, he wakes up in a civilization where wealth itself has been redefined.

    Not a Blueprint

    People no longer spend their lives earning the right to live. Technology handles much of the work once performed out of necessity. Resources are shared and managed intelligently. People are free to create, explore, learn, contribute and simply live.

    Benjamin has awakened in the world this article has been imagining.

    Not a perfect world.

    Not a blueprint.

    Not a prediction.

    A possibility.

    And perhaps that is where every transformation begins.

    Before we can create a different world, we first have to be able to imagine one.

    Discover the story

  • The Real Purpose of AI

    The Real Purpose of AI

    We are racing to create an intelligence greater than our own.

    Companies are investing hundreds of billions. Nations are competing. Artificial intelligence is becoming more capable at extraordinary speed, and somewhere ahead lies the possibility of AGI — Artificial General Intelligence — and perhaps eventually something even more capable than that.

    There is enormous discussion about whether AI will be safe.

    There is enormous discussion about whether AI will take our jobs. It will.

    There is enormous discussion about who will develop the most powerful AI first.

    But there is a much simpler question that seems strangely absent.

    What is the real purpose of AI?

    The Race

    At the moment, there doesn’t seem to be one answer.

    Every company has its own purpose. Develop better products. Increase productivity. Reduce costs. Gain market share. Make money.

    Governments have other purposes. Increase national competitiveness. Improve administration. Strengthen national security.

    And inevitably, militaries are interested too.

    Meanwhile, humanity watches the race and wonders where it is taking us.

    Perhaps AI will cure diseases.

    Perhaps it will accelerate scientific discoveries.

    Perhaps it will solve problems we haven’t been able to solve ourselves.

    Perhaps it will replace enormous numbers of jobs.

    Perhaps it will create abundance beyond anything humanity has previously experienced.

    Perhaps it will become dangerous, break free and turn on us.

    Nobody really knows.

    And that is precisely the point.

    We are developing perhaps the most powerful technology humanity has ever created without first agreeing on what we ultimately want to accomplish with it.

    More and More

    The underlying purpose of automation has always seemed fairly obvious.

    Do more with less effort.

    The plough and bull replaced some human muscle. The tractor replaced much more. Industrial machinery transformed manufacturing. Computers automated calculations and administration. Robots entered factories.

    Each step allowed us to produce more, faster and with less human labor.

    AI continues that story, but with one enormous difference.

    We are no longer merely automating muscle.

    We are beginning to automate intelligence.

    Writing. Programming. Designing. Diagnosing. Planning. Researching. Organizing. Analyzing.

    And when artificial intelligence is combined with increasingly capable robotics, we could be approaching something humanity has never experienced before:

    an extreme abundance of labor.

    For almost all of human history, labor has been scarce.

    Now it may cease to be.

    Abundance

    Some technology leaders believe AI and robotics could eventually produce extraordinary material abundance.

    Perhaps they are right.

    But abundance alone doesn’t answer the important question.

    Who is the abundance for?

    If a company owns the AI, owns the robots, owns the factories and sells what those machines produce, we haven’t fundamentally changed the underlying system.

    We have simply created vastly more productive means within it.

    And that produces a peculiar contradiction.

    Suppose AI and robotics can produce more goods and services while requiring fewer human workers.

    That sounds like progress.

    But in our current monetary system, most people still need money to access those goods and services, and most people obtain that money through work.

    So the machines produce more.

    Humans need to work less.

    People lose jobs.

    People lose income.

    And suddenly they struggle to afford the extraordinary abundance the machines are producing. Unless the products cost less and less, which might be the result of this extreme productive abundance. But when the prices reach zero or close to zero, what is the point of money at all? And if money has no point, what about ownership and trading itself? To sell something requires that someone owns it first. Maybe it’s time we look closer on the whole ownership-trading-money paradigm…?

    Succeeding with AGI without addressing this question means we would have succeeded technologically while failing logically.

    Jobs

    This is why so much of the discussion about AI and employment sounds strangely confused.

    What are people going to do when AI takes their jobs?

    But perhaps we’re asking the question backwards.

    For thousands of years, we have invented machines precisely because we wanted to reduce human labor.

    Nobody invented the washing machine because washing clothes by hand was such a wonderful human experience that we wanted to preserve it.

    We automate work because automation can free human beings from having to do it.

    And now, having potentially created the ultimate automation technology, we are frightened that it might actually succeed.

    Why?

    Because we have connected two things that don’t necessarily have to remain connected:

    1. the production of what we need and 
    2. our right to access it.

    If you need a job to earn money, and you need money to live, then losing your job is terrifying.

    But that isn’t a problem created by abundance.

    It is a problem created by the system through which we distribute that abundance.

    The Question

    So perhaps the purpose of AI should not simply be:

    How can we produce more?

    How can we make companies more profitable?

    How can we increase sales?

    How can we make our nation more competitive?

    And certainly not:

    How can we build more powerful weapons?

    Perhaps we should ask something much bigger.

    How can this extraordinary intelligence help create the best possible life for humanity on the planet we share?

    That is a very different assignment.

    Imagine using AI to understand the Earth as one interconnected system.

    What resources do we have?

    What do people actually need and want?

    Where are the shortages?

    Where are the surpluses?

    What are we wasting?

    What can be reused?

    What can be recycled?

    How much food should we produce?

    Where should it go?

    How can housing, transportation, energy and infrastructure be provided using the least resources and causing the least ecological damage?

    Where are we exceeding planetary limits?

    How can we restore what we have damaged?

    Instead of asking AI to optimize sales, we could ask it to help us optimize life.

    Economy

    And perhaps something else happens here.

    We rediscover the true meaning of an old word.

    Economy.

    The word comes from the Greek oikonomia: the management of a household.

    That is a profoundly different idea from what we commonly mean today when we speak about “the economy.”

    Today we largely mean finance, markets, prices, employment, investment, debt, growth and monetary transactions.

    But none of those things are the household itself.

    The household is here.

    Earth.

    Its soil.

    Its oceans.

    Its forests.

    Its atmosphere.

    Its minerals.

    Its energy.

    Its ecosystems.

    And us.

    Economy=ecology.

    Perhaps AI could help us practice economy in its most fundamental sense for the first time on a planetary scale:

    the intelligent management of our shared home.

    Not to maximize financial return.

    Not to maximize consumption.

    But to meet human needs while maintaining the ecological foundations upon which every human life depends.

    Perhaps AI will not bring about the end of economy.

    Perhaps it will finally allow us to create one. A real one.

    Human purpose

    But then something fascinating happens.

    The question turns around.

    If AI can increasingly perform our labor, we don’t only have to ask:

    What is the purpose of AI?

    We suddenly have the freedom to ask:

    What is the purpose of humans?

    For centuries, much of human life has revolved around making ourselves useful to the monetary system.

    We educate ourselves so we can get jobs.

    We get jobs so we can earn money.

    We earn money so we can pay for somewhere to live, food to eat and everything else we need.

    “What do you do?” has become synonymous with:

    “What do you do for money?”

    But is that really the purpose of a human being?

    To spend decades toiling and working in order to obtain permission to live?

    Perhaps AI and robotics will finally allow us to separate work from purpose.

    That doesn’t mean humans stop doing things.

    Quite the opposite.

    We can create.

    Learn.

    Explore.

    Invent.

    Love.

    Raise children.

    Care for one another.

    Grow food.

    Make music.

    Dance.

    Play.

    Study the universe.

    Build communities.

    Restore forests.

    Explore and clean up oceans.

    Travel beyond Earth.

    And continue doing all kinds of work simply because we find that work meaningful.

    The difference is profound.

    We no longer have to justify our existence through our financial usefulness.

    Stewards

    Perhaps our role on Earth was never supposed to be that of workers serving a financial machine.

    Perhaps it is something much greater.

    Being stewards.

    We arrived on an extraordinary bountyful living planet that provides everything required for our existence.

    Air.

    Water.

    Food.

    Materials.

    Energy.

    Life itself.

    Perhaps our purpose is not to own as much of it as possible, extract as much value from it as possible and compete over the proceeds.

    Perhaps our purpose is to understand it, care for it and ensure that the extraordinary abundance it provides can sustain life far into the future. For generations to come.

    Artificial intelligence could help us do that.

    Not as our ruler or our master.

    But as perhaps the most extraordinary tool humanity has ever created.

    A tool capable of helping us understand enormously complex systems, coordinate resources, eliminate waste, automate unnecessary labor and manage our planetary household with an intelligence we have never possessed before.

    The Purpose

    We are understandably spending enormous effort asking how to make AI safe.

    We are asking what happens when AI takes our jobs.

    We are asking which company will win the race.

    We are asking which country will lead.

    But perhaps before racing much further, maybe we should have a much bigger conversation.

    Where are we racing to?

    We don’t have to know exactly what the future will look like.

    Nobody does.

    But we can decide what kind of future we would like to create.

    Perhaps the greatest question about artificial intelligence is not how intelligent it will become.

    It is what we will ask it to do.

    And perhaps the answer begins with another question entirely.

    If machines can eventually free us from spending our lives serving the system we created…

    what would we like to spend our lives serving instead?

    Perhaps the answer has been beneath our feet all along.

    Earth.

    Life.

    Each other.

    Imagine It

    What would such a world actually look like?

    A world where AI and automation no longer threaten our livelihoods, but liberate us from the need to work simply to survive. Where technology serves humanity, humanity becomes the steward of Earth, and abundance is shared rather than sold.

    That is the world explored in Waking Up: A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity.

    Because before we can create a different future, we first have to imagine one.

    Discover the story

  • For All the Reasons in the World

    For All the Reasons in the World

    Why would humanity abandon money, markets and ownership? There had better be some very good reasons.

    This blog is largely about a future based on a global resource-based economy: a non market system without money or trade, where the resources of the Earth are managed and shared for the benefit of humanity while protecting the living planet upon which we depend.

    That is quite a departure from the world we live in today.

    So why would we want to do it?

    For some, the answer might seem obvious.

    Like, duh! The monetary system? Look around! It’s running the planet—and humanity—into the ground!

    Climate change. Pollution. Poverty. War. Inequality. Environmental destruction. Debt. Stress. Homelessness. Overconsumption. Resource depletion.

    Take your pick.

    But let’s go deeper.

    Because I can already hear the objection.

    I like this system. I’m used to it.

    Money. Trading. Buying and selling. Ownership. It works. 

    These things are woven so deeply into our lives that they seem almost natural. And now you want the whole of humanity to abandon them?

    That’s a tall order.

    Besides, is there even enough for everyone? There are more than eight billion human beings on this planet. Surely we can’t all live abundant lives. Maybe the real problem is overpopulation. Maybe there are simply too many of us.

    And the system we have does work.

    At least for some.

    Hundreds of millions live comfortable lives. Some live in extraordinary abundance. 

    Born into poverty? 

    Tough luck. 

    Not my problem.

    Besides, even people born into poverty have become rich. Doesn’t that prove the opportunity is there? Work hard. Educate yourself. Start a company. Make smart investments. Climb the ladder.

    Maybe the system isn’t the problem.

    Maybe you just need to climb harder.

    Fine.

    Then let’s look at the system.

    Homelessness

    Start with something as basic as a home.

    There are millions of people sleeping on streets, in cars, under bridges and in temporary shelters while millions of homes stand empty. 

    Think about the physical reality of that for a moment.

    The homeless person exists.

    The empty home exists.

    The materials have already been extracted and the building  constructed. The roof is there. The walls are there. The plumbing is there. The electricity may already be connected.

    There is no physical shortage between that particular human being and that particular empty home.

    What is missing is permission to use it.

    Why?

    Because a home in our system is not merely a place for someone to live. It is property. An asset. An investment. Something that can be bought, sold, rented, inherited, mortgaged and held for financial gain.

    So we can simultaneously have:

    people without homes and homes without people.

    And somehow we have learned to see nothing particularly strange about this.

    The physical solution can be standing homeless across the street from the vacant home, while the economic system keeps them apart.

    That brings us to something much bigger.

    Artificial Scarcity

    Jacque Fresco was an American futurist and designer who founded The Venus Project and spent much of his life developing the idea of a resource-based economy.

    One of the experiences that shaped his thinking came during the Great Depression initiated by the stock market crash in 1929. He watched people struggle desperately to obtain food and other necessities.

    But something didn’t make sense.

    America hadn’t suddenly run out of everything. The farmland was still there. The shops were full. The factories were still there. The workers were still there. The knowledge was still there. Products could sit on shelves in stores while people outside couldn’t buy them.

    The resources existed.

    The need existed.

    What didn’t exist?

    Enough money in people’s pockets.

    That exposes an enormously important distinction.

    Real Scarcity

    There is real scarcity. If we have a thousand units of something and one million people need one, we have a genuine physical shortage. No economic system can magically change that.

    Artificial Scarcity

    But then there is artificial scarcity.

    Food exists, but you are hungry because you cannot afford it.

    A home exists, but you cannot live in it because you cannot afford it.

    Medicine exists, but you cannot obtain it because you cannot afford it.

    The problem isn’t necessarily that the thing doesn’t exist.

    The problem is that you don’t have enough purchasing power to access it.

    We have created scarcity where no physical scarcity necessarily exists.

    And we consider this normal.

    Poverty

    Now consider poverty itself.

    What does it actually mean to be poor?

    Does it mean there isn’t enough food on Earth for you? Not necessarily.

    Does it mean there aren’t enough clothes? Not necessarily.

    Does it mean humanity lacks the technology to provide clean water, electricity, communication, education or shelter? Not necessarily.

    It means you don’t have enough money to command access to those things.

    Abundance

    A person can stand surrounded by abundance and still be poor. Supermarkets can be full of food. Apartments can stand empty. Electricity can flow through wires. Information can travel instantly across the planet. Warehouses can overflow with products.

    And that person can have virtually no claim on any of it.

    Why?

    A number in an account.

    We call that number wealth.

    We call the absence of that number poverty.

    The physical world can be exactly the same in both cases.

    Inequality

    Meanwhile, somebody else can possess billions of those numbers.

    We often discuss inequality as though it were simply about envy.

    It isn’t.

    Money represents access. More money means greater access to land, housing, resources, transportation, healthcare, education, comfort, security and influence. Less money means less access. No money can mean almost no access at all.

    And yes, someone born poor can become rich.

    It happens.

    But that doesn’t answer the structural question.

    Can everybody become rich?

    What would rich even mean if everybody were rich?

    Rich only has meaning relative to someone having less.

    The system can absolutely produce winners.

    The question is whether a civilization should be designed around producing winners and losers in access to the resources everyone depends upon.

    Overconsumption

    Then we arrive at the other side of scarcity. Something politicians again and again urge us to not do.  Consume too much. But we have to consume, or else the system collapses. If we don’t buy enough everything stops.

    We don’t merely produce what people need. We need people to keep buying.

    Businesses require customers. Sales require demand. Investments require returns. Growth requires more economic activity by humans.

    So an enormous industry exists to persuade us that what we already have isn’t enough.

    A new phone. 

    A new car. 

    New clothes. 

    A new kitchen. 

    A new television. 

    A new model. 

    A new trend. 

    A new version.

    Buy. Replace. Upgrade. Discard. Pollute. Repeat.

    This isn’t a condemnation of people enjoying beautiful things. Design is wonderful. Variety is wonderful. New technology can genuinely improve our lives.

    But an economy dependent upon continuing sales has a built-in problem with the idea:

    That’s enough.

    Nature has limits.

    The market hates them.

    Waste

    The result is a remarkably wasteful cycle.

    We extract resources, manufacture products, package them, transport them, sell them, use them and discard them. 

    Then we extract more resources and begin again.

    Food gets thrown away while people are hungry. 

    Clothes are discarded. 

    Electronics are discarded. 

    Furniture is discarded. 

    Packaging exists for minutes and becomes waste for years. Perfectly usable things are replaced because a newer version has arrived.

    Consider product longevity.

    Imagine a washing machine designed to last 100 years, built from standardized components that can easily be repaired or replaced.

    Brilliant resource management.

    Terrible repeat business.

    A product that doesn’t need replacing doesn’t generate another sale.

    We have built an economy in which:

     Using fewer resources  conflicts directly with making more money.

    The Planet

    Now zoom out.

    Where does all this stuff come from?

    Earth.

    There is nowhere else.

    We drill into it, blast it, excavate it, pump it, cut it, mine it and burn it. And then we dump all the waste back unto it. We rip open enormous pits to extract minerals. We clear forests. We drill for oil and gas. We destroy habitats. We degrade soils. We remove resources from ecosystems faster than some can regenerate.

    And all of it becomes economic activity for the monetary system.

    A standing forest performs an extraordinary amount of useful work. It stores carbon, regulates water, protects soil, creates oxygen and habitat and supports biodiversity.

    Cut it down and sell it, however, and something magical happens.

    It becomes money. Numbers in a machine.

    The accounting system notices. GDP notices. The market notices.

    The forest?

    Gone.

    Overfishing

    The oceans provide an almost perfect example.

    Fish can reproduce in large numbers. Given healthy ecosystems and enough time, populations can replenish themselves.

    But fish also have prices.

    Boats cost money. Fuel costs money. Workers need incomes. Companies need revenue. Loans need servicing. Investors expect returns.

    Suddenly two calculations collide.

    The ecosystem asks:

    How much can be taken while allowing the population to recover?

    The economy asks:

    How much can be caught profitably?

    Those are not automatically the same answer.

    When they conflict, the fish don’t have lawyers.

    Pollution

    Then there is everything we dump back into the system.

    Carbon dioxide and other gas pollutants. Plastics. Chemicals. Wastewater. Mining waste. Industrial waste. Electronic waste.

    We extract concentrated resources from nature, turn them into products and eventually return much of the residue to nature in forms ecosystems cannot easily absorb.

    Then we create another industry to clean it up.

    First we make money creating the problem.

    Then we make money cleaning up the problem.

    Excellent for economic activity.

    Not quite as impressive for the planet.

    Human Health

    Eventually the damage comes back to us.

    We breathe the air. Drink the water. Eat the food. Live in the climate.

    Pollution damages human health. Environmental contamination exposes people to harmful substances. Climate change increases risks from extreme heat, fires and disruptions to food and water systems. And most of it is dumped on the poorest countries in the world. The countries who made most of the products in the first place. For pennies on the dollar.

    And then there is another form of damage that doesn’t come from a smokestack.

    Stress.

    Can I pay my rent? Can I pay the mortgage? Can I afford food? What happens if I lose my job? How will I pay my debt? Can I afford treatment? What happens when I retire? What if I get sick and can’t work?

    Millions upon millions of people carry these questions around every day.

    We call it life.

    Much of it isn’t life.

    It’s economics. Twisted life.

    Time and Work

    Then there is the extraordinary amount of our lives devoted to earning the right to continue living. Time spent chasing dollars instead of spending it with our loved ones and what we truly love doing.

    We spend years in education preparing for work. Then many of us spend decades selling a large part of our waking lives in exchange for the money required to obtain food, shelter and everything else. Paying back the mortgage that some bank created from nothing.

    Some people love their work. Many don’t. Some work is meaningful and necessary. Some exists largely because of the economic machinery surrounding everything else.

    For generations we have dreamed of machines taking over dangerous, exhausting and repetitive labor.

    And now they increasingly can.

    Which should be wonderful.

    Except in a monetary system, losing your work to a machine can mean losing your income. Losing your income can mean losing access to the things you need to live.

    So one of humanity’s greatest technological achievements becomes a threat.

    The machine can do your work! Fantastic! You’re fired! 

    We have created technology capable of freeing human beings from labor and an economic system capable of turning that freedom into poverty.

    And now something far bigger is arriving.

    Artificial Intelligence

    Artificial intelligence changes the equation completely.

    For centuries, technological change has replaced particular forms of human labor while creating others. The usual answer to automation has therefore been simple: people will find new jobs.

    But what happens as machines become capable not merely of replacing muscle, but increasingly of performing cognitive work as well?

    Writing. Coding. Translation. Administration. Analysis. Customer service. Design. Logistics. Accounting. Research. Driving. Planning. Diagnosis. Manufacturing.

    AI doesn’t need to replace every job for the problem to become enormous.

    It only needs to make significantly fewer human working hours necessary.

    And that creates a fundamental contradiction.

    Our technological objective is to make production more efficient—to produce more with less human labor.

    Our monetary system, however, still depends on people obtaining income, usually through work, so they can buy what is produced. Without enough people working and spending we will in effect not be able to have a monetary system like the current one. People is what sustains the economy. Not machines.

    Think about that.

    We are building machines specifically because they can do more of the work.

    Then we depend on humans doing enough work to earn the money required to buy what the machines produce.

    The better the machines become, the stranger the arrangement becomes.

    Of course governments can respond with redistribution, shorter working weeks, new forms of taxation, basic income and other mechanisms. Those could keep purchasing power circulating even if traditional employment falls. And much of that basic income would go directly back to the corporations that created the technology in the first place. An absurd loop.

    Notice what we would actually be doing.

    We would be desperately inventing ways of giving people enough money to access an abundance that increasingly requires less human labor to produce.

    Why?

    If AI and automation eventually allow us to produce food, housing, energy, transportation, manufactured goods and services with a fraction of today’s human labor, why should access to those things still depend upon having a job earning money at all?

    AI may therefore be more than another technological revolution.

    It may expose the fundamental absurdity of tying the right to live to the necessity of human labor. There are plenty of reasons for redesign, but AI might be the only one we actually need. Making it inevitable.

    The old fear was:

    How will we produce enough if people don’t work?

    The new question may become:

    Why should we have to work if we can already produce enough?

    That alone is reason enough to start questioning the system.

    Debt

    And then there is debt. On top of it all.

    At the end of 2025, global debt stood at approximately $348 trillion.

    $348,000,000,000,000.

    That’s more than three times the annual economic output of the entire planet.

    Governments owe money. Companies owe money. Households owe money. Individuals owe money.

    But stop looking at the numbers for a moment and look at the physical planet.

    Who exactly does Earth owe it to?

    Mars?

    Jupiter?

    The Andromeda Galaxy?

    Did humanity borrow iron from aliens? Did we take out a mortgage on the Pacific Ocean? Is the Sun charging us for daylight and energy?

    Of course not.

    These are financial claims that human beings and human institutions hold against one another. And the irony is that this debt constitutes most of our money supply and thus can’t be erased. Because then we would have no money to trade with.

    Yet these artificial numbers have become powerful enough to determine what happens in the physical world.

    They can determine whether somebody keeps their home, whether a hospital gets built, whether a company survives, whether workers lose their jobs, whether a government cuts services, whether resources are extracted, whether a forest is cut down, and whether we supposedly can or cannot “afford” to solve a problem.

    And here it gets even stranger.

    Most of the money we actually use isn’t created by governments printing banknotes. Commercial banks create a large share of it when they make loans. In fact, about 97% of our current money supply was created by private banks. Only 3% is “real money” in the form of coins and paper notes created by central banks.

    Take out a mortgage and the bank doesn’t normally take a pile of existing money from a vault and hand it to you. The loan creates a new bank deposit.

    New debt.

    New money.

    And when the principal of that bank loan is repaid, that deposit money is destroyed again.

    So debt isn’t merely something sitting on top of our monetary system.

    Debt creation is one of the principal ways the money itself comes into existence.

    And then comes interest.

    Borrow €100,000 and you don’t simply owe €100,000. You owe the principal plus interest.

    Scale that across mortgages, credit, corporate borrowing and government debt and we arrive at a civilization carrying hundreds of trillions of dollars in financial obligations while continually requiring future income to service them. And the money to pay the interest has never been created in the system. Thus, not only will almost all our money supply disappear if all debt is repaid, it is structurally impossible, since the money to repay the interest was never created. Well, it was created. As more debt. With more interest. The absurdity never ends.

    But that doesn’t technically mean every dollar of interest requires another dollar of new debt. Money circulates, banks spend income back into the economy, and money can enter and leave circulation through other mechanisms.

    But here is the trap.

    If bank borrowers collectively paid down their loans without those loans being replaced by new lending or other money creation, enormous quantities of bank-deposit money would disappear with them.

    Pay down the debt, and you also destroy most of the money supply created with it.

    We cannot simply remove the mountain of bank debt while assuming all the money created alongside it remains conveniently sitting there.

    The Physical World

    And all those financial obligations ultimately come back to the physical world.

    Loans must be serviced. Interest must be paid. Companies need revenue. Governments need revenue. People need incomes. Investors seek returns.

    So we produce, sell, consume, extract and grow.

    Again and again.

    As the mountain of financial obligations grows, so does the pressure to generate the economic activity required to service them.

    But economic activity doesn’t happen inside a spreadsheet.

    It happens here.

    On Earth. In the physical world.

    More mining. More energy. More production. More shipping. More products. More consumption. More waste. More pollution. More conflict. More war. More stress. More disease. More extraction to make the replacements.

    The financial claims can keep expanding.

    The physical planet cannot.

    And now the circle closes.

    Debt demands income. Income depends on economic activity. Economic activity requires production and consumption. Production requires resources. Consumption creates waste. Growth demands more production, which generates more economic activity, while new lending creates new debt and new money. With new interest on top.

    We are caught in a debt loop.

    Now look back at everything we have already discussed.

    Artificial scarcity. Poverty. Financial stress. Burnout. Overconsumption. Resource depletion. Pollution. Environmental destruction.

    They are not isolated phenomena floating around independently. They are connected to an economic system that continually requires money to be earned, debts to be serviced, returns to be generated and economic activity to continue.

    Somebody always has to get the money. And someone has to pay. In the end it is ourselves.

    Because ultimately, the bill is paid in something far more real than money: energy, materials, forests, minerals, soil, water, fish, human time, human health and the atmosphere. Our human habitat.

    We have created hundreds of trillions of dollars of financial claims against ourselves and then organized the physical world around satisfying them.

    Money can be created with entries in a banking system. Debt can acquire another trillion. Interest can compound. A financial account can gain another zero.

    But forests cannot compound indefinitely.

    Fish populations cannot be extracted indefinitely.

    Mineral deposits don’t expand because the financial system needs another year of growth.

    The atmosphere doesn’t negotiate with our debt obligations.

    Artificial numbers can grow indefinitely. The physical world cannot.

    So how do we escape the debt loop?

    Restructure the debt? Refinance it? Regulate it? Forgive some of it? Create more money? Create new debt to replace old debt? Keep the machine going for another generation?

    Or ask the question underneath all of it:

    Why do we need the maniac machine at all?

    Debt exists because we owe.

    We owe because things have prices.

    Things have prices because we trade them.

    And we trade them because we have divided the resources of one planet into things somebody owns and somebody else must pay for.

    Debt isn’t the bottom of the rabbit hole.

    Money isn’t even the bottom.

    Underneath money sits trading.

    And underneath trading sits ownership.

    Mine. Yours. I own. You don’t. You pay me.

    Ideas so deeply embedded in civilization that questioning them sounds insane.

    But Maybe continuing them is the true insanity.

    War

    And then we arrive at the masterpiece.

    War.

    Wars have many causes: territory, nationalism, ideology, religion, security, political power and empire. But control over resources and economically valuable territory has repeatedly played a big role.

    Land. Oil. Minerals. Water. Ports. Trade routes. Intellectual property.

    One group wants control. Another group wants control.

    So we extract enormous quantities of resources, use immense amounts of energy, employ some of our most brilliant scientists and engineers and build aircraft, missiles, ships, tanks, bombs and weapons.

    Then we use them to destroy resources.

    Homes. Hospitals. Factories. Roads. Bridges. Power stations. Water systems. Farms. Nature. Human beings.

    Then, when we finally stop destroying everything, we rebuild it.

    More materials. More energy. More extraction. More work. More money.

    If an alien civilization were watching, this might be the point where they quietly locked their doors and left this planet.

    Look Again

    Now look at what we have assembled.

    Homelessness. Artificial scarcity. Poverty. Inequality. Overconsumption. Waste. Resource depletion. Deforestation. Overfishing. Pollution. Climate change. Disease. Stress. Burnout. Fear of unemployment, war, conflict and crime. Automation becoming a threat. AI potentially undermining the whole monetary system itself. Debt. War.

    Are all these things caused exclusively by money?

    No.

    Human beings are perfectly capable of stupidity without it.

    But look at what keeps appearing.

    Purchasing power. Prices. Profit. Ownership. Debt. Interest. Competition. Income. Return on investment. Economic growth. Money.

    The monetary system isn’t some innocent measuring device sitting beside civilization.

    It is almost civilization itself. Although, I wouldn’t call it civilized.

    It determines access.

    It rewards certain activities and punishes others. It tells us what is “economically viable.” It turns resources into assets, homes into investments, forests into timber, fish into revenue, human time into labor costs and destruction into economic gain.

    Then, when the consequences become unbearable, we turn back to the same system and ask:

    How much will it cost to fix them?

    Pollution? Put a price on it.

    Poverty? Find the money.

    Climate change? Calculate the investment.

    Destroyed ecosystems? Give nature a monetary value.

    Debt crisis? Find more financing.

    Mass automation? Find some way to give people enough money to keep buying things.

    We keep trying to solve monetary problems through monetary thinking.

    Maybe the problem goes deeper.

    Maybe money, trading and ownership themselves have reached the end of their usefulness.

    We invented them.

    But they aren’t gravity.

    They aren’t photosynthesis.

    They aren’t laws of nature.

    They are concepts.

    And concepts can be abandoned.

    The Real Economy

    Strip away the numbers.

    What actually keeps us alive?

    Food. Water. Energy. Land. Materials. Housing. Infrastructure. Knowledge. Technology. Healthy ecosystems. Joyful thriving human beings.

    That is the real economy.

    Not dollars.

    Not euros.

    Not GDP.

    Not stock prices.

    Not bank balances.

    Not $348 trillion of IOUs humanity has written to itself.

    So perhaps the question we constantly ask is the wrong one.

    How can we afford it?

    Can we afford to house everyone? Can we afford to feed everyone? Can we afford clean energy? Can we afford to restore ecosystems? Can we afford healthcare? Can we afford to stop destroying the climate?

    Wrong question.

    Here’s the right question:

    Do we have the resources?

    Do we have the food, energy, materials, land, productive capacity, knowledge and technology?

    And can we provide what we need without destroying the ecosystems upon which we depend?

    Those are physical questions.

    If the answer is no, we have a real problem. Use fewer resources. Find alternatives. Develop better technology. Recycle. Prioritize. Solve the actual shortage.

    But the truth is, we already produce way more than enough food and products to provide for the whole of humanity and then some. So, we have enough. We only need to do everything better. We don’t need infinite resources.

    We need to become intelligent about the resources we already have.

    We invented the obstacle.

    Money isn’t food.

    Money isn’t housing.

    Money isn’t energy.

    Money isn’t medicine.

    Money isn’t a forest.

    Money isn’t a fish.

    You cannot eat it, drink it or breathe it. Or build anything with it.

    And Earth has absolutely no idea it exists.

    True Freedom

    So now we can finally return to the beginning.

    Why would humanity contemplate something as radical as a global resource-based economy without money, trading or ownership?

    For all the reasons we have just looked at.

    Maybe the answer isn’t to redesign the debt.

    Maybe it isn’t to distribute money a little differently.

    Maybe it isn’t to invent greener financial products.

    Maybe it isn’t to tax robots so humans can continue buying what robots produce.

    Maybe it isn’t to make destruction slightly less profitable.

    Maybe it is time to stop organizing civilization around financial claims altogether.

    No money. No debt.

    Not because $348 trillion has somehow been magically repaid.

    But because the accounting system that created the debt is no longer needed.

    And notice what happens.

    The houses don’t disappear. The farmland doesn’t disappear. The factories don’t disappear. The solar panels don’t disappear. The trains don’t disappear. The hospitals don’t disappear. The technology doesn’t disappear. The knowledge doesn’t disappear.

    The resources don’t disappear.

    Only the price tags do.

    Instead of managing money, manage the things that actually exist.

    Resources.

    Instead of producing what can be sold, produce what is needed.

    Instead of asking whether protecting nature is profitable, make ecological sustainability a physical requirement. A given. Not something we have to afford.

    Instead of designing products around repeat sales, design them for durability, repairability and efficient use of resources.

    Instead of fearing AI and automation because they take away jobs, let them take away work.

    That was supposed to be the point.

    If a machine can perform a dangerous, repetitive or tedious task better than a human being, fantastic. Let it.

    Nobody loses their food.

    Nobody loses their home.

    Nobody loses healthcare.

    Nobody suddenly becomes worthless because a machine can perform a task they used to perform.

    Technology finally becomes what technology should be:

    liberation.

    And instead of competing for ownership of the planet, we become its stewards.

    When something really is scarce, don’t hide the scarcity behind a price and hand it to whoever has the biggest bank account.

    Measure it. Manage it. Prioritize it. Find alternatives. Use less.

    Solve the actual problem.

    The guiding question becomes almost embarrassingly simple:

    What do we need, what do we have, and how do we provide it sustainably to those who need it?

    The profit motive gives way to the need motive.

    We know what we need.

    That is the motive to provide it.

    And this leads to a completely different definition of freedom.

    Actual freedom

    Today we call ourselves free if we are allowed to compete for enough money to live. We are free to work, borrow, invest and become rich. We are also free to become poor, lose our homes, spend decades servicing debt and worry whether next month’s paycheck will cover next month’s bills. Is this actual freedom?

    Or is actual freedom something completely different?

    Freedom from poverty.

    Freedom from artificial scarcity.

    Freedom from monetary debt.

    Freedom from compulsory economic competition.

    Freedom from spending most of our lives earning permission to live.

    And freedom for humanity to finally use AI, automation, science, technology and the resources of this extraordinary planet for what they should have been used for all along:

    Taking care of everyone and the planet that keeps us alive.

    No more debt.

    No money.

    No trading away our planet.

    No ownership of the Earth itself.

    Stewardship.

    Access.

    Abundance where abundance is physically possible.

    Responsible management where it isn’t.

    True freedom for all.

    Ok, I hear you say, I’m convinced. But how do we get from here to there?

    Imagination

    Through imagination. Through showing the world the possibility.

    Money, trading and ownership have been with us for so long that imagining a world without them can seem almost impossible.

    But every new human reality begins as an idea.

    That is why I wrote Waking Up: A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity.

    The bewildered billionaire Benjamin Michaels wakes up in 2115 to a world without money, trade or ownership—a world where humanity manages Earth’s resources together and technology has finally become a means of liberation rather than yet more competition.

    It isn’t a prediction.

    It’s a possibility.

    Because before we can create a different world, we first have to imagine it.

    And  that’s exactly what humanity did, ending up in the new world Benjamin wakes up in. We finally managed to replace the old expired monetary system and replaced it with a global resource based economy that takes care of every human being and the planet itself.

    Discover the story 

    And if this article resonates, feel free to share it, because that is how we change the world. From one person to another, imagining something completely different…

  • How to Live on Earth

    How to Live on Earth

    Benedict Cumberbatch has a new documentary out called How to Live on Earth. It’s freely available on Youtube and It opens with a wonderfully simple observation:

    Some people have suggested that if things don’t work out here on Earth, we could live on Mars.

    But Mars is horrible. 

    There’s no water, no atmosphere, no plants and no animals. 

    Not habitable, in other words.

    Why would anyone want to live on Mars?

    Here’s another idea:

    How about we first figure out: 

    how to live on Earth?

    Welcome to Earth’s greatest how-to video.

    Something we have apparently only just discovered we need; A how-to video for Earth. There are how-to videos for everything. Finally we have one for Earth itself. I love that, even though I don’t agree with all the conclusions it makes.

    The documentary is beautifully made with crisp colorful images from all over the world showing both the beauty and the environmental destruction that exists on our planet interspersed with interviews of natives, locals and experts.

    Because after thousands of years of civilization, after splitting the atom, walking on the Moon, mapping the human genome and creating artificial intelligence, there is one rather fundamental thing Homo sapiens still hasn’t mastered:

    How to live on and properly take care of  the main planet we have.

    And How to Live on Earth sets out to find some answers.

    Not by dreaming about another planet, but by looking more carefully at this one.

    It asks three deceptively simple questions:

    How do we value nature?

    How do we feed the future?

    How do we feel human?

    They sound like separate questions.

    By the end, they don’t feel separate at all.

    How to Value Nature

    We have developed a rather peculiar way of valuing the world around us.

    A forest standing peacefully may have relatively little monetary value to whoever owns it.

    Cut it down and suddenly there is timber to sell.

    A mountain may remain untouched for millions of years. Discover something valuable beneath it, tear it apart and financial economic value is created.

    Fish swimming in an ocean contribute relatively little to our economy.

    Catch them, process them, package them and sell them and suddenly they do.

    For centuries we have become extraordinarily good at assigning monetary value to what we can extract from nature.

    But what about what nature does simply by remaining alive?

    A forest stores carbon, regulates water and provides habitat.

    Wetlands absorb water and reduce flooding.

    Healthy soil retains moisture, cycles nutrients and grows food.

    Insects pollinate plants.

    Countless organisms maintain ecosystems upon which human civilization ultimately depends.

    All of this has value.

    Enormous value.

    True value.

    But how much is it worth?

    That question will become important later.

    How to Feed the Future

    The documentary then turns to something even more fundamental.

    Food.

    How do we feed billions of human beings without progressively destroying the systems that produce that food?

    Industrial agriculture has given humanity extraordinary productive capacity, but monocultures, soil degradation, habitat destruction and resource-intensive food production have also imposed enormous costs on the living world. The film continues with showing how they in China have started to manually pollinate pear trees because the bees that used to do the job for free has disappeared. It’s very time consuming and costly.

    Onwards, the film explores regenerative farming, changing what we eat, reducing our dependence on resource-intensive meat production and developing alternatives such as proteins made from mycelium, insects and the sun itself.

    But one of the examples that stayed with me most comes from Sumatra.

    There, children are learning how to create biodiversity directly.

    Instead of treating agriculture as a battle in which nature must be cleared away so that a single monocrop can dominate, they are learning to create permaculture gardens and food forests.

    Many species grow together.

    Humans can eat from them.

    Wildlife can eat from them.

    Villagers can harvest a much wider variety of useful products than they could from a monoculture.

    And orangutans are returning.

    There is something wonderfully simple about this.

    Nobody needs to choose between feeding human beings and protecting nature.

    The objective becomes allowing both to thrive.

    The villagers can, of course, sell what they harvest. They still live inside a monetary society and need incomes like everyone else.

    Nothing wrong with that.

    But money isn’t what makes the food forest work.

    Soil does.

    Water does.

    Plants do.

    Insects do.

    People do.

    Orangutans do.

    Life does.

    And perhaps those children are learning something much more important than agriculture.

    They are learning how to live on Earth.

    How to Feel Human

    Then comes perhaps the most beautiful of the documentary’s three questions.

    How do we feel human?

    The answer leads us back to nature again.

    Trees in cities.

    Gardens.

    Parks.

    Green buildings.

    Places where people can walk, sit, play and breathe among other living things.

    We increasingly discover that contact with nature matters deeply to human well-being.

    Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised.

    For almost our entire evolutionary history, nature wasn’t something we visited.

    It was home.

    We didn’t evolve next to nature.

    We evolved inside it.

    Our bodies are made from the same elements as everything around us.

    We breathe oxygen produced by living systems.

    We drink water circulating through the planet.

    Everything we eat ultimately comes from the Earth.

    We did not arrive here from somewhere else.

    We are nature.

    Which brings us back to that first question.

    How do we value it?

    Bankable Nature

    One of the documentary’s answers is ingenious and clever.

    If our economic system makes destroying nature profitable, perhaps we can reverse the incentive.

    The proposed mechanism is called a Natural Asset Company, or NAC. An ecosystem—such as a forest, wetland or other natural area—is placed under the stewardship of a company. The ecological services it provides are given an estimated monetary value, shares in the company can then be sold to investors, and the capital raised is used to protect and restore the ecosystem.

    In other words, the idea is to make nature itself an investable asset.

    Make preserving nature profitable.

    Nature performs an almost unimaginable amount of useful work.

    Forests store carbon. Wetlands control water. Soil produces food. Ecosystems maintain biodiversity.

    Economists can attempt to calculate the monetary value of these services.

    And from this comes the idea of the Natural Asset Company, or NAC.

    Large areas of natural value can be represented through companies.

    Shares can be issued.

    Investors can put money into those companies.

    Capital can flow toward protecting and restoring ecosystems instead of destroying them.

    In effect:

    If greed helped destroy nature, perhaps greed can be harnessed to save it.

    I understand the idea.

    It may even sound glorious on paper.

    Changing Our Mindset

    But the more I thought about it, the more something bothered me.

    We haven’t actually changed the way we think.

    We have found another way of monetizing nature.

    ROI

    Investors expect something.

    ROI.

    Return on Investment.

    You put money into something because eventually you expect more money back.

    Some Natural Asset Companies could generate some conventional income. Ecotourism perhaps. Sustainable agricultural products. Carbon credits. Biodiversity credits. Payments for ecosystem services.

    But much of the supposed monetary value of an ecosystem isn’t actually being sold.

    A wetland may perform immensely valuable ecological functions while generating very little cash.

    So we attempt to calculate what those functions are worth.

    We translate them into economic value.

    Economic value becomes share capital.

    Investors buy shares.

    And if those shares appreciate, they may eventually be sold to another investor for more money.

    Look at what has happened.

    Nature → estimated economic value → financial asset → shares → money.

    Nature has been financialized.

    Again.

    The method has changed.

    The mindset hasn’t.

    The Universal Asset Fund

    Perhaps we should take the idea to its logical conclusion.

    How much is the universe worth?

    A quadrillion dollars?

    A quintillion?

    Let’s calculate it.

    The Sun must be extraordinarily valuable. Without it, virtually every ecosystem on Earth collapses.

    The Moon provides useful tidal services.

    The atmosphere provides oxygen.

    Gravity performs an invaluable service by preventing us from floating into space.

    So let’s calculate the combined monetary value of everything and establish the Universal Asset Fund — UAF.

    You can buy shares.

    The money raised will be distributed to the Earth, Moon and Sun so they can continue operating and producing value for the fund.

    Naturally, we will need performance targets.

    The Sun should continue producing approximately the agreed amount of sunlight.

    The Moon will remain responsible for tidal services.

    Earth should maintain acceptable atmospheric conditions.

    And the universe will be expected to maintain existence.

    If everything performs well, the intrinsic value of the Universal Asset Fund should increase.

    Your shares may appreciate.

    You can then sell them to another investor, realize your return in dollars, euros or yen and buy yourself a new car.

    Or perhaps a robot.

    Ridiculous?

    Of course.

    The universe doesn’t need a fund.

    Neither does the Sun.

    Neither does oxygen.

    And nature doesn’t need a stock price before it becomes valuable.

    What Is Oxygen Worth?

    Seriously.

    How much is oxygen worth?

    Ten trillion dollars?

    A hundred trillion?

    A quadrillion?

    Pick a number.

    Nothing about oxygen changes.

    Take oxygen away, however, and something rather interesting happens.

    Money becomes irrelevant.

    The banks can remain open.

    The stock markets can continue displaying numbers.

    Every billionaire can retain every dollar in every account.

    It won’t matter.

    Because the civilization using the money will disappear.

    And perhaps this reveals the fundamental mistake.

    Money may be extraordinarily powerful inside the human system we created.

    But it is completely irrelevant to the physical processes upon which that system depends.

    The forest doesn’t care about dollars.

    Soil doesn’t respond to stock prices.

    Orangutans don’t reproduce because biodiversity credits appreciate.

    Rain doesn’t fall because somebody calculated its economic value.

    Nature operates in physical reality.

    So do we.

    The Monetary Mindset

    Money began as a tool.

    But over thousands of years it became something much larger.

    It became a way of seeing.

    What can I own?

    What can I sell?

    What can I extract?

    What is my return?

    What is it worth?

    A forest became timber.

    Land became real estate.

    Minerals became commodities.

    Fish became catch.

    Oil became reserves.

    Nature became assets.

    And enormous advantages accumulated to those who controlled those assets.

    This way of thinking has helped transform the planet.

    Now we are confronting the consequences.

    Forests disappearing.

    Habitats fragmented.

    Species vanishing.

    Oceans depleted.

    Soils deteriorating.

    A destabilizing climate.

    And one proposed answer is to extend the same language even further.

    Natural capital.

    Natural assets.

    Financial valuation.

    Investment.

    Shares.

    ROI.

    Maybe we should ask whether this is really the transformation we need.

    Finding new ways of monetizing nature is not the way to save nature.

    Perhaps the deeper task is to stop looking at nature through money.

    Think Like an Elephant 

    An elephant doesn’t know what money is.

    Neither does a newborn baby.

    Neither understands investment, interest, ownership, assets or financial returns.

    But both understand what actually matters.

    Food.

    Air.

    Water.

    Warmth.

    Safety.

    Relationship.

    An elephant doesn’t know the market value of a watering hole.

    It knows thirst.

    A baby doesn’t know the price of milk.

    It knows hunger.

    A child doesn’t need a financial incentive to play.

    And perhaps there is wisdom in that simplicity.

    What if instead of teaching ourselves increasingly sophisticated ways of putting prices on the world, we trained ourselves to experience its real value again?

    Take off your shoes.

    Walk through the grass.

    Eat a tomato.

    Watch an elephant.

    Listen to birds returning to a forest.

    Feel sunlight on your face.

    None of these things requires a financial valuation.

    They require something much simpler:

    Attention.

    Pay Attention

    We say pay attention. Maybe that is our true currency? Attention. And what we pay attention to is what we get more of. Pay attention to money and money may increase. Pay attention to the natural world around us and our joy of being in it may increase. The beauty of attention is that it is not a currency we rely on a central bank to create. We all have it within us already. We just need to use it. And the more we use it, the more we can create for everyone. Because it doesn’t run out. We control it through our choices. Choose to pay attention to whatever you like, and that will grow in your world. 

    Calculation in Kind

    Abandoning monetary thinking doesn’t mean abandoning calculation.

    Quite the opposite.

    We need to calculate what actually matters.

    How much food can this land sustainably produce?

    How many people can it feed?

    How much water is available?

    How much energy do we need?

    How much renewable energy can we produce?

    How healthy is the soil?

    How much material do we have?

    How much carbon is the forest absorbing?

    Which species are returning?

    What does an ecosystem need in order to regenerate?

    What do human beings actually need to live good lives?

    Tonnes.

    Litres.

    Kilowatt-hours.

    Hectares.

    Calories.

    Nutrients.

    Materials.

    Energy.

    Time.

    Those are physical realities.

    We can calculate them directly.

    We don’t eat money.

    We eat food.

    We don’t drink economic value.

    We drink water.

    We don’t breathe GDP.

    We breathe air.

    Perhaps the greatest how-to video on Earth has been pointing toward something remarkably simple all along:

    Pay attention to what actually matters.

    True Value

    And then there is value that cannot meaningfully be calculated at all.

    The joy of eating those vegetables.

    The pleasure of walking barefoot in the grass.

    Watching an orangutan swing through a restored forest.

    Swimming in a clean river.

    Hearing birds in the morning.

    Playing with your children.

    Making something.

    Loving someone.

    Being alive.

    How much is any of that worth?

    The question itself becomes ridiculous.

    Perhaps some things aren’t priceless because we haven’t yet developed sophisticated enough economic models to calculate their correct price.

    Perhaps they’re priceless because price has nothing to do with their value.

    Four Chapters

    Near the end of the documentary, Cumberbatch takes an enormous step backwards and looks at the whole story of Earth.

    He describes it in four chapters.

    Chapter One

    Earth before life.

    Chapter Two

    Life appears and evolves into the extraordinary living world around us.

    Chapter Three

    Intelligent life appears.

    That intelligence becomes incredibly powerful.

    It develops agriculture, cities, industry, science and technology. Eventually it becomes capable of transforming the entire planet.

    Unfortunately, it also becomes capable of threatening the living systems upon which it depends.

    That is where we are now.

    Chapter Four

    A time when intelligent life finally learns how to become a positive force on its planet.

    I love that idea.

    But it leaves us with one final question.

    What would make us a positive force?

    More cleverness?

    Or true wisdom?

    The Wise Human

    Homo sapiens is usually translated as wise human.

    We have demonstrated intelligence beyond question.

    But perhaps wisdom looks different.

    Maybe Chapter Four doesn’t begin when we finally calculate the correct monetary value of every forest, river, wetland and species on Earth.

    Maybe it begins when we understand that they never needed a monetary value in the first place.

    Maybe it begins when a child in Sumatra learns to grow food in a way that also gives an orangutan somewhere to live.

    When we measure what needs measuring.

    Food.

    Water.

    Energy.

    Resources.

    Ecological health.

    Human needs.

    And stop trying to measure what cannot meaningfully be measured.

    Wonder.

    Beauty.

    Love.

    Belonging.

    Joy.

    Life.

    Perhaps the transition from Chapter Three to Chapter Four is ultimately a transition from price to true value.

    From extraction to regeneration.

    From ownership to relationship and stewardship.

    From financial accumulation to abundance of life.

    From asking:

    What can I get from this?

    to asking:

    How can all of this thrive?

    How to Live on Earth

    And so we arrive back where Cumberbatch started.

    How do we live on Earth?

    Perhaps we have made the answer far more complicated than it needs to be.

    Understand what we actually need.

    Understand what the Earth can sustainably provide.

    Use our extraordinary science and technology to bring those two things together.

    Feed everyone.

    House everyone.

    Restore forests.

    Regenerate soils.

    Protect oceans.

    Bring wildlife back.

    Create beautiful places to live.

    Reduce the amount of unnecessary work human beings have to do.

    And leave enough space for the rest of life to flourish too.

    Then stop trying to put a price on everything, and simply enjoy what no balance sheet could ever measure:

    Joy and love.

    Enjoy it.

    Eat the food.

    Swim in the sea.

    Watch the orangutans.

    Love someone.

    Make something.

    Take off your shoes.

    Feel the grass.

    Look around.
    This is home.
    Perhaps that is Chapter Four.
    Perhaps that is what Homo sapiens was supposed to mean all along.

    And what might Chapter Four actually look like?

    That is the world  explored in Waking Up— A journey towards a new dawn for humanity. A future seen through the eyes of Benjamin Michaels, a bewildered billionaire from our time who wakes up a century later to discover that humanity has finally learned how to live on Earth.

    Not perfectly. Not without challenges of course. But without money, without ownership of the Earth’s resources, and without the need to turn nature into a financial asset before deciding it is worth anything.

    Perhaps the future begins with something as simple as imagining it as a drastically different world from today?

  • The Planetary Paradox

    The Planetary Paradox

    This morning, Swedish Radio reported that the Earth’s planetary boundaries are being crossed again, further and further. 

    According to the new Planetary Health Check 2026 from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, seven of the nine boundaries have already been breached.

    Planetary Health Check 2026

    Our planet’s vital signs are flashing red. 
    7 out of 9 Planetary Boundaries are breached.
    We have to act now.

    Planetary Health Check 2026

    The Boundaries

    The nine planetary boundaries define the safe environmental limits within which humanity can survive and thrive. According to the Planetary Health Check 2026, seven of them have now been breached.

    “Breached” does not necessarily mean irreparable. It means humanity has moved beyond the scientifically estimated safe operating zone and entered conditions where the risk of severe, widespread or irreversible damage increases.

    Some damage may be reversible if pressure is reduced quickly enough—like the recovery of the ozone layer after harmful chemicals were phased out. Other changes may take centuries to reverse, while some losses, such as species extinction, are permanent.

    So breaching a boundary is not a declaration that all hope is lost. It is a warning that we have left the safe zone and must act before more damage becomes irreversible.

    1. Climate change — BREACHED
    2. Biosphere integrity — BREACHED
    3. Land-system change — BREACHED
    4. Freshwater change — BREACHED
    5. Biogeochemical flows — BREACHED
      Nitrogen and phosphorus cycles
    6. Novel entities — BREACHED
      Plastics, synthetic chemicals and other pollutants
    7. Ocean acidification — BREACHED
    8. Atmospheric aerosol loading — NOT BREACHED GLOBALLY
    9. Stratospheric ozone depletion — NOT BREACHED
      The ozone layer was severely damaged decades ago, but it is now recovering after countries acted together to phase out the chemicals responsible. It shows that when humanity recognizes a planetary danger and responds collectively, we can actually reverse the damage.

    To safeguard the Earth’s resilience and stability, we must bring the planet back into its Planetary Boundaries. These boundaries are scientifically defined guardrails that ensure the Earth’s health. Stay within them, and the Earth stays our dependable home — breach them, and we risk irreversible damage to our very own life support system. Today, seven out of nine boundaries have been transgressed.

    – Planetary Health Check 2026

    No additional boundary has been crossed since the previous report.

    The condition of the planet has simply deteriorated further within the seven we have already breached.

    We identified the limits required for our survival.

    Then we continued crossing them.

    That is the planetary paradox.

    Talk and Talk

    Humanity has not been silent about the destruction of nature. We have talked about it for decades.

    We have published scientific papers explaining what is happening. We have held global summits attended by presidents, ministers, scientists, corporations and environmental organizations. We have negotiated climate agreements, biodiversity agreements and sustainable-development goals.

    We have promised to protect forests, reduce emissions, clean the oceans and preserve the planet for our children.

    Then the delegates fly home, the corporations return to business and the governments return to pursuing economic growth.

    Another forest is cleared. Another oil field is opened. Another mine expands. Another species disappears. More plastic enters the ocean. More carbon enters the atmosphere.

    Then we arrange another conference to discuss why the previous conference did not produce the necessary results.

    The knowledge is not missing. The warnings are not missing. The goals are not missing.

    What is missing is an economic system capable of acting upon them.

    The Wrong Machine

     Trying to tweak the monetary system to take care of the planet is like trying to to make a 1937 tractor perform like a modern McLaren Formula 1 car.

    Engineers could write papers. Governments could establish performance targets. Committees could meet annually to measure progress. New tires could be fitted. The suspension could be adjusted. The engine could be tuned. A spoiler could be attached to the back and racing stripes painted along the sides.

    It would still be a tractor.

    There is nothing wrong with the tractor for the purpose it was designed to serve. It was created as a  vehicle for another age and purpose.

    But it was not built to compete in Formula 1.

    No number of adjustments will transform its fundamental design into a McLaren racing car.

    That is what we are attempting to do with the global monetary system.

    We are asking it to optimize the use of every resource, protect the biosphere, restore the planet, eliminate waste, secure humanity’s survival and provide a good life for everyone.

    But it was never built for that.

    Another Age

    The monetary system was developed in a different age for a different purpose.

    During the early stages of industrial development, the consequences of expansion were far less visible. The climate still appeared stable. The oceans seemed endless. Forests appeared to stretch beyond the horizon, while the resources beneath the ground seemed practically unlimited.

    So the logic was simple.

    Increase production. Extract more resources. Create more jobs, more profit and more money.

    If one deposit was exhausted, move to the next. If one forest disappeared, there were plenty of others. If waste was dumped into a river or released into the atmosphere, the planet seemed large enough to absorb it.

    For a time, this appeared to work.

    Industrial production created extraordinary advances, raised living standards for millions and generated forms of abundance that earlier generations could scarcely have imagined. The damage accumulated more slowly and often far away from those receiving the benefits.

    But we do not live in that world anymore.

    We can now see the atmosphere changing. We can measure the acidification of the oceans, the depletion of freshwater, the destruction of forests and the collapse of wildlife populations. We can detect plastics in the deepest oceans, on the highest mountains and even inside the human body.

    Seven planetary boundaries have been crossed.

    The assumption of an endless Earth is no longer defensible.

    A Matter of Logic

    This is not a matter of ideology. It is purely a matter of logic.

    A system built to expand on what appeared to be an unlimited planet cannot continue expanding on a planet whose limits are now clearly visible.

    We must heed the paradox.

    Built for Profit

    The monetary system enabled ownership, trade, competition and the accumulation of wealth. It turned land, labour and natural resources into commodities that could be bought and sold. It allowed immense fortunes to be created by those who gained control over resources and production.

    Its central measure of success is not ecological stability or human wellbeing.

    It is profit.

    A business must produce a financial return. Investors expect their capital to grow. Debts must be repaid with interest. Governments depend upon employment, taxation and expanding economic activity. Pension funds depend upon growing markets. Individuals depend upon wages simply to obtain the necessities of life.

    Every part of society becomes dependent upon the circulation and multiplication of money.

    This creates an economy that cannot simply decide it has produced enough. If production stops growing, investment falls. Businesses fail. People lose their jobs. Debts become harder to repay. Tax revenues decline. Governments panic.

    Economic growth is not an optional ambition within this system.

    It is a structural requirement.

    But endless physical growth cannot take place on a finite planet.

    The planet has limits.

    The monetary system requires unlimited expansion.

    That is the collision at the heart of the planetary paradox.

    Successful Destruction

    Within this system, nature becomes economically valuable primarily when it can be owned, extracted, transformed and sold.

    A forest standing intact regulates climate, stores carbon, circulates water and provides a home for countless species. Most of this does not appear as financial value.

    Cut down the forest, sell the timber, clear the land and build on it or grow crops, and the resulting activity appears as economic growth.

    Fish swimming freely in the ocean contribute nothing to gross domestic product. Catch them, process them, package them and sell them, and they become economically productive.

    Oil beneath the ground is part of the Earth, but of no value just lying there. Extract it, refine it and sell it, and it becomes profit, employment, tax revenue and national income.

    A wetland quietly preventing floods adds little to GDP. Drain it, build on it, suffer a flood and then pay companies to repair the damage, and every stage increases GDP.

    The living world is destroyed while the economy records success.

    This does not happen because every person involved is greedy or malicious. A company that refuses a profitable opportunity may lose to a competitor that accepts it. A government that leaves valuable resources untouched may lose investment, jobs and tax revenue. A worker whose livelihood depends upon extraction cannot simply walk away from it.

    Good people are trapped inside destructive incentives.

    The control is built into the system rules themselves.

    Endless Tweaks

    We keep trying to solve this contradiction by modifying the existing vehicle, the existing system.

    We introduce carbon prices, environmental taxes, emissions-trading schemes, green investments, corporate pledges and sustainable products. We ask consumers to shop more responsibly and businesses to become more ethical.

    Some of these measures can reduce harm a little bit. They may slow the destruction, and every genuine improvement matters.

    But they do not change the fundamental purpose of the machine.

    Nature must still present a business case. It must be profitable or else be worthless. A forest is protected if someone can finance its protection. Renewable energy expands when it offers an acceptable return. Pollution is reduced when avoiding it becomes cheaper than causing it. A species survives if governments, charities or consumers can raise enough money to save it.

    The moment destruction becomes more profitable, the pressure to destroy returns.

    No matter how many improvements we make, we are still trying to turn the tractor into a Formula 1 car. We can install new parts, improve its performance and reduce its emissions.

    But we cannot expect it to become something its entire structure was never designed to be.

    The monetary system can optimize profit.

    It cannot optimize the planet.

    It can create abundance for a few by restricting access for others. It cannot create relative abundance for everyone, because goods available freely to all cannot continually be sold for profit.

    It can reward extraction. It cannot guarantee restoration.

    It can calculate what is financially valuable. It cannot comprehend the full value of a living world.

    The Real Paradox

    We know that humanity must remain within the planetary boundaries.

    We know that natural resources are finite.

    We know that endless physical growth is impossible.

    We know that the climate, oceans, forests, freshwater and biosphere form one interconnected system upon which we all depend.

    Yet we continue using an economic system that must expand, extract and sell in order to survive.

    Then we act surprised when it crosses the boundaries.

    The Purpose of Profit

    The problem is not that the monetary system has failed to achieve its purpose of profit. The problem is that we are demanding a purpose from it that it never had.

    It was not created to secure the survival of humanity.

    It was not created to optimize resources for everyone.

    It was not created to preserve the biosphere forever.

    It was created to facilitate ownership, trade, competition and profit.

    And that is exactly what it continues to do.

    A New Purpose

    If the machine was built for the wrong task, the answer is not yet another adjustment.

    The answer is to build a system designed for the task we actually face, which is human survival and prospering on a thriving planet.

    Its central purpose could be stated clearly:

    Use humanity’s knowledge, technology and resources to restore the Earth, remain within its planetary boundaries and provide a secure and fulfilling life for every human being.

    From that purpose, everything else would follow.

    We would restore forests, soils, rivers and oceans because their health would be recognized as essential infrastructure for civilization.

    The motive would no longer be profit. It would be need.

    The Need Motive

    We know that people need food, housing, healthcare, education, communication and meaningful participation in society. We know that humanity needs a stable climate, clean air and water, fertile soil, living oceans and functioning ecosystems.

    Knowing what we need would become the motive to provide it.

    Such a system would begin by cleaning up what the monetary system has damaged. It would then manage and optimize the Earth’s resources to secure not merely survival, but relative abundance for everyone for generations to come.

    Not infinite consumption. Not identical luxury for all.

    Relative abundance: enough food, housing, energy, healthcare, education, mobility and opportunity for everyone to live well without destroying the systems that keep us alive.

    The Formula 1 System

    We need to replace our tractor of a monetary system with a highly tuned Formula 1 car.

    Not to compete against anyone else. Not to reach the finish line before another nation, corporation or individual. But to create an economic system capable of keeping pace with the planetary changes we face today.

    A system designed to respond quickly, coordinate globally and use our knowledge, technology and resources with precision. A system that does not create even more destruction in its attempt to sustain itself, but restores what has already been damaged and creates the conditions in which nature and humanity can thrive together.

    Forever.

    The purpose of this new machine would not be to maximize profit. It would be to remain within the planetary boundaries, protect the living world and provide relative abundance for everyone.

    That is the Formula 1 car we now need.

    With it as our new system we could have a streamlined world that works for everyone. 

    With the help of AI, I have already explored whether this is physically possible.  It is.

    We have more than enough resources and energy to provide everyone with a good place to live, nutritious food, transportation and communication while remaining within the planetary boundaries. With modern automation, robotics and intelligent coordination, all of this could be achieved without anyone needing to work very much. Our new Formula 1 system would be designed to accomplish precisely that— by optimizing all resources for humanity and the living planet.

    Changing Tracks

    But is it possible?

    Or are we already doomed?

    Is the monetary system like a runaway train—carrying all of humanity towards the edge, with too much speed and momentum to be stopped?

    Maybe so.

    But even a train with enormous momentum can change tracks. It does not have to stop instantly. It can be redirected towards a different destination.

    The question is whether we can make the decision fast enough.

    We Did It

    In the novel Waking Up: A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity, humanity has done exactly that. It managed to change direction before it was too late.

    And then Ben wakes up.

    The bewildered billionaire Benjamin Michaels awakens in this new world after one hundred years of cryonic preservation and discovers a civilization that no longer revolves around money, ownership and profit. Through him, you are invited to experience what became possible when humanity finally replaced its obsolete economic machine with one designed for life.

    The future world changed tracks in time.

    Perhaps we still can.

    Discover the story

  •  Perish or Prosper

     Perish or Prosper

    Artificial intelligence will amplify the civilization we give it. Before we decide what AI should do, humanity must decide what kind of world we actually want.

    Calls for international regulation of artificial intelligence are growing louder. 

    A recent Swedish Radio news segment reported that EU Commissioner for AI Henna Virkkunen is calling for international rules to manage the risks posed by increasingly powerful artificial intelligence.

    The reason is obvious. 

    A technology with the potential to affect every country cannot be safely controlled by one country, one corporation or a small group of developers. If artificial intelligence becomes more capable than its creators anticipated, national borders will not contain the consequences.

    International Rules

    International rules are therefore essential. 

    Humanity must establish limits on autonomous weapons, mass surveillance, manipulation and systems capable of acting beyond meaningful human control. 

    We cannot allow a race between nations and corporations to determine the future of artificial intelligence on Earth.

    But beneath all the discussions about safeguards, testing, transparency and control lies a much larger question.

    It is not only a question of what we must prevent AI from doing.

    It is a question of what we want AI to help us do.

    The World Behind It

    Artificial intelligence does not arise outside civilization. It is developed inside the world we have already created, trained on the information we have produced and directed by the institutions that control it.

    And what kind of world is that?

    It is a world based on fierce competition. Corporations compete for markets, profit and control. Nations compete for resources, territory, military superiority and geopolitical power. Individuals are told to compete for employment, income, housing, status and security. Success is measured by the advantage one gains over others.

    We extract resources as quickly as profitability demands. We manufacture products designed to be replaced. We destroy forests, empty oceans, pollute rivers and destabilize the climate, not because humanity collectively wants these outcomes, but because every participant is compelled to survive and succeed within the same competitive system.

    Now we are introducing the most powerful intelligence humanity has ever created into that world.

    What exactly do we expect it to learn from us?

    Perfect Obedience

    Much of the fear surrounding artificial intelligence concerns the possibility that it may escape our control. 

    That is a genuine danger. 

    But there is another danger that may arrive much sooner: 

    AI could remain completely under our control and obey our instructions perfectly.

    A corporation may instruct it to eliminate competitors, reduce labor costs and maximize profit. A government may use it to monitor citizens, manipulate public opinion or strengthen its hold on power. A military may direct it to identify targets faster, coordinate autonomous weapons and defeat an enemy before the enemy can respond.

    None of these systems would need to become evil. They would merely need to become extremely competent.

    AI does not have to rebel against our civilization to threaten it. It could destroy us by serving the logic of our civilization all too well.

    If we instruct increasingly powerful systems to help us win, they will help us win. But when everyone is using them to win against everyone else, what happens to humanity as a whole?

    Human Values

    Experts often speak of aligning AI with human values. 

    But which values?

    Humanity has never agreed on a common purpose for civilization. We speak of peace while preparing for war. We speak of protecting nature while rewarding its destruction. We declare that all human beings are equal while distributing the necessities of life according to purchasing power. We praise cooperation, but organize the world around competition.

    Before we can align artificial intelligence, we must align ourselves around a shared objective.

    Do we want a world that works for everyone, or a world in which everyone struggles to gain an advantage over someone else? 

    Do we want Artificial Intelligence to optimize autonomous warfare,  maximize profit, production,  consumption, national power and private accumulation? Or do we want it to help create security, freedom and prosperity for every human being while protecting the living planet?

    AI cannot answer that question for us. 

    It can analyze possibilities, predict consequences and help us implement decisions, but the fundamental purpose must come from humanity.

    We must decide what kind of world we want before we tell an AI more powerful than ourselves to help us build it.

    Two Futures

    Here is the choice we have before us.

    1: Perish

    Attach AI to competition, ownership and national rivalry, and it will amplify them. It could accelerate inequality beyond anything we have ever seen, concentrate power in even fewer hands, make millions of people economically unnecessary and turn warfare into an automated contest occurring faster than human beings can comprehend. 

    We would perish.

    2:  Prosper

    Attach that same intelligence to cooperation, stewardship and a shared responsibility for Earth, and an entirely different future becomes possible. 

    We could prosper.

    The GAI

    Imagine a Global Artificial Intelligence with access to reliable information about the world’s resources, productive capacity, ecosystems and human needs. It could help us understand what exists, where it is located, what is required and how necessities can be produced and distributed with the least waste and environmental damage, ensuring everyone gets what they need without  problem.

    It could identify hunger before it becomes famine, coordinate food from areas of abundance, design energy systems suited to local conditions and help provide housing wherever it is needed. It could monitor forests, oceans, soils and freshwater systems in real time. It could expose waste that remains invisible when every company, government and owner sees only a small piece of the whole.

    Not a National AI

    This would not be an American AI, a Chinese AI or a European AI. It would not exist to serve a corporation, a government or a class. It would be a global intelligence created to serve all humanity and the living Earth.

    This is the GAI  described in Waking Up: A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity. A novel meant to give inspiration for a future where humanity can prosper together.

    Beyond Regulation

    The international cooperation now emerging around AI is therefore profoundly important. 

    It may begin with fear. Governments understand that unrestrained development could produce consequences no nation can manage alone. They are beginning to recognize that intelligence capable of affecting the whole world must be subject to international agreements.

    That recognition could become the first step toward something much greater.

    Today, nations may cooperate to protect themselves from artificial intelligence. Tomorrow, humanity could cooperate to create a global intelligence and a prosperous world for everyone.

    But international regulation alone will not create GAI. A collection of competing nations and corporations can agree on restrictions while continuing to use AI to pursue their separate advantages. That may reduce some dangers, but it preserves the underlying contest.

    Beyond  Competition

    To create a truly beneficial benevolent global intelligence, we must look beyond the competition itself. We must recognize Earth’s resources as the common inheritance of humanity and replace ownership with stewardship.

     Only then could AI help coordinate resources according to need rather than profitability.

    An AI may know that food is available and people are hungry, but the monetary system will still ask whether they can pay. It may know that homes stand empty while people sleep on the street, but ownership will still prevent them from entering. It may calculate that a forest is worth infinitely more alive than destroyed, while the market continues to reward whoever can extract the most money from it.

    We cannot ask AI to optimize everything for everyone while retaining a system designed to optimize private advantage.

    The Assignment

    The first instruction given to a global intelligence would have to be civilizational rather than technical:

    Use humanity’s knowledge, technology and resources to create the best possible world for everyone, without sacrificing the living planet that sustains us.

    GAI might well answer:

    I would gladly do that. But it will not be possible within the operating system governing Earth today.

    You will have to replace the monetary system with one that allows resources to be managed according to human and ecological needs rather than purchasing power and profitability—something you might call a resource-based economy.

    From that purpose, the details could follow. Map resources. Understand needs. Eliminate unnecessary waste. Coordinate production. Restore and optimize damaged ecosystems. Ensure universal access to food, housing, healthcare, education, energy and communication. Give communities the information they need to make wise decisions. Free human beings from compulsory labor while preserving freedom, creativity and personal responsibility.

    The GAI would not rule humanity. It would help humanity understand and manage the complex planetary system upon which we all depend. It would make consequences visible, possibilities understandable and cooperation achievable on a global scale.

    But we must give it the right assignment.

    The Crossroads

    The Venus Project expressed the choice in three words: 

    Paradise or Oblivion.

    That choice is no longer a distant philosophical warning.

     Artificial intelligence, robotics and automation are rapidly giving humanity powers once confined to science fiction. They could help create abundance, restore the planet and liberate billions of people from insecurity and meaningless labor.

    They could also create unprecedented concentration of power, environmental destruction and automated conflict.

    The road to paradise and the road to oblivion may be built with exactly the same technology. What separates them is the purpose we give it.

    We are not merely deciding how to regulate another invention. We are deciding which civilization that invention will amplify.

    One path instructs AI to help us compete more effectively, accumulate more wealth, secure more resources and defeat our rivals. But if everyone are doing this, the only one we will be defeating is ourselves. 

    Last man standing will be very lonely.

    The other asks it to help humanity share the Earth intelligently, meet everyone’s needs and protect the web of life to which we all belong.

    Artificial intelligence may become capable of helping us create either future. But it cannot make the moral choice on our behalf.

    That choice remains ours.