Category: environment

  • The System of Scarcity 

    The System of Scarcity 

    Europe’s gas storage is low. Gas prices may rise. Electricity prices may rise with them—even in Sweden.

    This is presented as if Europe is running out of energy.

    Meanwhile, the sun continues to pour an incomprehensible amount of energy onto Spain and the rest of southern Europe every day. The wind continues to blow across the Earth. Rivers continue to flow through Scandinavia. We already possess the technology required to capture, store, distribute and intelligently combine all of these sources.

    The gas may be scarce.

    Energy is not.

    What we are witnessing is not merely an energy problem. It is a perfect demonstration of the system of scarcity.

    The Actual Need

    Europe does not need gas.

    Europe needs energy.

    Gas is only one possible means of providing heat, electricity and industrial power. Yet because enormous investments, markets and infrastructure have been built around gas, a shortage of gas is treated as a shortage of energy itself.

    This is extraordinarily narrow thinking.

    The Clean River

    Imagine someone standing beside a clean river and declaring that there is nothing to drink because the shop has run out of bottled water. The person has confused one commercial product with the underlying need that the product was supposed to satisfy.

    We do this throughout the economy.

    We do not fundamentally need oil.

    We need transportation, heat, materials and industrial processes. We do not need one particular metal. We need whatever function that metal performs. We do not need concrete in every conceivable construction. We need safe and durable buildings. We do not need one particular crop from one particular supplier. We need nutritious food.

    The Sane Civilization

    In a sane civilization, we would always begin by identifying the actual need. We would then examine every available resource, technology and method capable of meeting it.

    If one resource became scarce, we would not run around like headless chickens announcing the end of civilization. We would look for alternatives. We would substitute materials, redesign products, recycle components, improve efficiency or find a completely different way to achieve the desired result.

    A particular resource may be scarce without the solution being scarce.

    But that is not how our present system thinks.

    Market Thinking

    Unfortunately we don’t live in a sane civilization at the moment.

    The monetary system does not primarily ask how human needs can be met with the resources available. It asks what can be owned, traded and sold profitably through the system that already exists.

    Europe has built a market around gas. Companies own extraction rights, pipelines, terminals, storage facilities, power plants and contracts. Governments have designed policies around this structure. Financial markets trade expectations about its future availability. Millions of incomes, investments and institutional interests have become attached to maintaining it.

    Consequently, when gas becomes scarce, the response is not simply to move as quickly as possible toward whatever abundant alternatives are available. The shortage becomes a market event. Prices rise. Traders speculate. Households worry. Industries demand support. Governments compete for supplies.

    The system has mistaken its own dependency for a law of nature.

    In Sweden, electricity prices can be affected by European gas prices even though very little Swedish electricity is generated from gas. Electricity is traded through interconnected markets, and expensive gas-generated electricity elsewhere can influence prices far beyond the place where that gas is actually burned.

    The Labyrinth

    Spain may simultaneously receive an abundance of solar energy. But instead of regarding this as part of Europe’s shared energy capacity, we place a labyrinth of markets, ownership structures, pricing mechanisms, national interests and insufficiently coordinated infrastructure between the sunlight and the people who need energy.

    Then we point to the resulting bottleneck and call it scarcity.

    We have created a monetary maze between the resource and the need. When the resource cannot pass efficiently through the maze, we conclude that there is not enough.

    Scarcity Within

    The deepest scarcity, however, is not found in a gas storage facility. It is created in the human mind.

    It begins with the belief that there cannot possibly be enough for everyone. It is the narrow, frightened and egoic conviction that human beings are separate competitors trapped in a struggle over an inadequate world. If I do not acquire as much as possible for myself, someone else will take it. If others gain access, I must be losing something.

    From that belief, we created institutions based on ownership, competition, accumulation and exclusion. Those institutions then restrict access to resources and produce deprivation. Finally, the deprivation is offered as proof that the original belief was correct.

    The scarcity mindset creates the scarcity system. The scarcity system restricts access. Restricted access reinforces the scarcity mindset.

    It is a closed loop operating inside a world of extraordinary natural wealth, technological capability and human ingenuity.

    This does not mean that every resource is infinite. Earth is a finite planet. Some materials are genuinely rare. Ecosystems have limits, and reckless extraction can destroy the very foundations of human life.

    But physical limits do not require a civilization based on permanent scarcity. They require intelligence.

    They require us to know what resources exist, understand the rate at which they can safely be used, eliminate unnecessary waste, recover materials, develop alternatives and design products around what is sustainably available.

    The belief that physical limits force us to compete, hoard and exclude one another is not realism. It is a failure of imagination.

    Money Needs Scarcity

    Money does not merely help us manage scarcity. The monetary system depends upon scarcity in order to function.

    If something is genuinely abundant and freely accessible, there is little reason to buy or sell it. Nobody can build an enormous fortune selling something that everyone can already obtain freely whenever they need it.

    For trade to remain necessary, there must be a barrier between people and the things they require. Sometimes that barrier is a genuine physical limitation. But it can also be created through ownership, prices, patents, restricted distribution, deliberate underproduction or the destruction of surplus.

    If there were true abundance, we would not need money or trading.

    This creates a fundamental contradiction at the heart of the monetary system. It claims to pursue abundance through economic growth, innovation and increased production. Yet genuine abundance threatens the very prices and profits upon which the system depends.

    If housing were freely available to everyone, housing would cease to be an enormously profitable investment vehicle. If clean energy were universally available, energy empires could no longer collect fortunes from controlling access to it. If nutritious food were produced in abundance and distributed according to need, hunger could no longer coexist with mountains of discarded food. If knowledge and technology were openly shared, artificial monopolies built around controlling them would disappear.

    The system therefore does not merely distribute what exists. It determines who is permitted access.

    That is why food can be destroyed while people go hungry. Houses can remain empty while people are homeless. Factories can remain idle while essential needs go unmet. Medicines can exist while patients are unable to obtain them. Renewable energy can surround us while families fear their next electricity bill.

    These are not always shortages of the things themselves. They are shortages of permission, purchasing power and access.

    Proof of Abundance

    Despite the extreme inefficiency of the present system, we are, amazingly enough, still here. We extract vastly more resources than necessary because of the profit motive, manufacture disposable products, transport goods absurd distances, destroy unsold food, demolish usable buildings, discard functioning technology and bury valuable materials in landfills. 

    Yet Earth has continued to provide for billions of people in spite of all this waste.

    That alone is evidence of the extraordinary abundance our planet has to offer.

    But under the monetary system, this abundance is available primarily to those with enough money to access it. Some people can command more food, land, energy, housing and manufactured products than they could possibly use, while others are denied the essentials of life. What we call abundance today is therefore an abundance built upon extreme inequality, relentless extraction and enormous waste.

    It is not an abundance we have created intelligently. It is an abundance we have plundered selectively.

    And this cannot continue for much longer—not if we expect humanity to continue for much longer on this planet. The fact that Earth has survived our inefficiency until now does not mean its capacity is limitless. It means we have been given an extraordinary margin of abundance and have mistaken that generosity for permission to waste it.

    Manufacturing Waste

    The present system extracts far more resources than humanity actually needs—not because people require everything being produced, but because companies must continue selling in order to survive and generate profit. A product that lasts for fifty years is less profitable than one that must be replaced every five. A device that can be repaired and upgraded indefinitely creates fewer sales than one that is sealed, unsupported and eventually declared obsolete.

    The result is an economy built around continuous turnover. Countless competing companies manufacture slightly different versions of the same products, duplicate factories and distribution networks, cover everything in disposable packaging and spend enormous resources persuading us to replace things that still work. Unsold food is destroyed, usable clothing is discarded, buildings remain empty, machinery stands idle and valuable materials are buried in landfills because providing access without payment would undermine their market value.

    Humanity now extracts approximately 100 billion tonnes of materials from Earth every year, while the global economy remains only about eight percent circular. There is no precise calculation of how much extraction would disappear without the profit motive, but a reduction of twenty to forty percent is entirely conceivable once products were designed for durability, repair, sharing, standardization and complete material recovery. The same resources could provide a far higher standard of living while placing dramatically less pressure on the planet.

    This means that removing the profit incentive would not create deprivation. It would effectively create abundance.

    We would no longer need to extract enough resources to satisfy human needs and keep billions of products flowing continuously through the machinery of sales and profit. We would produce what was actually needed, make it as durable as possible, share rarely used equipment, repair what broke and recover its materials when it finally reached the end of its useful life.

    Abundance does not require producing an infinite number of disposable things. It means ensuring that everyone can access what they need. By removing the commercial requirement to manufacture, sell, discard and replace as much as possible, humanity could create greater abundance for everyone while extracting considerably less from Earth.

    Extreme Wealth

    This also explains why extreme billionaires could not exist in a world where everyone had enough.

    A billion euros is not a billion pieces of food, houses, cars or solar panels. It is a claim upon real resources and productive capacity. It gives one person extraordinary power to command land, materials, technology and human activity.

    That power has meaning only because access is unequally distributed.

    If everyone could obtain excellent housing, food, healthcare, education, transportation, communication and energy without payment, currency would lose  its practical power. A billionaire might still possess a vast numerical fortune, but there would be little that fortune could command which everyone else could not already access.

    Extreme wealth is therefore not evidence that society has created abundance. It is evidence that access to abundance has been concentrated through the ingenious monetary system. Ingenious for the billionaires, that is.

    The greater the distance between the billionaire and the person who cannot afford electricity, food or shelter, the more successfully the system has manufactured scarcity for one person while manufacturing almost unlimited purchasing power for another.

    The fortunes at the top and the deprivation at the bottom are not unrelated accidents. They are two results of the same system.

    Another Logic

    A sane world with a global resource-based economy would begin from a completely different question.

    Not:

    What can be sold?

    Not:

    Who can afford it?

    Not:

    Which shortage will produce the highest price?

    But:

    What do we need, what resources do we have available, and how can we use them intelligently for everyone?

    If humanity needed energy, we would map all available energy sources and build the most effective combination. Solar energy from sunnier regions could be integrated with wind, hydroelectricity, geothermal energy, storage and an interconnected grid. Production would be planned around physical reality rather than profitability.

    If a particular material became scarce, a global resource inventory would reveal that fact before it became a crisis. Products would be redesigned. Alternative materials would be developed. Existing components would be recovered. Wasteful uses would be discontinued, while essential uses received priority.

    There would still be limits. There would still be engineering challenges, ecological constraints and difficult decisions. But we would face those challenges as one civilization trying to solve them—not as competing owners attempting to profit from them.

    The greatest abundance available to humanity is not any single resource. It is our capacity to think, adapt, invent and cooperate. There are usually many ways to meet the same underlying need.

    Yet we suppress that abundance when we trap every solution inside the question of whether it is profitable.

    Europe worries about the gas in its storage tanks while an immense fusion reactor shines above us every day. That image captures the entire insanity of the present system.

    We are not living in a world without solutions. We are living inside a system that repeatedly overlooks them because they do not fit its narrow logic.

    The ultimate scarcity is not a lack of sunlight, resources, technology or human capability.

    It is the scarcity inside our thinking.

    And the moment we leave that thinking behind, we may discover that the world was far more abundant than we had ever allowed it to become.

    The Abundant World

    In the novel Waking Up: A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity, billionaire Benjamin Michaels awakens in 2115 to discover that humanity has finally abandoned the system of scarcity. Money, trade and ownership have been replaced by stewardship, intelligent resource management and optimized sharing. The world did not become abundant because Earth suddenly produced infinite resources. It became abundant because humanity stopped wasting what it already had.

    Discover the world that became possible when humanity finally chose abundance over scarcity here.

  • The Insanity of Humanity

    The Insanity of Humanity

    This might be the most important article I have ever written.

    A Russian drone has reportedly killed three civilians in Ukraine after using artificial intelligence to select its own target.

    Read that sentence again.

    The Terminator

    A human being programmed and  launched the weapon and gave it a general mission. But according to investigators, the drone then navigated and selected the precise object it would attack without further human intervention. It appears to have targeted propane tanks at a petrol station in Zaporizhzhia. Instead, it struck beside an apartment building and exploded, killing three people, including a 19-year-old student.

    This is not a scene from The Terminator. It is not a warning from a dystopian novel about something that might happen fifty years from now.

    It has happened.

    Drones For Death

    We have entered an age in which machines are being given the authority to decide where lethal force will be applied. Software observes the world through cameras and sensors, compares what it sees with a programmed target profile, selects something to destroy and attacks.

    There may still be human beings behind the mission. Humans manufacture the drone, define the target category and launch the weapon. But at the decisive moment—when one object is distinguished from everything surrounding it and marked for destruction—the machine may act alone.

    This is a threshold humanity should never have crossed.

    Yet, instead of stopping the insanity, every major military power will now feel compelled to move faster. If one country develops autonomous weapons, another will say it must do the same for its own protection. If one side deploys a hundred, the other will need a thousand. The drones will become smaller, cheaper, faster and more difficult to detect. They will learn to coordinate in swarms, recognize increasingly complex targets and continue operating when communication with a human controller has been lost or jammed.

    The military justification will always be the same: if we do not build them, somebody else will.

    That is how insanity becomes policy.

    Where Does This End?

    We Must Stop it

    Where does an autonomous arms race ultimately lead?

    Does the country possessing the largest number of killer drones eliminate everyone it considers a threat and then live happily ever after without all the bothersome others?

    Of course not. After all, we are dependent on each other for survival on this planet. Even the most selfish and fearful leaders see that.

    But autonomous weapons will not remain exclusively in the hands of a few powerful governments. The essential components already exist within the civilian economy: processors, cameras, navigation systems, motors, batteries and increasingly capable artificial intelligence. As the technology becomes cheaper, versions of these weapons will spread to smaller countries, militias, extremist organizations, criminal groups and individuals.

    We must stop this before it is too late.

    Nobody Will be Safe

    Eventually, nobody will be safe.

    Political leaders can be hunted. Dissidents can be hunted. Journalists, scientists, engineers and activists can be hunted. A person may be marked because of a uniform, a vehicle, a telephone signal, facial characteristics or simply because an algorithm incorrectly decides that the person matches a target profile.

    Machines do not understand mercy. They do not recognize fear in another person’s eyes and lower their weapons. They do not see a wounded soldier and decide that enough people have died. They cannot refuse an immoral command because something inside them says it is wrong.

    They process information and execute instructions.

    A world saturated with autonomous weapons would not be a world controlled by one victorious superpower. It would be a world in which power itself had become uncontrollable. Nobody would necessarily know who launched a particular drone, who programmed it or whether its behavior had been altered. One automated attack could provoke another. Retaliation could begin before human beings even understood what had happened.

    Wars could escalate at machine speed.

    And these weapons would not necessarily remain on distant battlefields. The same systems could be used by governments against their own populations. A dictator would no longer need soldiers willing to fire upon their neighbors. Machines do not disobey, protest or experience remorse. A government controlling millions of autonomous weapons could make resistance almost impossible.

    This is not security.

    It is the automated imprisonment of humanity.

    No One Wins

    If these weapons ever become genuinely uncontrollable, they will continue killing until their targets disappear or the industrial systems supporting them collapse.

    Power stations will fail. 

    Transport will stop. 

    Food distribution will break down. Hospitals will become inoperable. People will be unable to gather, travel or work safely. 

    Eventually, most of the machines will also stop as batteries degrade, components break and replacement parts disappear.

    Human civilization and its killer machines may collapse together.

    That is the glorious destination of the arms race: humanity hiding underground while machines patrol the surface of the planet we ruined through our own fear.

    Kill or Create

    We have developed artificial intelligence, advanced robotics, global communications and extraordinary scientific knowledge. We possess technology that could help restore ecosystems, clean the oceans, cultivate food, construct homes and release humanity from dangerous and exhausting work.

    And what do we do?

    We teach machines to kill.

    This is the insanity of humanity.

    The Insanity of Separation

    But beneath this insanity, humanity is not insane.

    Beneath the fear, conditioning and the constant story of separation, there is an awareness within every one of us. In that awareness exists love, compassion, understanding and intelligence. It is the part of us that recognizes another human being not as an enemy, a competitor or an obstacle, but as another expression of the same life.

    A Ukrainian child, a Russian mother, an American soldier, a Chinese engineer and an Iranian farmer are not separate forms of life with different fundamental values. They feel pain. They experience fear. They love their children. They want to live.

    There are no Others

    We have placed a frightened layer over this awareness. The ego divides the world into us and them. From it’s fear it constructs nations, armies, threats and enemies. It tells us that we can achieve safety only by possessing greater destructive power than everybody else.

    Each side insists that it is merely defending itself. Each new weapon is justified as a response to the weapons of another. Everyone pursues security, yet everyone becomes progressively less secure.

    Now we are taking this ancient insanity and embedding it in software.

    We are giving fear cameras, wings and explosives. We are teaching artificial intelligence to recognize the enemies created by our own minds and destroy them with increasing efficiency.

    The machine has not invented separation.

    We have programmed it.

    The Other Direction

    The alternative is not to abolish technology. It is not to close every data center, abandon artificial intelligence or return to some imagined pre-industrial past.

    The alternative is to give our technology another purpose.

    The New Purpose

    The same machine vision capable of recognizing a military target can recognize plastic in the ocean, an animal caught in an abandoned fishing net, the first signs of a forest fire or a person buried beneath earthquake rubble.

    Autonomous machines can remove pollution, restore forests, repair infrastructure, cultivate food and monitor the health of ecosystems. Artificial intelligence can help humanity understand what resources exist, what people need and how production can be organized without destroying the living world..

    The Choice is Ours

    We can use artificial intelligence to compete more effectively against one another, or we can use it to build a civilization that works for everyone.

    We can automate killing, or we can automate caring.

    The technology is not making that choice.

    We are.

    A Message to World Leaders

    To every head of state—and especially to the leaders of the world’s military powers:

    Stop.

    Refuse to authorize machines to select and attack human beings. Begin immediate negotiations for a binding global prohibition against autonomous weapons. Establish meaningful human control over every use of automated lethal force.

    Do not wait for your rivals to move first, because they are waiting for you.

    Somebody must interrupt the logic of fear. Somebody must possess the courage to say that humanity will not construct its future upon machines deciding who shall die.

    True courage is not developing the most efficient killer drone. It is stepping out of an arms race when everyone around you insists that stopping is impossible.

    You are not protecting your people by creating a technology that will inevitably spread and eventually be turned against them. You are not building peace by removing human conscience from the decision to kill. You are not demonstrating strength by surrendering life-and-death decisions to software.

    This is one planet. 

    We share one atmosphere, one biosphere and one future. No country can make itself permanently secure in a world where everyone else lives in fear.

    The security of one nation cannot be built upon the insecurity of all others.

    Share Another Future

    I urgently beg you. 

    I insist.

    Please share this article.

    Share it not for me, not for a political party or organization, and not because I want to sell books. Share it because humanity urgently needs to recognize the choice now before us.

    Because the recent incident in Ukraine is not to be taken lightly. 

    We are close to the ultimate choice.

    The choice to perish as humanity or the choice to prosper together.

    So please send it to friends. Send it to journalists, researchers, engineers, politicians, military commanders, technology executives and heads of state. Translate it. Republish it. Discuss it. Challenge it if you must—but do not ignore the direction in which we are moving.

    Share not only the warning. 

    Share the possibility of another future.

    People cannot choose a possibility they have never been shown.

    If the only futures presented to humanity are endless economic competition, military supremacy, automated warfare and survival against one another, we will continue constructing precisely that world.

    We must make another civilization imaginable: a civilization based upon stewardship instead of ownership, cooperation instead of competition and intelligent access to abundance instead of an endless struggle for money and power. A world in which AI and robotics serve humanity and the whole living planet—not profit, domination, fear and war.

    Somewhere within every government, military institution and technology company are human beings who still possess conscience and compassion. They must hear from us before fear makes the decision for them.

    One article will not stop the machinery of war. But silence guarantees that the machinery will continue.

    We do not need every human being to awaken at exactly the same moment. We need enough people to speak, share and demonstrate another direction. We need enough people to insist that the future does not belong to fear. We need enough people to remind those in power that there is still something within them deeper than the frightened voice demanding more weapons.

    Humanity Stands at a Threshold

    Down one road, nations surround themselves with increasingly autonomous instruments of death until every human being becomes a potential target and the entire planet becomes a battlefield controlled by machines.

    Down the other road, we recognize that there are no others. 

    We allow the intelligence, compassion and awareness within us to determine how our technology will be used. We stop preparing to destroy one another and begin building a world in which everyone can live.

    This is not a distant philosophical choice.

    It is happening now.

    Please Share

    Please carry this message as far as you can and as high as you can. Let it reach people with the power to change our direction. Let it remind them that another future remains possible.

    We cannot base humanity’s future on killer drones.

    Humanity thanks you.

  • 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

  • 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 Convenient Explanation

    The Convenient Explanation

    The fear of overpopulation is not new.

    It rose to global prominence in the 1970s, when predictions warned that humanity would soon outgrow the Earth’s capacity to sustain us. At the time, the global population had just passed around 3.7 billion, and many projections assumed near-exponential growth—doubling again within a few decades. Books like The Population Bomb warned of hundreds of millions starving by the 1980s and 1990s. Mass starvation, collapse, and crisis were expected within decades.

    But something interesting happened.

    Those predictions did not come true.

    We did not reach the catastrophic population levels that were forecast.

    So the obvious question is:

    Why not?

    What Actually Happened

    Population growth did not continue unchecked.

    In many parts of the world, it slowed down naturally.

    Why?

    Because of education.
    Because of improved living standards.
    Because of access to healthcare and family planning.

    But today, another factor is increasingly visible:

    Because of economic pressure and social stress.

    Rising housing costs, job insecurity, long working hours, and financial strain are making it harder for many to start or grow families.

    When people feel secure, informed, and supported, they tend to have fewer children.

    No coercion required.

    The Fear Returns

    Today, the fear of overpopulation has reemerged.

    Once again, it is presented as one of the central problems of our time.

    And on the surface, it makes sense.

    More people means more consumption.
    More pressure on the planet.

    It appears to be the simplest explanation.

    And therefore, the simplest “solution.”

    But simple does not mean correct.

    The Convenient Explanation

    Blaming overpopulation is convenient.

    It directs attention toward people—

    instead of toward the system we have built.

    Because the uncomfortable truth is this:

    The core problem is not how many we are. It is how we manage what we have.

    Carrying Capacity Is Not Fixed

    Yes, the Earth has limits.

    Of course we must keep our population within its carrying capacity.

    But that capacity is not a fixed number.

    It depends entirely on how efficiently we use our resources.

    According to scientific assessments, the Earth can sustain around 10 billion people—

    if resources are managed properly.

    That means:

    • Optimized production
    • Minimal waste
    • Sustainable use of materials and energy
    • Distribution based on real human needs

    A Note on Space, food and Land

    Another often overlooked point is how misleading population density can be.

    Most of us experience the world through cities, where people are packed closely together. This creates the feeling that the planet itself is overcrowded.

    But globally, that is not the case.

    There are roughly 4.8 billion hectares of agricultural land on Earth. That equals about 48 trillion square meters.

    If we divide that by a global population of around 8.3 billion people, it comes out to roughly:

    ~5,800–6,000 m² PER PERSON.

    This includes land used directly for crops, land used for grazing, and land that contributes to food production or can potentially be restored.

    In other words, a family of four would have access to around 2.3–2.4 hectares of land contributing to their food supply.

    Of course, land is not evenly distributed, and not all of it is equally productive. And if we also include cities, deserts, forests, and other land types, the total available land per person becomes even greater. But the conclusion is difficult to ignore:

    We are not running out of space or resources.

    What we are running into is the limits of how we manage that space and those resources. The same applies to food: globally, we already produce more than enough to meet human nutritional needs—yet hunger still exists, not because of lack of production, but because of how access and distribution are organized.

    The System We Actually Use

    But this is not how our current system operates.

    We do not manage resources directly.

    We manage money.

    And the monetary system is arguably the most wasteful system ever created—it is highly efficient at creating wealth for a few, but not at creating abundance for all.

    It prioritizes:

    • Profit
    • Growth
    • Consumption

    Which leads to:

    • Overproduction
    • Overextraction
    • Overconsumption 
    • Massive waste

    Not because we need it—

    but because the system depends on it.

    When Population Looks Like the Problem

    In our current system, more people will naturally seem like a problem.

    Because the system is already inefficient.

    Already wasteful.

    Already misaligned with real needs.

    So the conclusion becomes:

    “Too many people.”

    But that conclusion is misleading.

    Because what we are really seeing is:

    Too inefficient a system.

    And this is the remarkable paradox:

    We are already around 8.3 billion people on Earth—

    even within this highly inefficient and wasteful system.

    Which means the issue is not that the planet cannot support us.

    The issue is that this system cannot scale much further without increasing stress, inequality, and environmental damage.

    So yes—within this system, many more people do become a huge problem.

    But that only reinforces the real point:

    It is not humanity that has reached its limit.

    It is the system.

    A Better Way to Stay Within Limits

    If we truly care about staying within the Earth’s limits, the answer is not to reduce humanity through fear or force.

    The answer is what has already proven to work:

    • Education
    • Stability
    • Access to knowledge and healthcare

    This naturally leads to balanced population levels over time.

    A Practical Boundary

    It is also worth stating something very simple:

    If we stay around two children born per woman, we are roughly at replacement level.

    That means:

    • No exponential growth
    • A stable global population over time

    This is not a radical idea. It is already happening in many parts of the world—without coercion.

    And importantly, this can be achieved through education and empowerment alone.

    So what are the alternatives often implied?

    Culling? Inhuman.
    Antinatalism? A path that ultimately leads to the extinction of humanity.

    None of these are real solutions.

    The only viable path is the one we already see working:

    Informed, secure, educated societies naturally move toward stable population levels.

    And at the same time, we must address the deeper issue:

    How we manage resources as a global society.

    The Real Shift

    The real challenge is not population.

    It is transition.

    From a system that:

    • Extracts beyond need
    • Produces beyond use
    • Distributes based on purchasing power

    To one that:

    • Optimizes resources
    • Reduces waste
    • Serves real human and ecological needs

    Final Thought

    Overpopulation may look like the problem.

    But more often, it is a reflection of something deeper.

    Because in a world that manages its resources intelligently,

    humanity itself is not the problem.

    The system is. And the system is also the solution.

    A Different Perspective

    What if the problem was never the number of people?

    What if the real issue is the system we’ve been taught not to question?

    And what if a completely different way of organizing the world is not only possible—but already imaginable?

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

    Benjamin Michaels wakes up 100 years into the future… and discovers a world where money is no longer the organizing principle of society.

    👉 Explore the book HERE.

    And if this made you see the overpopulation question from a new angle—please share it. That’s how perspectives shift and we create a new world.

  • The Free Companion Book Is Now Available

    The Free Companion Book Is Now Available

    We are in ecological overshoot.

    The planet is strained.
    Politics are polarized.
    The monetary system rewards scarcity while promising prosperity.

    Not because humanity is incapable — but because the tool we use to coordinate ourselves no longer fits the world we live in.

    For months, I have been working on four questions:

    WHERE are we as humanity?
    WHAT do we actually want?
    HOW could we transition?
    WHY did we choose to change?

    Those questions became The Companion Book to Waking Up.

    I wrote it because I kept receiving the same questions: How would such a world actually work? How could we transition from here to there? Is it realistic? The companion exists to address those questions directly — structurally, not rhetorically.

    It examines the structure of the monetary system, ecological limits, human psychology, and the possibility of redesigning our global coordination around stewardship instead of ownership.

    No ideology.
    No utopia.
    Just structural clarity.

    And today happens to be a rare Saturn–Neptune conjunction at 0° Aries.

    Saturn represents structure, limits, and reality.
    Neptune represents dreams, spirituality, and imagination.

    Structure meeting vision.

    Astrologers describe this alignment as a potential turning point for humanity — a moment when long-term dreams demand practical form and collective direction.

    What better day to release a book about aligning vision with redesign?

    The Companion Book is now available.

    It is free.

    This book also contains the first 4 chapters from the novel in chapter 21.

    Subscribe here to receive the PDF or EPUB. Your choice:

    GET THE FREE COMPANION BOOK HERE

    If it resonates, share it.

    — Harald

  • Why Waking Up Exists

    Why Waking Up Exists

    An article for new readers who might be interested in a better future for humanity.

    All my life I’ve had a strong urge to fix things.

    Gadgets and machines — and systems. Situations where people suffer even though, intuitively, it feels like they shouldn’t have to. That urge was always paired with something else: a deep concern for humanity, and a simple desire for everyone to be able to thrive.

    Over time, one pattern became impossible to ignore. Again and again, the limits to human well-being traced back to the same source: money. How much you had of it. Or didn’t.

    Everywhere I looked, money seemed to generate problems — inequality, stress, conflict, environmental destruction. Not because people were inherently selfish or cruel, but because the system itself was built on scarcity, competition, and exclusion.

    That realization led to an obvious but uncomfortable question:

    How do you fix a system that large?

    For a long time, I couldn’t see an answer.

    Then I encountered ideas that changed the frame entirely. The Venus Project had turned everything upside down. Instead of asking how to distribute money more fairly, they asked a different question altogether: Why is money there in the first place? What if, instead of managing prices and profits, we managed what actually exists — the planet’s resources, our knowledge and technologies, and our collective capacity to care for one another?

    This way of thinking removes money from the equation and focuses on something more concrete: what we have, what we need, and how we can organize society so that everyone’s needs are met within ecological limits.

    That shift fascinated me. Not as ideology, but as design. As engineering applied to civilization itself.

    TVP had been exploring and sharing these ideas for decades, often with little traction. Inspired by their persistence, I didn’t want to write a political program or a manifesto. I wanted to explore what such a world would actually feel like.

    So I chose fiction.

    I began writing a story about a contemporary man who wakes up in a future where humanity has finally reorganized itself around cooperation, stewardship, and shared abundance. A world where the central question is no longer who can afford to live, but how can we make life work for everyone?

    That story became Waking Up – A journey towards a new dawn for humanity.

    Over the many years it took to write the book, new ideas naturally emerged — about technology, psychology, governance, ecology,  human nature, and the story of the novel itself. All of them were woven into the story, not as lectures, but as lived reality.

    Waking Up exists to explore a simple, unsettling question:

    What would the world look like if we finally designed it to work — for people, nature, and for the planet?

    If this question resonates with you, you’re already part of the conversation and I urge you to share this article.

    If you would like to read the result of all these years of writing, you can find the book HERE. I thank you.

    ⸻

  • From Supply and Demand to Demand and Supply

    From Supply and Demand to Demand and Supply

    For centuries, the dominant logic of our economy has been supply and demand.

    Seemingly they try to fulfill a demand. So, something is produced. Then demand is measured again — or manufactured — and price adjusts accordingly. If demand is too low, marketing steps in to create it. If demand is high, prices rise. Scarcity becomes profitable.

    This logic has quietly inverted the purpose of production.

    Instead of producing what people actually need, we produce what can be sold — and then persuade people they need it.

    The result?

    • Overproduction of the non‑essential

    • Underproduction of the essential

    • Rising prices on food, housing, energy, healthcare, and land

    • Ecological overshoot and pollution

    • Stress baked into the system itself

    The hidden flaw in supply‑first thinking

    In a supply‑first world, need is secondary to profitability.

    Food is destroyed to keep prices stable.

    Homes can stand empty while people are homeless.

    Water can be privatized.

    Scarcity can be engineered.

    All of this is considered rational — even responsible — within the logic of supply and demand.

    But rationality is not the same as wisdom.

    A simple reversal that changes everything

    Imagine flipping the logic:

    Demand first. Supply second.

    Nothing is produced unless there is a real demand for it. Which of course is impossible within today’s logic and monetary system.

    And whatever there is a demand for will be produced — as long as:

    • it stays within ecological limits

    • it does not come at the expense of other people

    • it does not damage future generations

    This is not utopian.

    It is simply mature.

    What demand actually means

    In today’s system, demand is distorted by:

    • unequal purchasing power

    • artificial scarcity

    • advertising pressure

    • survival anxiety

    A demand‑first future assumes something radically different:

    That basic needs are already met.

    When people are not forced to compete for survival, demand becomes clearer, calmer, and more truthful. People ask for what they actually need — not what they fear losing status without.

    So what is “need”?

    Need is not limited to bare survival.

    It includes basic needs — food, shelter, water, healthcare, self-realization, safety — and the things people genuinely want once those basics are secure.

    Need emerges wherever a conscious, informed desire exists.

    For example:

    If a group of people want Coca‑Cola, then there is a demand — and meeting that demand becomes a legitimate task.

    In a demand‑first system, the question is not whether something should exist, but how it can be produced responsibly:

    • within ecological limits

    • without exploiting people or ecosystems

    • without externalizing harm to others or the future

    If those conditions can be met, production makes sense.

    If they cannot, the demand itself becomes a conversation — not a market opportunity.

    This shifts production from manipulation to dialogue.

    Needs are no longer guessed at, manufactured, or monetized.

    They are expressed — and answered. People ask for what they actually need — not what they fear losing status without.

    Production as response, not manipulation

    In a demand‑and‑supply world:

    • Production responds to lived needs, not speculative markets

    • Supply chains become adaptive instead of extractive

    • Waste collapses because excess production disappears

    • Prices lose their coercive role and fade from relevance

    Production becomes a service to life — not a mechanism for profit extraction.

    Technology makes this possible

    For the first time in history, we can:

    • measure real demand in real time

    • coordinate production globally

    • model ecological impact before acting

    • distribute without intermediaries designed to skim value

    The barrier is no longer technological.

    It is only conceptual.

    From fear to trust

    Supply‑first systems are built on fear:

    What if there isn’t enough?

    What if someone else gets more?

    What if I lose?

    Demand‑first systems are built on trust:

    We produce because someone needs this.

    We stop when the need is met.

    We respect planetary boundaries.

    This is not about controlling people.

    It is about listening to them.

    The quiet shift already underway

    We already see early signals:

    • on‑demand manufacturing

    • local energy production

    • open‑source collaboration

    • cooperative housing

    • circular design

    These are not anomalies.

    They are previews.

    A world that finally makes sense

    A civilization is mature when it no longer needs scarcity to function.

    When demand guides supply — instead of supply manipulating demand — production aligns with reality rather than fighting it.

    This is not the end of provision.

    It is the end of distortion.

    And it may be one of the simplest ideas powerful enough to change everything.

    If this perspective resonates, please share this article.

    You can explore this vision through story in Waking Up – A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity.

  • Climate Change Is the Symptom — Not the Disease

    Climate Change Is the Symptom — Not the Disease

    In the UK this week, spring flowers were reported blooming in January.

    Not in a greenhouse.
    Not as a freak anecdote.
    But across regions — measured, recorded, and described as part of a trend.

    The same reports note that the UK has just experienced its warmest years since measurements began in 1884.

    This is not speculation.
    It is observation.

    Plants do not follow politics. They respond to temperature. When ecosystems start behaving out of season, it tells us something fundamental has shifted.

    This is climate change in its early, quiet form.
    And if left unchecked, it does not stop here.

    From Climate Change to Possible Collapse

    Climate change is not just about warmer weather or uncomfortable summers.

    Left unresolved, it can lead to global ecological collapse — not the end of the planet, but the breakdown of the living systems that support food, water, stability, and human cooperation.

    This is the point where climate change stops being an environmental issue and becomes a civilizational one.

    Nature stops buffering our mistakes.
    Ecosystems lose resilience.
    And societies built on constant growth and consumption begin to strain and fracture.

    The Real Cause

    At the root of this lies one dominant driver:

    systemic pollution.

    The largest source of pollution is not individual behavior.
    Not culture.
    Not human nature.

    It is the economic system itself — a system that requires endless extraction, growth, consumption and combustion in order to function.

    A Measure of Success?

    As long as success is measured in money, damage that does not appear on balance sheets becomes invisible.

    When profit depends on extraction, extraction continues.
    When growth is mandatory, limits are ignored.

    Burning fossil fuels is not an accident of this system.
    It is a requirement of it.

    No offset, no efficiency gain, no future technology can change that physical reality while the underlying incentive structure remains the same.

    The system is doing exactly what it was designed to do.

    A Precedent We Forget: The Ozone Layer

    We have faced a planetary threat like this before.

    In the late 20th century, scientists discovered that human‑made chemicals — CFCs — were thinning the ozone layer. The result was direct and measurable harm: more ultraviolet radiation reached the surface, increasing the risk of skin cancer, cataracts, and damage to ecosystems.

    The response was decisive.

    CFCs were identified as the cause and phased out globally through the Montreal Protocol. Not adapted to. Not offset. Stopped.

    And once the cause was removed, the ozone layer began to recover.

    This matters because it proves something essential:

    When humanity identifies a root cause and removes it, planetary systems heal.

    The difference today is not physics. It is scale.

    CFCs were a side branch of the economy.
    Fossil fuels are the cornerstone of the entire monetary system.

    That is why climate change has been harder to confront — not because the solution is unclear, but because it challenges the very system that runs our world.

    Can We Stop It at All?

    This is the question people are often afraid to ask:

    Can we actually stop this — not slow it, not manage it, but stop the collapse trajectory altogether?

    The honest answer is:

    Yes.

    But only if we are willing to stop absolutely all pollution.

    Not symbolic reductions.
    Not offsets.
    Not promises for later.

    All pollution.

    And that immediately reveals the deeper truth.

    Stopping all pollution means stepping beyond an economy that depends on pollution to survive.

    It means letting go of a system built on endless competition, extraction, consumption and growth — and replacing it with one aligned with life.

    This is not a technical leap.
    It is a systemic one.

    Which means we have to not only change one part of the economy like we did to fix the ozone layer, we have to change THE WHOLE ECONOMIC SYSTEM ITSELF. 

    An Awakening — Not a Dystopia

    In the novel Waking Up – A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity, the future is not a dystopia where climate change ran rampant and humanity collapsed into endless struggle.

    It is the opposite.

    At a certain point in future history, humanity experienced an awakening.

    Not a mystical event — but a moment of collective clarity.

    Humanity stopped asking how to dominate, outcompete, or survive at someone else’s expense.

    And started asking a radically simple question instead:

    Why not just be friends?

    Why fight over resources on a shared planet?
    Why organize society around fear, scarcity, and competition?

    Why not simply collaborate — and create the best possible world for all life?

    That shift changed everything.

    Once the incentive to compete and extract was removed, pollution stopped at the source.

    Climate change no longer dominate daily life.

    Not because it was ignored — but because its cause was removed.

    In Waking Up, the future is calmer.
    More humane.
    More cooperative.

    Climate change is not the story.

    It is what stopped being the story once humanity chose to grow up.

    Follow Benjamin Michaels

    Through the eyes of Benjamin Michaels, you are invited to step into that future — not as fantasy, but as a plausible consequence of choices we could still make. It is not too late.

    👉 Follow Benjamin Michaels into that future in Waking Up – A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity.

    Because the world does not need more dystopias.

    It needs a vision of what becomes possible when humanity finally chooses cooperation over destruction. If this resonates with you, please share this article. And to get more, subscribe to the newsletter below…

  • What System Comes After the Monetary System?

    What System Comes After the Monetary System?

    For centuries, the monetary system has been treated as inevitable.

    Not perfect, not fair, not even particularly rational — but unavoidable.

    Every serious discussion about climate change, inequality, war, sustainability, or wellbeing eventually reaches the same unspoken conclusion:

    We are sorry, but we have to continue with the system we have.

    The question that is almost never asked — or answered — is the most fundamental one:

    What system comes after the monetary system?

    Because, clearly, we need a change.

    But to answer that, we need to stop arguing inside the current framework and instead look at systems themselves: how they arise, how they function, and how they evolve.

    ⸻

    Three systems, clearly distinguished

    Humanity currently operates at the intersection of three fundamentally different systems. Understanding their nature is the key to understanding what comes next.

    1. The Monetary system — an artificial system

    The monetary system is not natural.

    It is a symbolic coordination system invented by humans.

    Its defining characteristics are:

    • money as a proxy for value

    • prices as signals

    • growth as success

    • scarcity(with abundance for a few) as a requirement

    • competition as a driver

    It does not measure wellbeing, ecological health, or long-term balance.

    It measures monetary activity. 

    This is the one thing it does very well.

    That does not make it evil — but it does make it blind.

    ⸻

    2. The Planetary system — a natural system

    The Planetary system is the opposite.

    It is Earth’s biophysical reality:

    • ecosystems

    • climate

    • soil

    • oceans

    • biodiversity

    • feedback loops

    It operates without money, ownership, prices, or growth imperatives.

    Its defining features are:

    • balance

    • regeneration

    • circular flows

    • natural limits

    • real, physical feedback

    The planetary system does not negotiate.

    It responds.

    ⸻

    3. The Humanitary system — a natural system with humans consciously included

    The Humanitary system represents a qualitative shift.

    It is also a natural system, but one where humans no longer act as an external, extractive force. Instead, human activity becomes consciously integrated with planetary reality.

    In this system:

    • wellbeing replaces profit as the primary measure

    • contribution replaces competition

    • access and stewardship replaces ownership

    • regeneration replaces extraction

    This is not ideology.

    It is systems alignment.

    ⸻

    The key shift: the ecosystem becomes the economic system

    Today, the word ecosystem almost exclusively refers to ecological systems.

    In the Humanitary system, the meaning expands:

    The ecosystem becomes the economic system.

    Not metaphorically.

    Literally.

    Human resource flows begin to behave like natural ecosystems:

    • resources circulate like nutrients

    • waste becomes input

    • diversity creates resilience

    • balance replaces growth

    • feedback is immediate and real

    The economy stops being an abstract overlay and starts behaving like a living system.

    Once this is seen, it becomes difficult to unsee.

    The next system will not be communism, socialism or capitalism. It won’t even be the monetary system.

    ⸻

    The Natural Exchange System (NES)

    If the ecosystem is the economic system, how does exchange actually work?

    This is where the Natural Exchange System (NES) comes in.

    NES is neither a market nor a centrally planned economy.

    It is applied ecology.

    ⸻

    Exchange without trade

    One of the deepest assumptions of the monetary system is that exchange requires trade — that value must be priced, negotiated, balanced, or repaid.

    Nature shows us otherwise.

    In a natural ecosystem:

    • nothing is traded

    • nothing is paid back

    • nothing is accounted

    • nothing is owed

    Yet everything that needs to happen, happens.

    Plants produce oxygen without expecting carbon dioxide in return. 

    Animals and humans already do the same only opposite. Breathing in oxygen and out CO2.

    Bees pollinate without invoices.

    Trees share nutrients through fungal networks without bookkeeping.

    Predators regulate populations without moral judgment.

    Exchange exists — but not as transaction.

    Not as trade.

    It exists as participation.

    ⸻

    NES as human participation in a living system

    The Natural Exchange System follows the same principle.

    In NES:

    • humans contribute based on interest, ability, curiosity, and context

    • fulfillment comes from the activity itself, not from reward

    • resources flow according to real needs, not purchasing power

    Technology help where it is needed

    • coordination emerges from awareness, not accounting

    People do what they are naturally drawn to do —

    because doing it is meaningful, satisfying, or joyful.

    This is not hypothetical.

    It already happens wherever money is absent:

    • parenting

    • caregiving

    • art

    • open-source software

    • community help

    • volunteering

    • emergency response

    NES simply removes the artificial constraints that prevent this logic from scaling.

    ⸻

    No accounting needed

    Accounting exists to manage scarcity, distrust, and misalignment.

    In a functioning ecosystem:

    • scarcity is physical, not artificial

    • trust is implicit in interdependence

    • alignment is enforced by feedback, not punishment

    In NES:

    • resource availability is sensed directly

    • needs are visible, not hidden behind prices

    • overuse is corrected by real-world signals

    • contribution is self-regulating, not coerced

    Just as no forest needs a ledger,

    a mature human ecosystem does not require accounts, balances, or reciprocal payment.

    ⸻

    Motivation without reward

    A common concern is: “Why would anyone do anything?”

    Nature answers this clearly.

    Species act because:

    • it is their nature

    • it sustains the system they depend on

    • it feels right within their role

    Humans are no different — when freed from survival anxiety and artificial scarcity.

    In NES:

    • work is not forced

    • contribution is not moralized

    • rest is not punished

    • creativity is not secondary

    People choose what they contribute —

    and are fulfilled by the contribution itself, not by compensation.

    That fulfillment is the signal.

    The ecosystem responds accordingly.

    ⸻

    Exchange as flow

    The core shift is simple:

    • Monetary system → exchange as transaction and trade

    • Natural Exchange System → exchange as flow

    Nothing is traded.

    Nothing is paid back.

    Everything moves.

    Resources circulate like nutrients.

    Skills circulate like energy.

    Care circulates like water.

    Once exchange is understood this way, the question is no longer

    “How do we replace money?”

    but rather

    “Why did we ever need it in the first place?”

    ⸻

    A system of systems

    The Humanitary world is not a single mechanism.

    It is an interconnected system of systems, all behaving ecosystem-like:

    • Resource systems — food, energy, materials

    • Information systems — sensing, feedback, coordination

    • Social systems — care, creativity, contribution

    • Governance systems — councils, transparency, resonance

    Each system:

    • adapts locally

    • cooperates globally

    • responds to real-world signals

    No growth mandate.

    No artificial scarcity.

    No central authority.

    ⸻

    Why the monetary system cannot evolve into this

    The monetary system cannot simply be “fixed” into an ecosystem because it violates ecosystem logic at its core:

    • it rewards accumulation

    • it requires scarcity

    • it externalizes damage

    • it measures symbols instead of reality

    In nature, any subsystem that behaves this way is eventually corrected.

    What we are witnessing today — ecological breakdown, social stress, political fragmentation — is not a failure of humanity.

    It is a system mismatch.

    ⸻

    What comes after the monetary system

    The answer is not another ideology.

    It is not socialism, communism, or a greener version of capitalism.

    What comes after the monetary system is a living system — one that behaves like nature itself.

    A Humanitary system, where the ecosystem is the economic system, and exchange follows natural laws rather than artificial symbols.

    When that happens, humans stop being a disruptive force on Earth —

    and become a regenerative one.

    ⸻

    If this resonates and you would like to read an inspirational story about a contemporary man who wakes up in a world like this, the novel Waking Up – A journey towards a new dawn for humanity is for you.