Category: Blog

  • The Practical Advantage

    The Practical Advantage

    Humanity is remarkably good at disagreeing.

    We disagree about politics, economics, religion, borders, culture, ideology and almost everything else we can possibly find to disagree about.

    And yet, quietly underneath all this disagreement, we have managed to agree on an astonishing number of things.

    International Coordination

    A meter is a meter everywhere on Earth. A second is a second. A minute contains sixty seconds, an hour sixty minutes, and a day twenty-four hours. We organize our lives around days, weeks, months and years, and most of the world uses the same civil calendar. We have internationally coordinated time standards and time zones. We use latitude and longitude to describe where we are on the planet. Scientists use common units, symbols and terminology. Ships navigate using international standards. Aircraft cross borders using internationally coordinated systems. Computers communicate through common protocols. Shipping containers are built to standardized dimensions so they can travel from a truck to a train to a ship and halfway around the planet.

    Even our electrical civilization runs overwhelmingly on the same basic principle: AC – Alternating Current. We haven’t quite managed to agree on the voltage, frequency or plugs everywhere—apparently that would have been asking too much—but the fundamental technology became nearly universal.

    Why?

    Not because humanity held a giant meeting and everybody finally agreed to get along.

    Practical Advantage

    Because these things had one thing in common: the practical advantage.

    That may be one of the most powerful forces behind universal adoption.

    The Universal Adoption

    When something makes life easier, safer, more efficient or simply more practical—and particularly when everybody benefits from using compatible systems—it has an extraordinary tendency to spread.

    And there is another universally adopted system that we rarely think about in this way.

    Money.

    The Money Standard

    We don’t have one universal currency. We have dollars, euros, pounds, yen, yuan, kroner, pesos, rupees and many others.

    But the underlying concept of money has become universal.

    Why did humanity adopt this  pervasive system so comprehensively?

    Again, the answer may be remarkably mundane.

    Practical advantage.

    The history of money is of course more complicated than the familiar story that people once wandered around trying to exchange chickens for shoes. Early monetary systems were also connected to debt, accounting, taxation and commodities.

    But the fundamental advantage remains.

    Money made economic accounting and exchange enormously easier.

    Instead of every transaction depending upon a direct exchange between two people who happened to possess exactly what the other wanted, value could be represented by a commonly accepted medium. 

    That was an enormous practical improvement.

    Brilliant.

    And that is precisely the point.

    Money didn’t become universal because it was sacred. It became universal because it worked.

    It was a technology.

    Perhaps one of the most successful technologies humanity ever invented.

    The Other Side

    But money also did something else.

    Once access to resources became dependent upon purchasing power, possessing more money meant gaining access to more resources.

    And that created an extraordinary incentive to accumulate it.

    Money did not invent greed. Human beings were perfectly capable of greed long before the modern monetary system existed.

    But money gave greed a remarkably efficient instrument.

    Unlike physical needs and resources, monetary accumulation has no natural endpoint.

    There is only so much food a person can eat. There are only so many clothes anyone can wear. There is a practical limit to how much housing, transportation and material comfort a human being actually needs.

    Money has no equivalent limit.

    Once wealth can be expressed numerically, accumulation itself becomes measurable—and potentially limitless. More can always become more.

    And because money represents purchasing power, greater accumulation means greater potential claims upon the resources, products and labor of the world.

    The result is the extraordinary inequality we see today. Some individuals control fortunes larger than the economic output of entire countries, while other human beings struggle to obtain adequate food, shelter, clean water, education and healthcare.

    But this article isn’t really about condemning money.

    It is about something much more interesting:

    What if the same process that made money successful eventually makes it obsolete?

    Practical Advantage

    Think again about why standards spread.

    We didn’t standardize measurement because meters are morally superior to feet.

    We didn’t adopt international aviation standards because pilots suddenly developed a common political ideology.

    We didn’t standardize shipping containers because rectangular steel boxes represent a higher state of human consciousness.

    We did these things because they worked.

    Standardization offered a practical advantage.

    And that raises a fascinating possibility.

    What happens when a moneyless system begins to offer a greater practical advantage than a monetary one?

    Because the world in which money emerged and the world we are entering are radically different.

    For most of human history, producing things required enormous amounts of human labor. Information traveled slowly. Transportation was difficult. Knowing exactly what millions—or billions—of people needed was impossible.  Knowing what resources existed, where they existed and how efficiently they could be distributed was equally difficult. In came the the monetary system.

    The Solution to Distribution

    Money and markets provided a remarkably effective mechanism for coordinating much of this complexity. Although far from perfect,   the monetary system at least provided one possible way to refine and distribute resources and products. Money became the solution to distribution. If you had money you could buy everything you needed.

    But Look at What is Happening Now

    Artificial intelligence can process quantities of information that no human administration could possibly handle. Automation can manufacture products with progressively less human labor. Robotics can increasingly build, harvest, transport, sort and distribute. Global communication is effectively instantaneous. Satellites, sensors and databases can monitor resources and infrastructure. Modern logistics systems already coordinate astonishingly complex global supply chains.

    We are building something humanity has never possessed before:

    the technological capacity to coordinate resources directly on a planetary scale.

    And if that becomes easier and more fair than coordinating them through money, something very interesting happens.

    Money loses its practical advantage.

    The Complicated System

    We tend to assume that a moneyless civilization would require some impossibly complicated system.

    How would we keep track of everything? How would we know what people need? How would we know what to produce? How would we distribute it?

    Fair questions.

    But perhaps we should first look at the system we already have.

    Consider the extraordinary infrastructure required merely to keep money functioning: governments, banks, payment processors, accounting departments, tax authorities, auditors, insurance companies, debt collectors, stock exchanges, currency exchanges, mortgage systems, credit-rating agencies, investment funds, financial regulators, billing departments and payroll departments.

    Every business has to keep track of revenue, expenses, salaries, taxes, profits, losses, invoices, debts and payments.

    Every individual has to have a job, work, earn money, receive money, store money, spend money, save money, borrow money, repay money and frequently worry about whether enough money will remain at the end of the month.

    We have constructed an astonishingly complicated global technological system whose purpose is largely to keep track of who owns what and who owes what to whom.

    And the problem is not merely that this system is complicated.

    Look at what it has helped us do to the planet.

    We have extracted resources at enormous scale because resources can be converted into products, products into sales and sales into money. We have cut forests, mined mountains, depleted fisheries, burned enormous quantities of fossil fuels and manufactured billions upon billions of products—not simply according to what humanity actually needs, but according to what can be profitably produced and sold. And we have to constantly consume, consume and consume more to keep the system alive. Only a small drop in global consumption threatens to collapse the whole system.

    We have created products designed to be replaced, enormous advertising industries dedicated to making us want more, and an economic system in which reducing consumption can itself become an economic problem.

    The consequences are all around us: polluted air and water, plastic in the oceans, toxic waste, depleted resources, destroyed habitats, biodiversity loss, greenhouse-gas emissions and climate change.

    And then there is the human cost.

    Throughout history, people, companies, kingdoms and nations have competed for land, resources, trade routes, markets, wealth and economic power. Money is certainly not the only cause of conflict and war, but struggles over resources and economic interests have repeatedly been woven through human conflict.

    At the individual level, billions of people spend enormous portions of their lives trying to acquire enough purchasing power simply to maintain access to food, housing, transportation, healthcare and the other necessities of life.

    Some accumulate extraordinary fortunes.

    Others have almost nothing.

    And somehow we have become so accustomed to all of this that when somebody suggests replacing the system with direct, intelligent management and sharing of the world’s resources, our immediate response is:

    But wouldn’t that be complicated?

    Complicated compared to what?

    Perhaps the monetary system isn’t merely complicated.

    Perhaps it has become the biggest threat to the survival of humanity.

    And perhaps today’s technology finally allows us to replace all this indirect monetary accounting with something far more relevant:

    direct accounting of the planet itself.

    Accounting for Reality

    Accounting doesn’t have to disappear.

    We simply change what we account for.

    Instead of primarily accounting for monetary value, we account for the physical reality underneath it.

    How much food is available? How much energy? How much water? What materials do we have? What is being consumed? What needs to be produced? Where are shortages developing? Where is there excess capacity? What can be repaired, reused or recycled? What do people actually need? What can the planet sustainably provide?

    Those are the numbers that ultimately matter.

    Resources.

    Production.

    Availability.

    Demand.

    Need.

    Ecological impact.

    An advanced technological system could continuously optimize the relationship between them.

    We have already agreed upon all the different measuring systems we need: Distance, weight, time, location.

    Now we only have to agree upon the best production and distribution system. 

    This doesn’t require infinite resources.

    There will always be limitations. There is only so much land on Earth. Certain minerals are scarce. Certain locations are desirable. Environmental boundaries are real.

    But scarcity doesn’t automatically require money. Maybe before but not today.

    Scarcity requires allocation.

    And perhaps an advanced technological civilization can allocate limited resources more intelligently by looking at availability, sustainability and actual need than by asking who happens to possess the greatest purchasing power.

    The Next Standard

    Imagine a global system where requesting something you need becomes as ordinary as using the internet.

    You need transportation. You request it.

    You need food. You obtain it.

    You need materials for a project. The system checks availability.

    You need somewhere to live. Available housing and resources are matched with actual requirements.

    Behind all of this, AI and automated systems continuously monitor production, resources, demand, environmental impact and distribution.

    No price needs to be calculated. No credit card needs to be charged. No invoice needs to be generated. No salary needs to be deducted. No VAT needs to be calculated. No bank needs to approve anything.

    The important questions become:

    What is needed?

    What is available?

    What is the most intelligent and sustainable way of connecting the two?

    At some point, that may become considerably simpler than money.

    And if it does, we may witness something that initially sounds revolutionary but is actually deeply consistent with human history.

    Humanity has repeatedly adopted new systems for the same remarkably simple reason. It was more practical.

    The Summit for a New Standard

    Here’s a couple of examples of how humanity solved global coordination in the past.

    Bretton Woods

    In 1944 at Bretton Woods, central bankers and economists gathered to build the modern monetary system out of financial chaos after the war.

    The Meridian Conference

    Sixty years earlier, at the 1884 Meridian Conference, a very different group—diplomats, astronomers, and engineers—met to fix conflicting clocks and maps, establishing 0 longitude at Greenwich simply because global transport required a shared baseline.

    The Third Gathering

    Now imagine a third gathering: a modern planetary summit.

    This time, the delegates are not central bankers managing inflation, nor navigators mapping oceans. They are systems engineers, logistics architects, and computer scientists. Instead of debating currency pegs or interest rates, they develop a single agreement: to retire indirect monetary accounting entirely and transition planetary resource coordination to an automated, intelligent network.

    It sounds like a radical leap. But every time humanity has replaced a fragmented, friction-heavy system with a universal standard, it felt revolutionary right up until the moment it became obvious.

    But of course, unlike the top-down summits of the past, a transition of this scale today would not be decided behind closed doors, but chosen directly by the global population through modern tools of direct, real-time digital democracy.

    Easier Than Money

    Money solved an enormous problem.

    We should give it credit for that.

    But technologies don’t remain useful forever simply because they were once useful.

    Transformative Technologies

    The horse transformed transportation. The steam engine transformed industry. The telegraph transformed communication. Paper maps transformed navigation.

    And when something better came along, we moved on.

    Money deserves the same question.

    Not:

    Is money good or evil?

    But:

    Is money still the easiest and most intelligent way to coordinate the resources of an advanced technological civilization?

    For thousands of years, the answer may reasonably have been yes.

    For the future, it may increasingly become no.

    Because the great irony could be that humanity doesn’t eventually abandon money because everybody becomes enlightened, altruistic or politically united.

    We may abandon it for exactly the same reason we adopted it.

    Practical advantage.

    Perhaps the next great universal standard will not be another currency.

    Perhaps it will be the realization that we no longer need one.

    In the novel Waking Up: A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity, humanity has made that realization and abandoned money entirely. 

    Follow the bewildered billionaire Benjamin Michaels when he wakes up in this world after 100 years of cryonic preservation..

    Discover his story

  • Beyond Ownership: Why AI Will Render the Concept of Ownership Obsolete

    Beyond Ownership: Why AI Will Render the Concept of Ownership Obsolete

    When tech leaders and titans of high finance debate the future of artificial intelligence, they inevitably reach the same tantalizing conclusion: intelligent automation and robotics will soon unleash an era of unprecedented global expansion. In this near-future world, the cost of producing goods, energy, and services drops toward zero.

    Yet during a high-profile exchange at the World Economic Forum in Davos between Elon Musk and Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, a critical fault line emerged. While Musk pointed to exponential productivity as the solution to global poverty, Fink zeroed in on the structural question mainstream visionaries routinely gloss over:

    Larry Fink: 

    “Elon, can that expansion be broad? Or is it narrow? And how can that be created? How can it broaden the global economy?”

    When asked directly how it broadens the economy, Musk answered that economic output will scale exponentially with robotic labor:

    “The way to think of it is that if you have a large number of humanoid robots, the economic output is the average productivity per robot times the number of robots.”

    He argued that in a benign scenario, automated production will eventually saturate all human material needs to the point where people won’t even be able to think of new tasks to ask a robot to perform.

    But Fink’s point strikes at the very foundation of our economic system, wondering if this expansion will benefit everyone or just a few. If automated systems become the sole engine of wealth creation, who actually owns the engine? A few hyper billionaires, or humanity as a whole?

    The Flaw in the Market Solution

    Musk’s answer to Fink’s concern relies on traditional market dynamics: scale, open-source competition, and plummeting marginal costs. In Musk’s view, because tech companies naturally seek the largest possible customer base, market competition will force AI and robotics out to billions of people, making abundance broad by sheer volume.

    However, this logic contains a massive blind spot.

    Lowering the cost of production does not solve the fundamental problem of access if the underlying mechanisms of income, capital, and private title remain unchanged. If a tiny fraction of corporate entities and private individuals own the algorithms, data centers, energy grids, and robotic factories, then even hyper-cheap abundance remains bottled up behind a legal gatekeeper.

    Traditional market thinking tries to patch this hole with ideas like Universal Basic Income (UBI) or Universal High Income(UHI). But these are merely temporary band-aids—scaffolding designed to pump financial purchasing power into the hands of consumers so they can continue buying goods from capital owners and thus pump the financial power back to the capital owners. It attempts to maintain the illusion of a market exchange long after the necessity of human labor in production has evaporated.

    Furthermore, these universal income models assume a tax base that is rapidly disappearing. In our current framework, state tax revenue relies completely on citizens—through income taxes, payroll taxes, and wage-driven consumer spending. But if AI and robotics displace human labor at scale, the primary engine of public revenue dries up. Where does the state draw the funds to distribute a UBI or UHI if the taxable working class no longer exists? Proponents point to “robot taxes” or corporate AI levies, but this creates an absurd circular loop: taxing corporate capital to fund state payouts, so citizens can hand that money right back to the corporate capital owners. The logic completely falls apart. The only true resolution is to stop trying to patch a broken loop and instead replace the monetary system itself, making the shift from ownership to stewardship our main foundational change.

    If we want true, broad abundance, we cannot simply adjust the distribution of money. We have to fundamentally rethink the concept of ownership itself.

    From passive Ownership to Active Stewardship

    Our current economic framework is anchored in private property rights—a system designed to manage artificial scarcity by granting an owner the legal right to exclude others, extract rent, and maximize short-term capital returns.

    When applied to an automated world, exclusive ownership becomes an even tighter artificial bottleneck that enforces artificial scarcity.

    Crucially, our economy is fundamentally powered by human activity, not machines. The entire monetary engine—from taking out and repaying loans to paying taxes, settling monthly bills, and earning wages—relies on billions of people earning an income to cycle capital back through the system. If intelligent automation and robotics displace human labor at scale, the conventional flow of money collapses; without workers earning, there are no consumers spending or taxpayers funding public infrastructure. The rise of AI does not just present a disruption to jobs—it forces an inescapable reality upon us: when human labor is no longer the foundational fuel of production, the entire monetary system breaks down, compelling us to fundamentally rethink the necessity of money, trading, and ownership itself. Thus, UBI/UHI would not last very long or be much of a point at all as soon as the technology has come far enough. 

    To bridge the gap between technological capacity and universal human flourishing, society must transition from a paradigm of Ownership to a paradigm of Stewardship.

    1. Access Over Exclusion

    Under stewardship, the goal of economic infrastructure is not asset appreciation, but functional access. When AI and automated systems manage agricultural yield, energy lproduction, and goods manufacturing, the legal right to “own” the production capacity becomes redundant. Assets are treated as shared public infrastructure—much like the air we breathe or open-source protocols—where access is granted based on need and utility rather than account balances.

    2. Sustainable Abundance with Ecological Limits

    The word “abundance” on its own can imply reckless, endless consumption. Coupling it with sustainability requires stewardship. Private ownership incentivizes the rapid liquidation of natural capital because balance sheets do not account for planetary depletion. Stewardship bakes ecological boundaries directly into the system, using AI non-monetary to monitor resource pools, closed-loop recycling, and carrying capacities in real time.

    3. Dissolving the Gatekeeper Class

    So long as capital accumulation dictates who survives, technological advancement will run the risk of creating an ever-narrower elite. Replacing ownership with stewardship removes the leverage of the gatekeeper class. No one own anything. We all optimize and share everything based on need. When production assets are managed as a trust for all humanity, technology stops being a mechanism for extracting wealth and becomes what it was always meant to be: a tool for human liberation.

    The Horizon Beyond Money

    The debate between Larry Fink and Elon Musk reveals that even the highest tiers of global finance and technology recognize that a massive transition is underway. Yet they remain bound by the language of the old world—debating how market mechanisms or asset portfolios will adjust.

    True sustainable abundance is not just about producing more stuff faster with robots. It is about outgrowing the archaic game of tokenized exchange altogether.

    By shifting our foundational logic from who owns the world to how we responsibly steward our shared resources, we pave the way for a true post-scarcity future—a world where technology serves human purpose rather than financial accounting.

    Beyond the Paradigm of Ownership

    It is crucial to recognize that transitioning from ownership to stewardship is not a push to revive 20th-century state-collectivism or government control. Replacing private ownership with state ownership merely transfers exclusive authority from a corporate board or private individual to a bureaucratic government. Both models operate on the exact same underlying logic: the assumption that someone—an individual, a company, or a state—must possess the Earth and dictate access.

    Transcending Ownership

    Stewardship transcends the concept of ownership altogether. In nature, no forest owns the rain, and no river issues an invoice for its water; ecosystems operate through open, interconnected relationships rather than title deeds. Transforming our mindset means recognizing that humans are not masters or owners of the planet, but temporary caretakers.

    When we step away from “mine versus state-owned” and move toward stewardship, access is no longer mediated by legal title or purchasing power. Instead, societal assets, technological infrastructure, and natural resources exist to be maintained, optimized, and shared directly for human well-being and ecological health. It is not a shift in who owns the property—it is the maturation of human consciousness past the need to own at all.

    Operationalizing Stewardship: How Non-Monetary Resource Management Works

    If money is no longer used as a proxy for access, and state bureaucratic allocation is rejected, how does a society actually coordinate the flow of goods, energy, and raw materials?

    In a stewardship model, non-monetary resource management replaces speculative market pricing with real-time physical feedback loops and dynamic allocation protocols.

    1. Direct Physical Feedback Over Price Signals

    Under traditional economics, price is an indirect, highly distorted signal that measures purchasing power rather than actual human need or environmental health. In a non-monetary stewardship framework, interconnected sensor and AI networks track direct physical parameters—crop yields, regional water tables, energy grid storage, material depletion, human input and atmospheric boundaries—in real time. Supply chains shift from chasing financial profit margins to maintaining biological and operational equilibrium.

    2. Algorithmic Commons and Universal Access

    Instead of purchasing goods through monetary debt or tokenized exchanges, access is coordinated via an open algorithmic commons. Essential foundations of human welfare—clean energy, nutritious food, shelter, healthcare, and educational tools—are provisioned unconditionally as public infrastructure. When physical constraints arise for localized or rare resources (such as prime physical locations or unique craftsmanship), allocation is governed by transparent scheduling, shared usage cycles, or community-agreed priority frameworks rather than financial bidding wars.

    3. Thermodynamic and Ecological Accounting

    Monetary balance sheets record financial growth while treating environmental destruction as an “externalities” line item. Non-monetary resource management relies on strict physical accounting: tracking energy efficiency, material recyclability, and ecological carrying capacity. Automated manufacturing systems are programmed to execute projects only when raw materials can be sourced, used, and recycled within planetary boundaries.

    4. Polycentric, Transparent Governance

    To prevent automated networks or administrative boards from becoming centralized gatekeepers, governance is structured polycentrically. Local communities retain direct democratic authority over their immediate environments and social priorities, while open-source, auditable protocols coordinate larger-scale logistical distribution across regions.

    By grounding economic coordination in tangible physical reality rather than symbolic monetary exchange, non-monetary stewardship replaces structural scarcity with a system designed for real sustainable abundance.

    Experience the Future Beyond Money

    If you want to explore what this transformation looks like in practice, the novel Waking Up: A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity paints a vivid picture of a world where ownership, money, and trade have truly become relics of the past. Seen through the eyes of Benjamin Michaels—a bewildered billionaire who wakes up into this post-scarcity reality—the story allows readers to experience the daily life, culture, and human dynamics of a society grounded entirely in stewardship and abundance. The book is not a manifesto or instruction manual. Rather, it is a story meant to inspire and show what can be possible in a future like this. For Benjamin, waking up after 100 years in cryonic preservation is of course a shock. But what will he experience in this new world? 

    Will he survive? Will he thrive? Or will he succumb to the temptation of another wake-up trying to bring the world back to what it was…? Back to money, war and ownership…?

    Discover his story 

  • Just for the love of it

    Just for the love of it

    A friend of mine in Norway runs a small music blog called Volum11.no

    No Corporate Backing

    The name itself is a little music joke. It comes from the rockumentary film This Is Spinal Tap, where one of the musicians proudly points to his amplifier and says, “This one goes to 11.” It’s exactly the kind of reference only a true music enthusiast would choose.

    He has no sponsors. No corporate backing. No business plan.

    He simply listens and writes.

    He writes about old albums, new albums, forgotten artists and modern classics. He dissects production techniques, musicianship, lyrics and atmosphere. But he also digs into the lives of the artists themselves—their childhoods, the bands they formed, the musicians they collaborated with, are influenced of and the creative journeys that shaped their music.

    Reading his articles feels less like reading reviews and more like traveling through music history.

    And he does it simply because he loves music.

    Not because anyone told him to.
    Not because the government assigned him to do it.
    Not because there is huge money in it.

    But simply because he loves it.

    Reading his articles feels less like reading reviews and more like traveling through music history.

    Why Work?

    This made me think of a chapter I recently read in Robin Everett Cox’s excellent book What Comes Next? Volume 1: The Illusion of Money: Why We Need a “System Upgrade”.

    The chapter is called “Why Work?”, and it asks one of the most fundamental questions of all.

    Why do we work?

    Many would say, “because we need money”. And that wouldn’t be wrong of course. In the context we are in.

    But Robin points to the remarkable response during the COVID-19 pandemic in England, when millions of people volunteered to help total strangers without expecting anything in return. According to Patrick Butler, writing in The Guardian:

    “In the space of a few weeks of corona virus lockdown England acquired a million-strong network of social volunteers – surpassing demand and prompting speculation: is this a new sign of social solidarity, and can the newly acquired community spirit survive?”

    Robin then writes:

    “It is inherent to volunteering that volunteers don’t receive payment for their time. As author Sherry Anderson said, ‘Volunteers don’t get paid, not because they’re worthless, but because they’re priceless.’ Putting a price tag on their labour not only negates their status as volunteers; some studies suggest that, when offered a financial reward, they are inclined to work less and with markedly less enthusiasm.

    In short, money can undermine our ‘intrinsic motivation’ to work.”

    — Robin Everett Cox, What Comes Next? Volume 1: The Illusion of Money

    That paragraph stayed with me.

    Our Intrinsic Motivation

    “money can undermine our ‘intrinsic motivation’ to work.”

    Really?

    If so, perhaps we’ve been asking ourselves the wrong question for centuries.

    We’ve built an entire civilization around the assumption that money is what motivates people.

    Without money, people wouldn’t work.

    Without salaries, nobody would contribute.

    Without financial incentives, civilization would collapse.

    But is that really true?

    Volunteers Helping Strangers

    When I look around, I don’t see a world driven only by money. Of course, I see people work for money, but that is only because we live within a monetary system that demands money for almost everything. But if there wasn’t any money in the first place, I think we would still work just as much. But for different reasons. Even in today’s world I see lots of work being done for reasons other than money.

    I see volunteers helping strangers.

    I see parents dedicating countless unpaid hours to raising children.

    I see programmers building free open-source software that powers much of the internet.

    I see people contributing to Wikipedia.

    I see neighbors helping neighbors after floods, fires and earthquakes.

    I see people restoring old cars simply because they love them.

    I see gardeners spending weekends growing flowers and vegetables.

    I see musicians playing, improvising and composing music.

    Artists painting.

    Writers writing.

    Dancers dancing.

    And then I look at the work people actually get paid to do.

    The Salary is Not the Dream

    Many farmers don’t become farmers because they’re chasing wealth. They genuinely love farming. They love being outdoors, working with the seasons and watching life grow from the soil.

    Many builders love construction. They enjoy seeing something tangible rise from an empty plot of land. Something useful. Something needed.

    Many teachers love watching children discover something new.

    Many nurses love caring for people.

    Many security guards and police officers genuinely enjoy being of service and helping others feel safe.

    Many engineers love solving problems.

    Many scientists love discovering how the world works.

    Many chefs love cooking.

    For countless people, the salary is not the dream.

    It is simply what allows them to continue doing what they already love.

    Of course, not everyone has their dream job. Many people work in jobs they would happily leave tomorrow if they could.

    But perhaps that, too, tells us something.

    Whenever people have the opportunity, they usually try to move closer to what genuinely interests them.

    They change careers.

    Start businesses.

    Study new subjects.

    Write books.

    Learn instruments.

    Travel.

    Volunteer.

    Create.

    Because something inside them keeps pulling them toward meaning.

    Toward curiosity.

    Toward contribution.

    Toward joy.

    Maybe that’s what it really means to be human.

    Maybe we are not naturally lazy beings who must constantly be bribed into contributing.

    Maybe we are naturally curious beings who want to create, build, care, discover and share.

    If that’s true, then perhaps the real purpose of a civilization should not be to figure out how to coerce people to work.

    Perhaps it should be to make it as easy as possible for people to do what they genuinely love.

    But no, no. We have to buy, sell, compete, extract, consume, argue, earn money, go to war, hoard more, stress more, go bankrupt, start all over again and constantly tricking each other into buying as much as physically possible. 

    Imagine what humanity might become if that was not our starting point.

    But rather: A civilization where people aren’t asking:

    “How can I make a living?”

    But instead:

    “How can I best contribute?”

    Maybe that’s not an impossible dream.

    Maybe we already see glimpses of it every single day.

    In volunteers.

    In artists.

    In teachers.

    In farmers.

    In builders.

    In musicians.

    Reward

    There is another assumption buried deeply within our economic thinking: that human beings need to receive something from somebody else in return for everything they do. A reciprocal service.

    Money.

    A favour.

    A product.

    A service.

    Some kind of trade.

    Otherwise, why bother?

    But perhaps the answer is staring us in the face.

    The reward can be in the task itself.

    The musician doesn’t necessarily need somebody to reward her for playing music. Playing music is the reward.

    The gardener doesn’t need somebody to compensate him for tending his garden. Watching it grow and enjoying the fresh air and nature can be the reward in itself.

    The farmer can experience enormous satisfaction from seeing the first shoots emerge from the soil.

    The builder can stand back at the end of the day and look at something that didn’t exist before.

    And my friend doesn’t spend hours researching the history of musicians and writing articles for Volum 11 because he expects somebody to give him something of equivalent value in return.

    He enjoys doing it.

    The reward lies in doing what you love.

    There can also be another kind of reward—one that doesn’t require a direct exchange.

    Think again about those volunteers in England. They weren’t thinking, I’ll help this particular person today as long as this particular person promises to repay me tomorrow.

    There was no contract.

    No invoice.

    No balance sheet.

    Perhaps many simply understood something much more fundamental:

    We all benefit from living in a society where people help one another.

    I contribute when I can. Someone else contributes when they can. And when I eventually need help, likely somebody will be there for me too.

    Nobody has to keep score.

    That isn’t really trade at all.

    It is participation in a society in which people contribute because they care about what they are doing—and about each other.

    GROJ

    This is an idea I played with in my novel Waking Up.

    In the future civilization Benjamin Michaels awakens to, money has disappeared. But the people jokingly say they still have a “currency”.

    They call it GROJ: Gratitude, Love, Joy.

    It is a rather peculiar currency.

    You can’t put it in a bank.

    You can’t hoard it.

    You can’t accumulate enough of it to become a billionaire.

    In fact, GROJ works almost exactly opposite to money.

    The more you give away, the more you get.

    Help somebody, and you may receive gratitude while experiencing the joy of having helped.

    Create something beautiful and share it, and that joy can spread to other people and come back to you in addition to the joy you felt when creating it.

    Give love, and you may find yourself surrounded by more of it.

    Nobody needs to keep score.

    Maybe this is the kind of reward we have underestimated.

    Not everything valuable needs to come back to us as payment or ROI.

    Sometimes doing it is the reward.

    Sometimes giving it away is the reward.

    And sometimes the richest person in the room might simply be the one experiencing the most gratitude, love and joy.

    In people like my friend in Norway, quietly writing article after article about music…

    Just for the love of it.

    A World Like That

    What if we actually had a world like that? Where everyone only did what they genuinely loved doing?

    In the novel Waking Up – A journey towards a new dawn for humanity, the bewildered billionaire Benjamin Michaels wakes up in a world exactly like that. And through his eyes you can get a glimpse into that world too.

    Discover his story

    Further reading:

    Robin Everett Cox – What Comes Next? Volume 1: The Illusion of Money: Why We Need a “System Upgrade”

    Volum11 – https://www.volum11.no

    Harald Neslein Sandø – Waking Up – A journey towards a new dawn for humanity

  • Is Life Over for Humanity?

    Is Life Over for Humanity?

    Yesterday I came across another news report.

    Europe’s waterways are at record-low levels.

    The Rhine and the Danube—two of Europe’s most important rivers—have become so shallow that cargo ships can no longer sail fully loaded. Even nuclear power plants are being affected because low water levels interfere with their cooling systems.

    Tomorrow it will probably be another headline.

    A glacier disappearing.

    The north pole ice is already gone.

    Another record-breaking heatwave.

    Another drought.

    Another forestfire.

    Another flood.

    Whether climate change is entirely human-made or not is, in one sense, beside the point.

    What matters is that something fundamental seems to be changing.

    For centuries, humanity has lived on an extraordinarily friendly planet. Rivers carried our goods. Fertile soils produced abundant food. Glaciers stored fresh water. Stable seasons allowed civilizations to flourish.

    Nature quietly made our civilization possible.

    Now the conditions that supported us for so long are becoming less predictable.

    Earth Emergency

    Does this mean life is over for humanity?

    Not necessarily.

    But it does mean we have entered a new reality.

    For most of human history, our greatest challenges were each other.

    From survival with each other on the planet to:

    Empires.

    Wars.

    Borders.

    Politics.

    Economics.

    But today, a new challenge stands above them all:

    The condition of the very planet that makes civilization possible.

    If the rivers continue drying up…

    If agriculture becomes increasingly unstable…

    If ecosystems continue breaking down…

    …then every other problem becomes harder to solve.

    This is no longer just another political issue.

    It is becoming the foundation beneath every political issue.

    And that makes it something entirely different.

    A planetary emergency.

    Fighting Each Other

    Yet look at how we respond.

    We continue acting as though the greatest threat is one another.

    We argue over political parties.

    We blame other countries.

    We compete economically.

    We prepare for wars and go through with them.

    We still seem to believe that if only our side wins, everything will somehow be fine.

    But rivers do not recognize borders.

    The atmosphere does not vote.

    The oceans do not distinguish between left and right.

    Nature has never accepted our illusion of separation.

    What We Normally Do In Emergencies

    Imagine a forest fire racing toward a town.

    Do the firefighters stop to debate politics?

    Do they argue over religion?

    Do they refuse help because it comes from another country?

    Of course not.

    They gather every available person, every vehicle and every resource.

    They work together because the emergency is greater than their disagreements.

    That is what intelligent beings do.

    So why should a planetary emergency be any different?

    History Says It Isn’t Impossible

    Some people will say humanity could never unite.

    History disagrees.

    Few believed the Soviet Union would open itself through Glasnost.

    Few imagined apartheid could end with forgiveness instead of endless revenge.

    Few expected Britain to leave India after centuries of colonial rule.

    History is full of moments that looked impossible…

    …until they happened.

    Not because humanity became perfect.

    But because enough people finally realized that continuing the old way was no longer an option.

    The Hard Question

    So perhaps the question is not whether humanity can survive.

    Perhaps the question is whether our system is designed to deal with a planetary emergency.

    For thousands of years we have built civilization on the system of ownership.

    On money.

    On trade.

    On competition.

    On the pursuit of endless economic growth.

    Those foundations have brought us extraordinary technological progress.

    But have they also encouraged us to treat the planet as something to care for rather than something to exploit?

    If our civilization rewards extracting more, consuming more and competing more, should we really be surprised that the living systems supporting all of us are beginning to struggle?

    Perhaps this is why solving one environmental problem after another never seems enough.

    We are trying to repair the roof while the foundations remain unchanged.

    What About Overpopulation?

    Whenever humanity’s environmental problems are discussed, someone always arrives at the same conclusion.

    “There are simply too many of us.”

    It is true that population matters. No planet can support unlimited growth forever, and we should aim for a stable global population over time.

    But when people talk about rapidly reducing the population, the images that come to mind are not ones I want to think about.

    History has already shown us where that kind of thinking can lead.

    No.

    If we are going to do something drastic, let it be this:

    Let’s drastically redesign the way civilization operates.

    Instead of reducing people, let’s reduce waste.

    Instead of reducing people, let’s reduce pollution.

    Instead of reducing people, let’s reduce the unnecessary consumption of resources.

    Instead of asking how to make humanity smaller, perhaps we should ask how to make humanity wiser.

    Our economic system was established in an age when the planet seemed vast and its resources almost limitless. Today we know better.

    So perhaps the emergency is not that there are eight or nine or ten billion people alive.

    Perhaps the emergency is that billions of people are participating in a civilization that rewards ever-increasing extraction, consumption and economic growth on a planet with clear physical limits.

    That is a systemic design problem.

    And unlike population, a system can be changed. And population will change with it.

    If we have the courage to face reality, the most humane response to our crisis is not to cull humanity.

    It is to redesign civilization so that humanity—and the living world we depend on—can thrive together for generations to come.

    A Civilizational Transition

    This is why I don’t believe another election will solve our problems.

    Nor another war.

    Nor another economic package.

    This is not primarily a political or economic crisis.

    It is a civilizational one.

    The solution is not for one nation to defeat another.

    Nor for one ideology to defeat another.

    The solution is for humanity to begin acting as humanity.

    To recognize that we share one planet, one biosphere and one future.

    To gather our knowledge, technology, resources and compassion—not to compete against one another, but to preserve the extraordinary world that has given us life for so long.

    Because if history has taught us anything, it is that impossible changes sometimes become inevitable.

    Imagine That Future

    This is exactly what has happened in the novel, Waking Up – A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity.

    Humanity has redesigned the whole system from one on endless monetary growth to to a system that supports nature and humanity forever.

    Not by becoming perfect.

    But by growing up.

    By leaving behind the illusion of separation and building a civilization designed to work for everyone—and for the planet that makes every human life possible.

    Perhaps that future begins the same way every great change in history has begun.

    With enough people daring to imagine it.

    The bewildered billionaire Benjamin Michaels wakes up one hundred years into the future expecting to expand his empire.

    Instead, he discovers that humanity finally recognized the emergency and done something about it.

    Are you curious of how the world he wakes up in looks?

    If so, you can discover his story here.

    If you believe there is still hope for humanity and think our future depends on as many as possible waking up to the possibility of a world that works for all I invite you to share this article. I thank you.

  •  Nothing Matters More Than Money

     Nothing Matters More Than Money

    Nothing matters more than money.

    Not forests.

    Not clean rivers.

    Not fertile soil.

    Not a stable climate.

    Not peace.

    Not equality.

    Not even the future.

    At least not if you judge civilization by what it consistently rewards.

    Business as usual

    The world carries on as usual.

    Investing. Expanding. Trading. Discussing interest rates, inflation, wages, savings and loans as if this way of organizing civilization is simply how the world works—and always will.

    On the surface, everything appears normal.

    Markets rise and fall. Companies are worth trillions. Governments celebrate economic growth. Economists debate the next quarter. Investors search for the next opportunity. Smartphone companies create their next smartphone.

    Business as usual.

    Shiny Surfaces

    But look beneath the money. Beneath the shiny surfaces of Apple, Samsung, Morgan Chase and Citibank. 

    Climate change.

    Environmental degradation.

    Deforestation.

    Soil erosion.

    Polluted rivers and oceans.

    Mass extinction.

    War.

    Poverty.

    Crime.

    Stress.

    Loneliness.

    Growing inequality.

    A world on the brink of social and ecological breakdown.

    No Connection

    Yet we rarely connect these crises.

    Climate is discussed over here.

    Poverty over there.

    Crime somewhere else.

    War in another room.

    Economic growth in yet another.

    Every problem gets its own debate, its own conference, its own expert panel.

    But almost nobody asks the obvious question.

    What if they are not separate problems?

    What if they are different expressions of the same underlying system?

    Because the monetary system doesn’t ask what is best for humanity.

    It doesn’t ask what is best for nature.

    It doesn’t ask what will still work a hundred years from now. Or a thousand.

    The monetary system is designed for only one thing:

    Increase monetary wealth.

    It asks only one question:

    Can it generate more money?

    If the answer is yes, the activity is rewarded.

    If the answer is no, it struggles to survive.

    That logic doesn’t only influence corporations.

    It shapes governments.

    It shapes scientific research.

    It shapes media.

    It shapes education.

    It shapes our careers.

    It shapes our daily decisions.

    Even when we know the consequences.

    We often speak as if environmental destruction, inequality and endless consumption are unfortunate side effects of an otherwise successful civilization.

    But what if they are not side effects at all?

    What if they are exactly what a civilization built around monetary growth naturally produces?

    That would explain why every attempt to solve one problem seems to create another.

    We become more efficient, and consumption grows.

    We invent cleaner technologies, yet total resource use continues to increase.

    We promise green growth while extracting more from the Earth than ever before.

    The system keeps demanding more more more and more.

    Not because people are evil or stupid.

    Not because politicians don’t care.

    But because the system reward expansion, competition and accumulation.

    The tragedy is that we have become so accustomed to this system that we mistake it for a law of nature.

    It is not.

    It is a human invention.

    And what has been invented can be reinvented.

    The real wealth of humanity has never been money.

    It has always been fertile land.

    Clean water.

    Healthy ecosystems.

    Knowledge.

    Technology.

    Human creativity.

    Cooperation.

    Money cannot replace any of these.

    It can only assign numbers to them.

    And when the numbers become more important than the things they represent, civilization begins to consume the very foundations that keep it alive.

    Because more money does not create more resources, more fertile land, clean water and clean air. Quite the contrary. More money only makes more people compete for the same resources, effectively creating scarcity where abundance was the starting point.

    Perhaps that is where we are today.

    Not facing a climate crisis.

    Or an economic crisis.

    Or a political crisis.

    But a civilizational crisis.

    One that cannot be solved by changing governments, adjusting interest rates or creating another financial incentive.

    It requires something much deeper and groundbreaking.

    A new foundation.

    One where humanity finally organizes itself around protecting and intelligently managing real wealth instead of endlessly accumulating symbolic wealth.

    It may sound impossible as we are so ingrained in the monetary system. It may seem impossible to get out. 

    No Choice

    But what if we have no choice? What if our civilization is collapsing unless we get out of the quagmire of the monetary system? 

    Doing this demands vision. Enough people being able to imagine something else. 

    A Different World

    This is exactly what has happened in the novel Waking Up – A journey towards a new dawn for humanity. Humanity woke up and started imagining a different world. A world that works for both people, nature and the planet. 

    And this is exactly the future the bewildered billionaire Benjamin Michaels wakes up to in the story.

    A world where money is no longer the operating system of civilization, because humanity has finally realized that life itself is worth more. Follow the bewildered billionaire into this world as he wakes up after 100 years of cryonic preservation trying to escape his cancer. He had planned to expand his empire, but instead he finds a thriving world without money…

    Discover the story

  • What is your favorite quote?

    If you only believe in the sun when you can see it you will never get through the night.

    Leia Skywalker

  • The Grocery Store

    The Grocery Store

    Imagining the new world

    This article is dedicated to Zanny Minton Beddoes, Editor-in-Chief of The Economist.

    In her recent interview with Elon Musk, she asked a simple but profound question. Musk said: “By 2036, money might not matter at all“, whereupon Zanny asked:  “But in all practical terms, what would daily life look like in a moneyless world?”

    This article is an attempt to answer that question by imagining one of the most ordinary experiences of all: going to the grocery store.

    Understandably, many people have trouble imagining a world without money.

    So let’s make it simple.

    1. Abundance

    1. Imagine that the new world does not have any less abundance than today. But rather more. Imagine that all the goods, services, tools, food, technology, homes, healthcare, transport, and everything else we genuinely need are still here and are being updated as time goes by. 

    2. Grocery store

    You walk in, and the shelves are full. There are vegetables, fruit, bread, juice, household products, and everything else people in that area normally use. Perhaps there are fewer screaming labels, fewer fake choices, and far less wasted packaging — but the products are there.

    The difference is not that the store has disappeared.

    The difference is how it works.

    3. Behind the scenes

    1. Behind the scenes, an intelligent coordination system keeps track of what is actually needed and used. If people take more tomatoes, more tomatoes are produced, transported, and restocked. If people drink more orange juice, the system notices. If demand falls, production adjusts. All of it happens automatically through AI and robotics and the people who finds working with logistics interesting and fulfilling. 

    Not through prices.

    Not through profit.

    Not through competition.

    Through real need and actual use.

    While keeping it sustainable.

    AI, robotics, logistics, farming, transportation, storage, and local production all work together to keep the store supplied. The system responds to real use, not market speculation.

    And if you prefer to grow your own food, you can do that too. Whatever surplus you get you share with your neighbors and friends and get even more friends.

    If oranges grow where you live, you can grow oranges. If you want to make your own orange juice, you can order a juicer. If you want to plant vegetable beds, you can get the tools you need. If you produce more than your household uses, you can store it, share it with neighbors, or let the system know it is available.

    Nothing mystical is required.

    The new world can look surprisingly much like the world we already know.

    There will still be grocery stores, cafés, restaurants, workshops, farms, delivery systems, homes, tools, and everyday life.

    But the foundation is different.

    No Meaningless Jobs

    Today, money decides who gets what. Ownership decides who controls what. Prices decide what people can access. And millions of people are coerced into low-paid, exhausting, often meaningless jobs simply to survive.

    In a moneyless, resource-based society, the question changes.

    Instead of asking, “Can you afford it?” we ask, “Is it needed?”

    Instead of forcing people to take any job they can get just to pay bills, we ask, “What are you naturally good at? What do you love doing? Where can your contribution bring joy, usefulness, and meaning?”

    Of course, the grocery store is only one small example.

    The same principle would apply throughout society.

    Buildings would be maintained, renovated, and gradually upgraded according to need, sustainability, safety, and environmental impact. Roads, railways, water systems, energy networks, and public spaces would continuously evolve as better solutions become available.

    Vehicles would become cleaner, safer, and more efficient over time. Production methods would also improve whenever new technologies, materials, or processes could reduce waste, lower environmental impact, or provide a better quality of life.

    Society would not stand still.

    Innovation would continue. Research would continue. Development would continue.

    The difference is that progress would no longer be driven by profit, competition, or planned obsolescence, but by a simple question:

    How can we do this better?

    Better for people.

    Better for future generations.

    And better for nature and the planet that supports us all.

    The grocery store therefore becomes more than a place of consumption.

    It becomes a simple example of a different civilization.

    A civilization where the purpose of food production is not profit, but nourishment.

    A civilization where technology is not used to displace people into poverty, but to free people from unnecessary struggle.

    A civilization where abundance is organized intelligently, responsibly, and for everyone.

    That is the shift.

    Not from grocery stores to empty shelves.

    Not from comfort to sacrifice.

    But from money-based access to need-based coordination.

    From forced labor to meaningful contribution.

    From ownership and trade to stewardship and care.

    The future may not look as strange as we think.

    It may look like walking into a grocery store, taking what you need, knowing others can do the same — and realizing that civilization has finally grown up.

    If this sounds impossible, remember that every system humanity has ever lived under was once considered impossible before it existed.

    The future begins when we dare to imagine it. 

    And perhaps that is the real challenge.

    Not building the technology.

    Not producing the resources.

    But allowing ourselves to imagine that humanity can organize itself in a completely different way. And that is exactly what I have imagined in the novel Waking Up – A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity.

    It follows the bewildered billionaire Benjamin Michaels when he wakes up after one hundred years of cryonic preservation only to to discover a world where money, ownership, and trade have become historical curiosities—and where humanity has built a civilization based on cooperation, stewardship, and abundance.

    Could such a world ever exist?

    There is only one way to find out.

    👉 Discover the story

    And please share this article if it resonates.

    I thank you.

  • Money no longer matters in 2036??

    Money no longer matters in 2036??

    In a recent interview with The Economist, Elon Musk made a prediction that would have sounded like science fiction just a few years ago.

    He suggested that money may no longer matter by 2036.

    His reasoning is that if AI and millions of humanoid robots can produce more goods and services than humanity could ever consume, then scarcity largely disappears. As he put it, the most likely outcome is “an age of amazing abundance,” where anyone can have anything they can think of—assuming we avoid World War III.

    Whether that timeline turns out to be right or wrong remains to be seen.

    But the conversation itself has changed.

    One of the world’s most influential technology leaders is now openly talking about a future where money may no longer be the organizing principle of society with the editor in chief of the Economist.

    And there’s something remarkable about that in itself.

    The editor-in-chief of one of the world’s most influential financial publications is interviewing the richest man on Earth about a future where money may no longer matter.

    Just writing that sentence feels surreal.

    I’ve since seen two different clips from the interview circulating online. This is the other one:

    In one, Zanny asks the obvious question: “How will this be financed? Will there be massive redistribution of wealth?”

    Musk simply replies:

    “What was relevant in the past might not be relevant in the future.”

    It’s a fascinating answer because it suggests that perhaps we’re trying to understand tomorrow’s world using yesterday’s assumptions.

    In another clip, she asks a different question:

    “At a more prosaic level, what will life be like?”

    To me, that’s the most important question of all.

    Because abundance alone doesn’t tell us what everyday life actually looks like.

    How do we live?

    How do we organize ourselves?

    How are homes provided?

    How do education, healthcare and transportation work?

    What motivates people?

    What does a civilization beyond money actually feel like?

    Listening to these two clips, I couldn’t help smiling.

    Not because I think Elon Musk is describing the same future I have imagined.

    But because the questions being asked are the very same questions that fascinated me years ago.

    In fact, they fascinated me so much that I wrote an entire novel exploring them.

    Well… I imagined this world in the year 2115 rather than 2036. 😊

    But hey… if Elon turns out to be right, perhaps we’ll get there almost a century earlier than I expected…?

    If you, like like Zanny Minton Beddoes, ever wondered what everyday life in such a civilization might actually be like—not just technologically, but socially, politically and humanly—that is exactly what my novel Waking Up – A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity, and the many articles on this blog, explore.

    So if, like Zanny Minton Beddoes, you’re wondering what life beyond money might actually look like…

    …I think I may have an answer.

    Check out the story here.

    In the story, the bewildered billionaire Benjamin Michaels wakes up in that world after 100 years of cryonic sleep, trying to escape his cancer. He expected to expand his empire upon awakening, but much to his surprise there is no money in the world anymore. Instead he gets an amazing journey through this new world, filled with both peril and paradise…

    Hope you like it.

  • The Permanent Civilization

    The Permanent Civilization

    Most great civilizations in history has been temporary.

    The Egyptians believed their civilization would endure forever. The Romans thought the same. So did countless kingdoms, empires, and nations throughout history.

    Yet most of them eventually declined, fragmented, or disappeared.

    Perhaps the most dangerous assumption we make today is that our own civilization is somehow different.

    We tend to think of modern civilization as permanent. Money and ownership has lasted for generations and seem to last forever.

    But will it?

    Our economic system depends on endless growth on a finite planet. Our political systems struggle to solve increasingly global problems. Our industries consume resources faster than nature can regenerate them. Climate change, ecological degradation, resource depletion, and geopolitical tensions all raise an uncomfortable question:

    Are we building a civilization that can last?

    Or are we simply living in the latest chapter of another temporary one?

    The First Permanent Civilization

    For the first time in history, humanity possesses something no previous civilization ever had.

    A full global view.

    We can communicate instantly across continents. We can monitor weather systems from space. We can track resources, production, transportation, and consumption in real time. Artificial intelligence is rapidly increasing our ability to understand complex systems and coordinate information.

    The technical ability to manage a global civilization is already here.

    The challenge is no longer primarily technological.

    It is human.

    The question is not whether we can coordinate.

    The question is: coordinate toward what?

    Defining Success

    Before we can create a permanent civilization, we must decide what success actually means.

    Do we want everyone to have access to food, water, shelter, healthcare, and education?

    Do we want to preserve the ecosystems that support life?

    Do we want future generations to inherit a thriving planet?

    Do we want to reduce unnecessary suffering?

    Do we want peace and cooperation to become easier than conflict and competition?

    Most people, regardless of nationality, religion, or political belief, would probably answer yes to all these questions.

    Perhaps humanity already agrees on far more than we think.

    Our disagreements often concern methods rather than goals.

    And perhaps the greatest challenge facing humanity is not a lack of technology, resources, or intelligence.

    Perhaps it is simply that we have never clearly defined what success for humanity actually looks like.

    Human Hubris

    But even if we solve our environmental and economic challenges, another question remains.

    What about us?

    History is filled with examples of civilizations that were not destroyed by a lack of resources, but by arrogance, corruption, tribalism, greed, and the concentration of power.

    The Romans had resources.

    Many empires possessed advanced technologies for their time.

    What often failed was not the physical system, but the people operating within it.

    This does not mean human beings are flawed beyond repair.

    It simply means that human beings are human.

    A permanent civilization cannot depend upon perfect people alone.

    It must be designed to remain healthy despite imperfect people.

    The goal is not to eliminate human hubris.

    The goal is to prevent hubris from gaining enough influence to threaten the entire civilization.

    Decentralized but Coordinated

    This may be one of the most important lessons humanity has yet to learn.

    Power concentrated in one ruler, one party, one corporation, one ideology, or one elite group eventually creates risks for everyone.

    The larger the concentration of power, the larger the consequences when mistakes are made.

    A permanent civilization would likely require a different approach.

    Not centralized control.

    Not chaos.

    But decentralized management combined with global coordination.

    Local communities understand local needs.

    Regions understand regional challenges.

    At the same time, humanity increasingly possesses the ability to coordinate knowledge, resources, and information globally.

    A neighborhood can make decisions about its own affairs.

    A region can manage its own resources.

    A global network can provide information about planetary systems, resource availability, ecological impacts, and long-term consequences.

    The result is neither a world government nor a collection of isolated groups.

    It becomes a living network.

    A civilization where decisions are made at the lowest practical level while knowledge is shared at the highest possible level.

    Councils Instead of Rulers

    If humanity wishes to create a civilization that lasts for centuries or millennia, we may need to move beyond the ancient model of rulers.

    The challenge is not finding the perfect king, president, emperor, billionaire, or political party.

    Humanity has spent thousands of years trying that approach.

    The challenge is designing systems that remain stable and flexible regardless of who occupies a particular position.

    One possible path is a network of councils operating at neighborhood, community, regional, national, and global levels.

    Not rulers.

    But

    Direct democracy.

    Collaborators.

    Stewards.

    Combined with transparent information systems and advanced AI capable of analyzing consequences and identifying risks, such a structure could provide continuous feedback and self-correction.

    Humans would continue to provide wisdom, creativity, compassion, and values.

    AI would provide analysis, memory, modeling, and perspective.

    Together they would create a civilization that learns rather than commands.

    The Great Awakening

    Yet no system alone can guarantee permanence. A permanent civilization ultimately requires something deeper.

    A shift in consciousness.

    Not necessarily toward a particular religion, ideology, or belief system.

    But toward a broader understanding of who we are.

    For most of history, survival encouraged us to think in terms of tribes, nations, classes, religions, and competing groups. Money, ownership and property was inherited through generations. 

    Conscious Awareness

    Perhaps the next stage of civilization requires us to think as one human family. And create a new form of inheritance. An inheritance where conscious awareness is inherited. The conscious awareness that we are one global family trying our best to survive on this planet forever.

    Not because we become identical.

    Not because we lose our individuality.

    But because we recognize our shared destiny.

    The atmosphere belongs to all of us.

    The oceans belong to all of us.

    The land belong to all of us.

    The future belongs to all of us.

    A civilization that intends to last forever must care about people it will never meet and generations not yet born.

    Self-Correction, Not Perfection

    Perhaps the secret of a permanent civilization is not perfection.

    Perfection does not exist.

    Perhaps the secret is simply self-correction.

    A civilization humble enough to admit mistakes.

    Wise enough to learn from them.

    Flexible enough to change before those mistakes become fatal.

    A civilization that never assumes it has reached the end of history.

    A civilization that understands it is always evolving.

    Because the moment a civilization believes it has become perfect, it stops learning.

    And the moment it stops learning, decline begins.

    The Balanced Civilization

    The permanent civilization may not be humanity’s most powerful civilization.

    It may be humanity’s most balanced civilization.

    A civilization where power is distributed, knowledge is shared, resources are managed intelligently, and no individual or institution can accumulate enough influence to threaten the whole.

    A civilization based on stewardship rather than ownership.

    Collaboration rather than domination.

    Long-term thinking rather than short-term gain.

    Perhaps humanity’s greatest achievement will not be artificial intelligence, fusion power, space travel, or even reaching the stars.

    Perhaps our greatest achievement will be creating the first civilization in history that can truly go on forever.

    A civilization capable of enduring not merely for centuries, but for countless generations to come.

    The Permanent Civilization.

    A civilization designed not simply to survive.

    But to thrive.

    Forever.

    ⸻

    In the novel Waking Up: A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity, humanity has just made this transition and discovered what becomes possible when we begin to see ourselves as one global family. 

    The bewildered billionaire Benjamin Michaels wakes up in this future after 100 years of cryonic sleep. He was trying to escape his cancer in 2015, and hoped to wake up again continuing the expansion of his empire. Imagine his surprise when there is no money in the world anymore…

    You can discover his whole story here if you like.

    If this vision resonates with you, please share this article. The conversation about humanity’s future belongs to all of us.

  • The Most Important Choice

    The Most Important Choice

    In several interviews over the years, Elon Musk has suggested that a future without money may one day become possible, and maybe even inevitable.

    He has argued that sufficiently advanced artificial intelligence and robotics could create such extraordinary abundance that money might eventually become unnecessary. He has also repeatedly praised The Culture, Iain M. Banks’ celebrated science fiction series about a highly advanced civilization where artificial intelligence manages an economy of abundance and money has disappeared altogether.

    That is a remarkable thing to hear from the richest man on Earth.

    Here is someone who has built some of the world’s most valuable companies, accumulated immense wealth, and mastered today’s monetary system better than almost anyone else alive. Yet he openly entertains the possibility that money itself may not be a permanent feature of civilization. Maybe it’s just to sound interesting. Who knows?

    But why Elon Musk says it or is right is almost beside the point.

    The truly interesting question is whether we are prepared to follow that line of thought all the way to its conclusion.

    Human Economy

    The monetary system humanity has created has been built around people.

    People own land, businesses and resources. People work for wages. People buy and sell. People borrow money and repay loans. People invest, consume and pay taxes. Money is not simply coins, banknotes or numbers on a screen. It is the accounting system for billions of human interactions taking place every single day.

    Now imagine a future where artificial intelligence and robotics gradually perform most of the productive work.

    The machines build the houses, manufacture the products, grow the food, transport the goods. They maintain the infrastructure. They even design the next generation of machines.

    The more capable the technology becomes, the less human labour is required.

    But. Machines do not earn salaries. They do not buy groceries. They do not take out mortgages. They do not pay income tax. They do not participate in the monetary economy in the way people do. And they never will.

    If the productive activity that once belonged to billions of people is increasingly carried out by machines, then the foundation upon which today’s monetary system was built is fundamentally changing.

    Without economic activity from people, there will be no monetary system

    Thus, our problem is not merely an employment issue.

    It is a civilization issue.

    Follow Through

    This is where I think the conversation usually stops.

    We hear that artificial intelligence will create abundance.

    We hear that robots will do the work.

    We hear that people may receive a universal basic income.

    Then the discussion ends.

    But surely that is where the discussion should begin.

    Where does that income come from?

    How does a monetary system continue functioning if fewer and fewer people participate in the productive economy?

    What happens to wages?

    What happens to prices?

    What happens to ownership?

    What happens to profit?

    What happens to money?

    Every one of these questions is connected to every other.

    You cannot remove the human foundation from a system that has always depended upon human participation without asking whether the system itself is still appropriate.

    Perhaps Elon Musk has already followed this chain of thought all the way through.

    Perhaps he hasn’t.

    I honestly don’t know.

    But humanity eventually will have to.

    Our Choice

    Technology will not answer these questions for us.

    Artificial intelligence may create extraordinary abundance, but it cannot decide how civilization should organize itself once that abundance exists.

    That decision belongs to us.

    Perhaps we will find a way to preserve some form of monetary system.

    Perhaps we won’t.

    What matters is that we consciously examine the possibilities instead of automatically assuming that yesterday’s solutions must also be tomorrow’s.

    Throughout history, humanity has continually modified the monetary system. We have moved from barter to coins, from coins to paper money, from paper money to digital banking, from national currencies to cryptocurrencies.

    Every generation has tried to improve the system it inherited.

    Perhaps artificial intelligence will allow us to improve it once again.

    Or perhaps it is inviting us to ask a much more fundamental question.

    After all, regardless of the benefits money has brought, it has also been intertwined with poverty, inequality, debt, financial crises, exploitation, corruption, pollution, wars over resources and environmental destruction. It has been one of humanity’s most powerful inventions, but also one of its most troublesome.

    So if technology eventually gives us the opportunity to build a civilization beyond artificial scarcity, beyond involuntary labour and perhaps even beyond money itself…

    Wouldn’t it be prudent to at least explore that possibility instead of desperately trying to preserve a failing system at all costs?

    That may be the most important choice humanity has ever made.

    ⸻

    The Future

    In the novel Waking Up: A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity, Mankind has already made that choice, continuing civilization without a monetary system and instead created an optimized world providing a high degree of abundance for everyone on Earth. The former billionaire Benjamin Michaels wakes up in this world after one hundred years of cryonic sleep, only to discover that money and ownership no longer exist and that his dream of expanding his empire has become meaningless.

    Now imagine if that billionaire had been Elon Musk…

    Discover the story…