Why would humanity abandon money, markets and ownership? There had better be some very good reasons.
This blog is largely about a future based on a global resource-based economy: a non market system without money or trade, where the resources of the Earth are managed and shared for the benefit of humanity while protecting the living planet upon which we depend.
That is quite a departure from the world we live in today.
So why would we want to do it?
For some, the answer might seem obvious.
Like, duh! The monetary system? Look around! It’s running the planet—and humanity—into the ground!
Climate change. Pollution. Poverty. War. Inequality. Environmental destruction. Debt. Stress. Homelessness. Overconsumption. Resource depletion.
Take your pick.
But let’s go deeper.
Because I can already hear the objection.
I like this system. I’m used to it.
Money. Trading. Buying and selling. Ownership. It works.
These things are woven so deeply into our lives that they seem almost natural. And now you want the whole of humanity to abandon them?
That’s a tall order.
Besides, is there even enough for everyone? There are more than eight billion human beings on this planet. Surely we can’t all live abundant lives. Maybe the real problem is overpopulation. Maybe there are simply too many of us.
And the system we have does work.
At least for some.
Hundreds of millions live comfortable lives. Some live in extraordinary abundance.
Born into poverty?
Tough luck.
Not my problem.
Besides, even people born into poverty have become rich. Doesn’t that prove the opportunity is there? Work hard. Educate yourself. Start a company. Make smart investments. Climb the ladder.
Maybe the system isn’t the problem.
Maybe you just need to climb harder.
Fine.
Then let’s look at the system.
Homelessness
Start with something as basic as a home.
There are millions of people sleeping on streets, in cars, under bridges and in temporary shelters while millions of homes stand empty.
Think about the physical reality of that for a moment.
The homeless person exists.
The empty home exists.
The materials have already been extracted and the building constructed. The roof is there. The walls are there. The plumbing is there. The electricity may already be connected.
There is no physical shortage between that particular human being and that particular empty home.
What is missing is permission to use it.
Why?
Because a home in our system is not merely a place for someone to live. It is property. An asset. An investment. Something that can be bought, sold, rented, inherited, mortgaged and held for financial gain.
So we can simultaneously have:
people without homes and homes without people.
And somehow we have learned to see nothing particularly strange about this.
The physical solution can be standing homeless across the street from the vacant home, while the economic system keeps them apart.
That brings us to something much bigger.
Artificial Scarcity
Jacque Fresco was an American futurist and designer who founded The Venus Project and spent much of his life developing the idea of a resource-based economy.
One of the experiences that shaped his thinking came during the Great Depression initiated by the stock market crash in 1929. He watched people struggle desperately to obtain food and other necessities.
But something didn’t make sense.
America hadn’t suddenly run out of everything. The farmland was still there. The shops were full. The factories were still there. The workers were still there. The knowledge was still there. Products could sit on shelves in stores while people outside couldn’t buy them.
The resources existed.
The need existed.
What didn’t exist?
Enough money in people’s pockets.
That exposes an enormously important distinction.
Real Scarcity
There is real scarcity. If we have a thousand units of something and one million people need one, we have a genuine physical shortage. No economic system can magically change that.
Artificial Scarcity
But then there is artificial scarcity.
Food exists, but you are hungry because you cannot afford it.
A home exists, but you cannot live in it because you cannot afford it.
Medicine exists, but you cannot obtain it because you cannot afford it.
The problem isn’t necessarily that the thing doesn’t exist.
The problem is that you don’t have enough purchasing power to access it.
We have created scarcity where no physical scarcity necessarily exists.
And we consider this normal.
Poverty
Now consider poverty itself.
What does it actually mean to be poor?
Does it mean there isn’t enough food on Earth for you? Not necessarily.
Does it mean there aren’t enough clothes? Not necessarily.
Does it mean humanity lacks the technology to provide clean water, electricity, communication, education or shelter? Not necessarily.
It means you don’t have enough money to command access to those things.
Abundance
A person can stand surrounded by abundance and still be poor. Supermarkets can be full of food. Apartments can stand empty. Electricity can flow through wires. Information can travel instantly across the planet. Warehouses can overflow with products.
And that person can have virtually no claim on any of it.
Why?
A number in an account.
We call that number wealth.
We call the absence of that number poverty.
The physical world can be exactly the same in both cases.
Inequality
Meanwhile, somebody else can possess billions of those numbers.
We often discuss inequality as though it were simply about envy.
It isn’t.
Money represents access. More money means greater access to land, housing, resources, transportation, healthcare, education, comfort, security and influence. Less money means less access. No money can mean almost no access at all.
And yes, someone born poor can become rich.
It happens.
But that doesn’t answer the structural question.
Can everybody become rich?
What would rich even mean if everybody were rich?
Rich only has meaning relative to someone having less.
The system can absolutely produce winners.
The question is whether a civilization should be designed around producing winners and losers in access to the resources everyone depends upon.
Overconsumption
Then we arrive at the other side of scarcity. Something politicians again and again urge us to not do. Consume too much. But we have to consume, or else the system collapses. If we don’t buy enough everything stops.
We don’t merely produce what people need. We need people to keep buying.
Businesses require customers. Sales require demand. Investments require returns. Growth requires more economic activity by humans.
So an enormous industry exists to persuade us that what we already have isn’t enough.
A new phone.
A new car.
New clothes.
A new kitchen.
A new television.
A new model.
A new trend.
A new version.
Buy. Replace. Upgrade. Discard. Pollute. Repeat.
This isn’t a condemnation of people enjoying beautiful things. Design is wonderful. Variety is wonderful. New technology can genuinely improve our lives.
But an economy dependent upon continuing sales has a built-in problem with the idea:
That’s enough.
Nature has limits.
The market hates them.
Waste
The result is a remarkably wasteful cycle.
We extract resources, manufacture products, package them, transport them, sell them, use them and discard them.
Then we extract more resources and begin again.
Food gets thrown away while people are hungry.
Clothes are discarded.
Electronics are discarded.
Furniture is discarded.
Packaging exists for minutes and becomes waste for years. Perfectly usable things are replaced because a newer version has arrived.
Consider product longevity.
Imagine a washing machine designed to last 100 years, built from standardized components that can easily be repaired or replaced.
Brilliant resource management.
Terrible repeat business.
A product that doesn’t need replacing doesn’t generate another sale.
We have built an economy in which:
Using fewer resources conflicts directly with making more money.
The Planet
Now zoom out.
Where does all this stuff come from?
Earth.
There is nowhere else.
We drill into it, blast it, excavate it, pump it, cut it, mine it and burn it. And then we dump all the waste back unto it. We rip open enormous pits to extract minerals. We clear forests. We drill for oil and gas. We destroy habitats. We degrade soils. We remove resources from ecosystems faster than some can regenerate.
And all of it becomes economic activity for the monetary system.
A standing forest performs an extraordinary amount of useful work. It stores carbon, regulates water, protects soil, creates oxygen and habitat and supports biodiversity.
Cut it down and sell it, however, and something magical happens.
It becomes money. Numbers in a machine.
The accounting system notices. GDP notices. The market notices.
The forest?
Gone.
Overfishing
The oceans provide an almost perfect example.
Fish can reproduce in large numbers. Given healthy ecosystems and enough time, populations can replenish themselves.
But fish also have prices.
Boats cost money. Fuel costs money. Workers need incomes. Companies need revenue. Loans need servicing. Investors expect returns.
Suddenly two calculations collide.
The ecosystem asks:
How much can be taken while allowing the population to recover?
The economy asks:
How much can be caught profitably?
Those are not automatically the same answer.
When they conflict, the fish don’t have lawyers.
Pollution
Then there is everything we dump back into the system.
Carbon dioxide and other gas pollutants. Plastics. Chemicals. Wastewater. Mining waste. Industrial waste. Electronic waste.
We extract concentrated resources from nature, turn them into products and eventually return much of the residue to nature in forms ecosystems cannot easily absorb.
Then we create another industry to clean it up.
First we make money creating the problem.
Then we make money cleaning up the problem.
Excellent for economic activity.
Not quite as impressive for the planet.
Human Health
Eventually the damage comes back to us.
We breathe the air. Drink the water. Eat the food. Live in the climate.
Pollution damages human health. Environmental contamination exposes people to harmful substances. Climate change increases risks from extreme heat, fires and disruptions to food and water systems. And most of it is dumped on the poorest countries in the world. The countries who made most of the products in the first place. For pennies on the dollar.
And then there is another form of damage that doesn’t come from a smokestack.
Stress.
Can I pay my rent? Can I pay the mortgage? Can I afford food? What happens if I lose my job? How will I pay my debt? Can I afford treatment? What happens when I retire? What if I get sick and can’t work?
Millions upon millions of people carry these questions around every day.
We call it life.
Much of it isn’t life.
It’s economics. Twisted life.
Time and Work
Then there is the extraordinary amount of our lives devoted to earning the right to continue living. Time spent chasing dollars instead of spending it with our loved ones and what we truly love doing.
We spend years in education preparing for work. Then many of us spend decades selling a large part of our waking lives in exchange for the money required to obtain food, shelter and everything else. Paying back the mortgage that some bank created from nothing.
Some people love their work. Many don’t. Some work is meaningful and necessary. Some exists largely because of the economic machinery surrounding everything else.
For generations we have dreamed of machines taking over dangerous, exhausting and repetitive labor.
And now they increasingly can.
Which should be wonderful.
Except in a monetary system, losing your work to a machine can mean losing your income. Losing your income can mean losing access to the things you need to live.
So one of humanity’s greatest technological achievements becomes a threat.
The machine can do your work! Fantastic! You’re fired!
We have created technology capable of freeing human beings from labor and an economic system capable of turning that freedom into poverty.
And now something far bigger is arriving.
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence changes the equation completely.
For centuries, technological change has replaced particular forms of human labor while creating others. The usual answer to automation has therefore been simple: people will find new jobs.
But what happens as machines become capable not merely of replacing muscle, but increasingly of performing cognitive work as well?
Writing. Coding. Translation. Administration. Analysis. Customer service. Design. Logistics. Accounting. Research. Driving. Planning. Diagnosis. Manufacturing.
AI doesn’t need to replace every job for the problem to become enormous.
It only needs to make significantly fewer human working hours necessary.
And that creates a fundamental contradiction.
Our technological objective is to make production more efficient—to produce more with less human labor.
Our monetary system, however, still depends on people obtaining income, usually through work, so they can buy what is produced. Without enough people working and spending we will in effect not be able to have a monetary system like the current one. People is what sustains the economy. Not machines.
Think about that.
We are building machines specifically because they can do more of the work.
Then we depend on humans doing enough work to earn the money required to buy what the machines produce.
The better the machines become, the stranger the arrangement becomes.
Of course governments can respond with redistribution, shorter working weeks, new forms of taxation, basic income and other mechanisms. Those could keep purchasing power circulating even if traditional employment falls. And much of that basic income would go directly back to the corporations that created the technology in the first place. An absurd loop.
Notice what we would actually be doing.
We would be desperately inventing ways of giving people enough money to access an abundance that increasingly requires less human labor to produce.
Why?
If AI and automation eventually allow us to produce food, housing, energy, transportation, manufactured goods and services with a fraction of today’s human labor, why should access to those things still depend upon having a job earning money at all?
AI may therefore be more than another technological revolution.
It may expose the fundamental absurdity of tying the right to live to the necessity of human labor. There are plenty of reasons for redesign, but AI might be the only one we actually need. Making it inevitable.
The old fear was:
How will we produce enough if people don’t work?
The new question may become:
Why should we have to work if we can already produce enough?
That alone is reason enough to start questioning the system.
Debt
And then there is debt. On top of it all.
At the end of 2025, global debt stood at approximately $348 trillion.
$348,000,000,000,000.
That’s more than three times the annual economic output of the entire planet.
Governments owe money. Companies owe money. Households owe money. Individuals owe money.
But stop looking at the numbers for a moment and look at the physical planet.
Who exactly does Earth owe it to?
Mars?
Jupiter?
The Andromeda Galaxy?
Did humanity borrow iron from aliens? Did we take out a mortgage on the Pacific Ocean? Is the Sun charging us for daylight and energy?
Of course not.
These are financial claims that human beings and human institutions hold against one another. And the irony is that this debt constitutes most of our money supply and thus can’t be erased. Because then we would have no money to trade with.
Yet these artificial numbers have become powerful enough to determine what happens in the physical world.
They can determine whether somebody keeps their home, whether a hospital gets built, whether a company survives, whether workers lose their jobs, whether a government cuts services, whether resources are extracted, whether a forest is cut down, and whether we supposedly can or cannot “afford” to solve a problem.
And here it gets even stranger.
Most of the money we actually use isn’t created by governments printing banknotes. Commercial banks create a large share of it when they make loans. In fact, about 97% of our current money supply was created by private banks. Only 3% is “real money” in the form of coins and paper notes created by central banks.
Take out a mortgage and the bank doesn’t normally take a pile of existing money from a vault and hand it to you. The loan creates a new bank deposit.
New debt.
New money.
And when the principal of that bank loan is repaid, that deposit money is destroyed again.
So debt isn’t merely something sitting on top of our monetary system.
Debt creation is one of the principal ways the money itself comes into existence.
And then comes interest.
Borrow €100,000 and you don’t simply owe €100,000. You owe the principal plus interest.
Scale that across mortgages, credit, corporate borrowing and government debt and we arrive at a civilization carrying hundreds of trillions of dollars in financial obligations while continually requiring future income to service them. And the money to pay the interest has never been created in the system. Thus, not only will almost all our money supply disappear if all debt is repaid, it is structurally impossible, since the money to repay the interest was never created. Well, it was created. As more debt. With more interest. The absurdity never ends.
But that doesn’t technically mean every dollar of interest requires another dollar of new debt. Money circulates, banks spend income back into the economy, and money can enter and leave circulation through other mechanisms.
But here is the trap.
If bank borrowers collectively paid down their loans without those loans being replaced by new lending or other money creation, enormous quantities of bank-deposit money would disappear with them.
Pay down the debt, and you also destroy most of the money supply created with it.
We cannot simply remove the mountain of bank debt while assuming all the money created alongside it remains conveniently sitting there.
The Physical World
And all those financial obligations ultimately come back to the physical world.
Loans must be serviced. Interest must be paid. Companies need revenue. Governments need revenue. People need incomes. Investors seek returns.
So we produce, sell, consume, extract and grow.
Again and again.
As the mountain of financial obligations grows, so does the pressure to generate the economic activity required to service them.
But economic activity doesn’t happen inside a spreadsheet.
It happens here.
On Earth. In the physical world.
More mining. More energy. More production. More shipping. More products. More consumption. More waste. More pollution. More conflict. More war. More stress. More disease. More extraction to make the replacements.
The financial claims can keep expanding.
The physical planet cannot.
And now the circle closes.
Debt demands income. Income depends on economic activity. Economic activity requires production and consumption. Production requires resources. Consumption creates waste. Growth demands more production, which generates more economic activity, while new lending creates new debt and new money. With new interest on top.
We are caught in a debt loop.
Now look back at everything we have already discussed.
Artificial scarcity. Poverty. Financial stress. Burnout. Overconsumption. Resource depletion. Pollution. Environmental destruction.
They are not isolated phenomena floating around independently. They are connected to an economic system that continually requires money to be earned, debts to be serviced, returns to be generated and economic activity to continue.
Somebody always has to get the money. And someone has to pay. In the end it is ourselves.
Because ultimately, the bill is paid in something far more real than money: energy, materials, forests, minerals, soil, water, fish, human time, human health and the atmosphere. Our human habitat.
We have created hundreds of trillions of dollars of financial claims against ourselves and then organized the physical world around satisfying them.
Money can be created with entries in a banking system. Debt can acquire another trillion. Interest can compound. A financial account can gain another zero.
But forests cannot compound indefinitely.
Fish populations cannot be extracted indefinitely.
Mineral deposits don’t expand because the financial system needs another year of growth.
The atmosphere doesn’t negotiate with our debt obligations.
Artificial numbers can grow indefinitely. The physical world cannot.
So how do we escape the debt loop?
Restructure the debt? Refinance it? Regulate it? Forgive some of it? Create more money? Create new debt to replace old debt? Keep the machine going for another generation?
Or ask the question underneath all of it:
Why do we need the maniac machine at all?
Debt exists because we owe.
We owe because things have prices.
Things have prices because we trade them.
And we trade them because we have divided the resources of one planet into things somebody owns and somebody else must pay for.
Debt isn’t the bottom of the rabbit hole.
Money isn’t even the bottom.
Underneath money sits trading.
And underneath trading sits ownership.
Mine. Yours. I own. You don’t. You pay me.
Ideas so deeply embedded in civilization that questioning them sounds insane.
But Maybe continuing them is the true insanity.
War
And then we arrive at the masterpiece.
War.
Wars have many causes: territory, nationalism, ideology, religion, security, political power and empire. But control over resources and economically valuable territory has repeatedly played a big role.
Land. Oil. Minerals. Water. Ports. Trade routes. Intellectual property.
One group wants control. Another group wants control.
So we extract enormous quantities of resources, use immense amounts of energy, employ some of our most brilliant scientists and engineers and build aircraft, missiles, ships, tanks, bombs and weapons.
Then we use them to destroy resources.
Homes. Hospitals. Factories. Roads. Bridges. Power stations. Water systems. Farms. Nature. Human beings.
Then, when we finally stop destroying everything, we rebuild it.
More materials. More energy. More extraction. More work. More money.
If an alien civilization were watching, this might be the point where they quietly locked their doors and left this planet.
Look Again
Now look at what we have assembled.
Homelessness. Artificial scarcity. Poverty. Inequality. Overconsumption. Waste. Resource depletion. Deforestation. Overfishing. Pollution. Climate change. Disease. Stress. Burnout. Fear of unemployment, war, conflict and crime. Automation becoming a threat. AI potentially undermining the whole monetary system itself. Debt. War.
Are all these things caused exclusively by money?
No.
Human beings are perfectly capable of stupidity without it.
But look at what keeps appearing.
Purchasing power. Prices. Profit. Ownership. Debt. Interest. Competition. Income. Return on investment. Economic growth. Money.
The monetary system isn’t some innocent measuring device sitting beside civilization.
It is almost civilization itself. Although, I wouldn’t call it civilized.
It determines access.
It rewards certain activities and punishes others. It tells us what is “economically viable.” It turns resources into assets, homes into investments, forests into timber, fish into revenue, human time into labor costs and destruction into economic gain.
Then, when the consequences become unbearable, we turn back to the same system and ask:
How much will it cost to fix them?
Pollution? Put a price on it.
Poverty? Find the money.
Climate change? Calculate the investment.
Destroyed ecosystems? Give nature a monetary value.
Debt crisis? Find more financing.
Mass automation? Find some way to give people enough money to keep buying things.
We keep trying to solve monetary problems through monetary thinking.
Maybe the problem goes deeper.
Maybe money, trading and ownership themselves have reached the end of their usefulness.
We invented them.
But they aren’t gravity.
They aren’t photosynthesis.
They aren’t laws of nature.
They are concepts.
And concepts can be abandoned.
The Real Economy
Strip away the numbers.
What actually keeps us alive?
Food. Water. Energy. Land. Materials. Housing. Infrastructure. Knowledge. Technology. Healthy ecosystems. Joyful thriving human beings.
That is the real economy.
Not dollars.
Not euros.
Not GDP.
Not stock prices.
Not bank balances.
Not $348 trillion of IOUs humanity has written to itself.
So perhaps the question we constantly ask is the wrong one.
How can we afford it?
Can we afford to house everyone? Can we afford to feed everyone? Can we afford clean energy? Can we afford to restore ecosystems? Can we afford healthcare? Can we afford to stop destroying the climate?
Wrong question.
Here’s the right question:
Do we have the resources?
Do we have the food, energy, materials, land, productive capacity, knowledge and technology?
And can we provide what we need without destroying the ecosystems upon which we depend?
Those are physical questions.
If the answer is no, we have a real problem. Use fewer resources. Find alternatives. Develop better technology. Recycle. Prioritize. Solve the actual shortage.
But the truth is, we already produce way more than enough food and products to provide for the whole of humanity and then some. So, we have enough. We only need to do everything better. We don’t need infinite resources.
We need to become intelligent about the resources we already have.
We invented the obstacle.
Money isn’t food.
Money isn’t housing.
Money isn’t energy.
Money isn’t medicine.
Money isn’t a forest.
Money isn’t a fish.
You cannot eat it, drink it or breathe it. Or build anything with it.
And Earth has absolutely no idea it exists.
True Freedom
So now we can finally return to the beginning.
Why would humanity contemplate something as radical as a global resource-based economy without money, trading or ownership?
For all the reasons we have just looked at.
Maybe the answer isn’t to redesign the debt.
Maybe it isn’t to distribute money a little differently.
Maybe it isn’t to invent greener financial products.
Maybe it isn’t to tax robots so humans can continue buying what robots produce.
Maybe it isn’t to make destruction slightly less profitable.
Maybe it is time to stop organizing civilization around financial claims altogether.
No money. No debt.
Not because $348 trillion has somehow been magically repaid.
But because the accounting system that created the debt is no longer needed.
And notice what happens.
The houses don’t disappear. The farmland doesn’t disappear. The factories don’t disappear. The solar panels don’t disappear. The trains don’t disappear. The hospitals don’t disappear. The technology doesn’t disappear. The knowledge doesn’t disappear.
The resources don’t disappear.
Only the price tags do.
Instead of managing money, manage the things that actually exist.
Resources.
Instead of producing what can be sold, produce what is needed.
Instead of asking whether protecting nature is profitable, make ecological sustainability a physical requirement. A given. Not something we have to afford.
Instead of designing products around repeat sales, design them for durability, repairability and efficient use of resources.
Instead of fearing AI and automation because they take away jobs, let them take away work.
That was supposed to be the point.
If a machine can perform a dangerous, repetitive or tedious task better than a human being, fantastic. Let it.
Nobody loses their food.
Nobody loses their home.
Nobody loses healthcare.
Nobody suddenly becomes worthless because a machine can perform a task they used to perform.
Technology finally becomes what technology should be:
liberation.
And instead of competing for ownership of the planet, we become its stewards.
When something really is scarce, don’t hide the scarcity behind a price and hand it to whoever has the biggest bank account.
Measure it. Manage it. Prioritize it. Find alternatives. Use less.
Solve the actual problem.
The guiding question becomes almost embarrassingly simple:
What do we need, what do we have, and how do we provide it sustainably to those who need it?
The profit motive gives way to the need motive.
We know what we need.
That is the motive to provide it.
And this leads to a completely different definition of freedom.
Actual freedom
Today we call ourselves free if we are allowed to compete for enough money to live. We are free to work, borrow, invest and become rich. We are also free to become poor, lose our homes, spend decades servicing debt and worry whether next month’s paycheck will cover next month’s bills. Is this actual freedom?
Or is actual freedom something completely different?
Freedom from poverty.
Freedom from artificial scarcity.
Freedom from monetary debt.
Freedom from compulsory economic competition.
Freedom from spending most of our lives earning permission to live.
And freedom for humanity to finally use AI, automation, science, technology and the resources of this extraordinary planet for what they should have been used for all along:
Taking care of everyone and the planet that keeps us alive.
No more debt.
No money.
No trading away our planet.
No ownership of the Earth itself.
Stewardship.
Access.
Abundance where abundance is physically possible.
Responsible management where it isn’t.
True freedom for all.
Ok, I hear you say, I’m convinced. But how do we get from here to there?
Imagination
Through imagination. Through showing the world the possibility.
Money, trading and ownership have been with us for so long that imagining a world without them can seem almost impossible.
But every new human reality begins as an idea.
That is why I wrote Waking Up: A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity.
The bewildered billionaire Benjamin Michaels wakes up in 2115 to a world without money, trade or ownership—a world where humanity manages Earth’s resources together and technology has finally become a means of liberation rather than yet more competition.
It isn’t a prediction.
It’s a possibility.
Because before we can create a different world, we first have to imagine it.
And that’s exactly what humanity did, ending up in the new world Benjamin wakes up in. We finally managed to replace the old expired monetary system and replaced it with a global resource based economy that takes care of every human being and the planet itself.
Discover the story
And if this article resonates, feel free to share it, because that is how we change the world. From one person to another, imagining something completely different…
