Tag: MONEY

  • For All the Reasons in the World

    For All the Reasons in the World

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

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

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

    So why would we want to do it?

    For some, the answer might seem obvious.

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

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

    Take your pick.

    But let’s go deeper.

    Because I can already hear the objection.

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

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

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

    That’s a tall order.

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

    And the system we have does work.

    At least for some.

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

    Born into poverty? 

    Tough luck. 

    Not my problem.

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

    Maybe the system isn’t the problem.

    Maybe you just need to climb harder.

    Fine.

    Then let’s look at the system.

    Homelessness

    Start with something as basic as a home.

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

    Think about the physical reality of that for a moment.

    The homeless person exists.

    The empty home exists.

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

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

    What is missing is permission to use it.

    Why?

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

    So we can simultaneously have:

    people without homes and homes without people.

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

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

    That brings us to something much bigger.

    Artificial Scarcity

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

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

    But something didn’t make sense.

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

    The resources existed.

    The need existed.

    What didn’t exist?

    Enough money in people’s pockets.

    That exposes an enormously important distinction.

    Real Scarcity

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

    Artificial Scarcity

    But then there is artificial scarcity.

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

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

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

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

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

    We have created scarcity where no physical scarcity necessarily exists.

    And we consider this normal.

    Poverty

    Now consider poverty itself.

    What does it actually mean to be poor?

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

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

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

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

    Abundance

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

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

    Why?

    A number in an account.

    We call that number wealth.

    We call the absence of that number poverty.

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

    Inequality

    Meanwhile, somebody else can possess billions of those numbers.

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

    It isn’t.

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

    And yes, someone born poor can become rich.

    It happens.

    But that doesn’t answer the structural question.

    Can everybody become rich?

    What would rich even mean if everybody were rich?

    Rich only has meaning relative to someone having less.

    The system can absolutely produce winners.

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

    Overconsumption

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

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

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

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

    A new phone. 

    A new car. 

    New clothes. 

    A new kitchen. 

    A new television. 

    A new model. 

    A new trend. 

    A new version.

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

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

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

    That’s enough.

    Nature has limits.

    The market hates them.

    Waste

    The result is a remarkably wasteful cycle.

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

    Then we extract more resources and begin again.

    Food gets thrown away while people are hungry. 

    Clothes are discarded. 

    Electronics are discarded. 

    Furniture is discarded. 

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

    Consider product longevity.

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

    Brilliant resource management.

    Terrible repeat business.

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

    We have built an economy in which:

     Using fewer resources  conflicts directly with making more money.

    The Planet

    Now zoom out.

    Where does all this stuff come from?

    Earth.

    There is nowhere else.

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

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

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

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

    It becomes money. Numbers in a machine.

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

    The forest?

    Gone.

    Overfishing

    The oceans provide an almost perfect example.

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

    But fish also have prices.

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

    Suddenly two calculations collide.

    The ecosystem asks:

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

    The economy asks:

    How much can be caught profitably?

    Those are not automatically the same answer.

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

    Pollution

    Then there is everything we dump back into the system.

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

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

    Then we create another industry to clean it up.

    First we make money creating the problem.

    Then we make money cleaning up the problem.

    Excellent for economic activity.

    Not quite as impressive for the planet.

    Human Health

    Eventually the damage comes back to us.

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

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

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

    Stress.

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

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

    We call it life.

    Much of it isn’t life.

    It’s economics. Twisted life.

    Time and Work

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

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

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

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

    And now they increasingly can.

    Which should be wonderful.

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

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

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

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

    And now something far bigger is arriving.

    Artificial Intelligence

    Artificial intelligence changes the equation completely.

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

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

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

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

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

    And that creates a fundamental contradiction.

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

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

    Think about that.

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

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

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

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

    Notice what we would actually be doing.

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

    Why?

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

    AI may therefore be more than another technological revolution.

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

    The old fear was:

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

    The new question may become:

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

    That alone is reason enough to start questioning the system.

    Debt

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

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

    $348,000,000,000,000.

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

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

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

    Who exactly does Earth owe it to?

    Mars?

    Jupiter?

    The Andromeda Galaxy?

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

    Of course not.

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

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

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

    And here it gets even stranger.

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

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

    New debt.

    New money.

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

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

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

    And then comes interest.

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

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

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

    But here is the trap.

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

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

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

    The Physical World

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

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

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

    Again and again.

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

    But economic activity doesn’t happen inside a spreadsheet.

    It happens here.

    On Earth. In the physical world.

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

    The financial claims can keep expanding.

    The physical planet cannot.

    And now the circle closes.

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

    We are caught in a debt loop.

    Now look back at everything we have already discussed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

    But forests cannot compound indefinitely.

    Fish populations cannot be extracted indefinitely.

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

    The atmosphere doesn’t negotiate with our debt obligations.

    Artificial numbers can grow indefinitely. The physical world cannot.

    So how do we escape the debt loop?

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

    Or ask the question underneath all of it:

    Why do we need the maniac machine at all?

    Debt exists because we owe.

    We owe because things have prices.

    Things have prices because we trade them.

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

    Debt isn’t the bottom of the rabbit hole.

    Money isn’t even the bottom.

    Underneath money sits trading.

    And underneath trading sits ownership.

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

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

    But Maybe continuing them is the true insanity.

    War

    And then we arrive at the masterpiece.

    War.

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

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

    One group wants control. Another group wants control.

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

    Then we use them to destroy resources.

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

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

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

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

    Look Again

    Now look at what we have assembled.

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

    Are all these things caused exclusively by money?

    No.

    Human beings are perfectly capable of stupidity without it.

    But look at what keeps appearing.

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

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

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

    It determines access.

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

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

    How much will it cost to fix them?

    Pollution? Put a price on it.

    Poverty? Find the money.

    Climate change? Calculate the investment.

    Destroyed ecosystems? Give nature a monetary value.

    Debt crisis? Find more financing.

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

    We keep trying to solve monetary problems through monetary thinking.

    Maybe the problem goes deeper.

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

    We invented them.

    But they aren’t gravity.

    They aren’t photosynthesis.

    They aren’t laws of nature.

    They are concepts.

    And concepts can be abandoned.

    The Real Economy

    Strip away the numbers.

    What actually keeps us alive?

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

    That is the real economy.

    Not dollars.

    Not euros.

    Not GDP.

    Not stock prices.

    Not bank balances.

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

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

    How can we afford it?

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

    Wrong question.

    Here’s the right question:

    Do we have the resources?

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

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

    Those are physical questions.

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

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

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

    We invented the obstacle.

    Money isn’t food.

    Money isn’t housing.

    Money isn’t energy.

    Money isn’t medicine.

    Money isn’t a forest.

    Money isn’t a fish.

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

    And Earth has absolutely no idea it exists.

    True Freedom

    So now we can finally return to the beginning.

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

    For all the reasons we have just looked at.

    Maybe the answer isn’t to redesign the debt.

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

    Maybe it isn’t to invent greener financial products.

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

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

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

    No money. No debt.

    Not because $348 trillion has somehow been magically repaid.

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

    And notice what happens.

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

    The resources don’t disappear.

    Only the price tags do.

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

    Resources.

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

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

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

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

    That was supposed to be the point.

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

    Nobody loses their food.

    Nobody loses their home.

    Nobody loses healthcare.

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

    Technology finally becomes what technology should be:

    liberation.

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

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

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

    Solve the actual problem.

    The guiding question becomes almost embarrassingly simple:

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

    The profit motive gives way to the need motive.

    We know what we need.

    That is the motive to provide it.

    And this leads to a completely different definition of freedom.

    Actual freedom

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

    Or is actual freedom something completely different?

    Freedom from poverty.

    Freedom from artificial scarcity.

    Freedom from monetary debt.

    Freedom from compulsory economic competition.

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

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

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

    No more debt.

    No money.

    No trading away our planet.

    No ownership of the Earth itself.

    Stewardship.

    Access.

    Abundance where abundance is physically possible.

    Responsible management where it isn’t.

    True freedom for all.

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

    Imagination

    Through imagination. Through showing the world the possibility.

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

    But every new human reality begins as an idea.

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

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

    It isn’t a prediction.

    It’s a possibility.

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

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

    Discover the story 

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

  •  Nothing Matters More Than Money

     Nothing Matters More Than Money

    Nothing matters more than money.

    Not forests.

    Not clean rivers.

    Not fertile soil.

    Not a stable climate.

    Not peace.

    Not equality.

    Not even the future.

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

    Business as usual

    The world carries on as usual.

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

    On the surface, everything appears normal.

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

    Business as usual.

    Shiny Surfaces

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

    Climate change.

    Environmental degradation.

    Deforestation.

    Soil erosion.

    Polluted rivers and oceans.

    Mass extinction.

    War.

    Poverty.

    Crime.

    Stress.

    Loneliness.

    Growing inequality.

    A world on the brink of social and ecological breakdown.

    No Connection

    Yet we rarely connect these crises.

    Climate is discussed over here.

    Poverty over there.

    Crime somewhere else.

    War in another room.

    Economic growth in yet another.

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

    But almost nobody asks the obvious question.

    What if they are not separate problems?

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

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

    It doesn’t ask what is best for nature.

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

    The monetary system is designed for only one thing:

    Increase monetary wealth.

    It asks only one question:

    Can it generate more money?

    If the answer is yes, the activity is rewarded.

    If the answer is no, it struggles to survive.

    That logic doesn’t only influence corporations.

    It shapes governments.

    It shapes scientific research.

    It shapes media.

    It shapes education.

    It shapes our careers.

    It shapes our daily decisions.

    Even when we know the consequences.

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

    But what if they are not side effects at all?

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

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

    We become more efficient, and consumption grows.

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

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

    The system keeps demanding more more more and more.

    Not because people are evil or stupid.

    Not because politicians don’t care.

    But because the system reward expansion, competition and accumulation.

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

    It is not.

    It is a human invention.

    And what has been invented can be reinvented.

    The real wealth of humanity has never been money.

    It has always been fertile land.

    Clean water.

    Healthy ecosystems.

    Knowledge.

    Technology.

    Human creativity.

    Cooperation.

    Money cannot replace any of these.

    It can only assign numbers to them.

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

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

    Perhaps that is where we are today.

    Not facing a climate crisis.

    Or an economic crisis.

    Or a political crisis.

    But a civilizational crisis.

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

    It requires something much deeper and groundbreaking.

    A new foundation.

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

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

    No Choice

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

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

    A Different World

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

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

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

    Discover the story

  • The Death of Money

    The Death of Money

    It’s an almost apocalyptic title.

    The kind of title that immediately makes you think of empty supermarket shelves, closed banks, worthless banknotes and a world descending into chaos.

    Because if money dies…

    …what happens to us?

    The Book

    That is the question at the heart of The Death of Money, a fascinating book by economist, investment banker, lawyer and bestselling author James Rickards(74). Throughout his career, Rickards has advised governments, major financial institutions and even the U.S. defense and intelligence communities on financial risk, economic warfare and the international monetary system.

    When someone with that background writes a book with a title like The Death of Money, it is worth paying attention.

    Reserve Currency

    Rickards argues that the international monetary system has become increasingly fragile. The U.S. dollar has served as the world’s reserve currency since the end of the Second World War, becoming the foundation of international trade and finance.

    Confidence

    But that foundation rests on something surprisingly fragile.

    Confidence.

    The only value money possesses comes from only this one thing: 

    Our confidence in it.

    Not from gold.

    Not from silver.

    Not from the numbers displayed in our online bank accounts.

    Not even from the paper it is printed on.

    Confidence.

    That is all.

    The moment that confidence disappears…

    …so does the value of the currency.

    That simple observation changes everything.

    Growing debt, relentless fiat money creation, financial crises, geopolitical tensions, currency wars and increasing challenges to the dollar all place pressure on that confidence. Rickards argues that if confidence in the dollar(or other currencies for that matter) is seriously undermined, the consequences could spread throughout the entire international monetary system because no obvious replacement is waiting in the wings.

    Whether or not every prediction unfolds exactly as he expects is almost beside the point.

    His book forces us to confront a question most of us never ask.

    What happens if that confidence is lost?

    The Warnings

    Rickards is far from alone.

    For years, warnings have come from every direction. The LaRouche movement has long argued that the financial system is fundamentally unstable. Mainstream economists warn about unsustainable debt. Investors warn about bubbles. Governments quietly prepare for financial crises. Newspapers speak of inflation, banking instability, currency wars, de-dollarization, recession and geopolitical conflict.

    Different people describe different threats.

    Different people propose different solutions.

    Yet beneath all the disagreement lies the same uncomfortable feeling.

    Something doesn’t feel right.

    Something feels increasingly fragile.

    Perhaps that explains why The Death of Money resonates with so many readers.

    It gives a name to a fear that many people already carry.

    The Disaster

    Now imagine the warnings are right.

    Not every detail.

    Not every prediction.

    But the central concern.

    Imagine confidence suddenly evaporates.

    Banks close.

    Markets crash.

    Currencies collapse.

    Savings lose their value.

    Governments panic.

    Television screens fill with the words nobody ever wanted to hear.

    Financial collapse.

    Currency collapse.

    Economic emergency.

    The death of money.

    Fear spreads around the world.

    Because for centuries we have quietly come to believe that money is civilization itself.

    Without money…

    there is no food.

    No products.

    No joy.

    No work.

    No fun.

    No future.

    No survival.

    One question suddenly becomes more important than every other.

    What shall we do??

    The Illusion

    Will we die??

    No.

    Because money has never fed anyone.

    Money has never grown a single grain of wheat.

    Money has never purified a single drop of water, or made it rain.

    Money has never generated electricity.

    Money has never built a home.

    Money has never healed a patient.

    Money has never made a movie.

    Money has never created wealth.

    People do those things.

    Nature provides the resources.

    Technology transforms those resources.

    Human knowledge makes it all possible.

    Money has only organized access to them.

    It has only kept score.

    Somewhere along the way we forgot the difference.

    We stopped seeing money as a tool.

    We started seeing it as reality itself.

    Money became sacred.

    Question governments and people will argue with you.

    Question capitalism and people will argue with you.

    Question socialism and people will argue with you.

    Question banks and people will argue with you.

    Question money itself…

    …and many people think you’ve lost your mind.

    That is how deeply the illusion has taken hold.

    The Reality

    Imagine every currency disappeared tomorrow.

    What would actually disappear?

    Would the forests disappear?

    Would the rivers disappear?

    Would fertile farmland disappear?

    Would power stations disappear?

    Would hospitals disappear?

    Would engineers suddenly forget how to build?

    Would doctors suddenly forget how to heal?

    Would farmers suddenly forget how to grow food?

    Of course not.

    The real wealth of humanity would still be here.

    The Earth would still be here.

    Its resources.

    Its ecosystems.

    Its energy.

    Its knowledge.

    Its technology.

    Its people.

    Everything that actually sustains life would remain.

    Only the accounting system would have disappeared. And instead of the very unfair accounting system based on confidence in money, our accounting system could simply be based on confidence in each other, technology and Earth itself. Confidence that the Earth provides, technology can optimize and distribute it, and confidence in our own conscience, only taking what we need.

    Money has never been wealth.

    It has only represented wealth.

    The map is not the territory.

    The receipt is not the meal.

    The price tag is not the product.

    And money is not wealth.

    A New World

    James Rickards asks us to contemplate the death of money.

    I think he is asking exactly the right question.

    Because once we stop asking how to save money…

    …we can finally begin asking how to organize the real wealth of this planet directly.

    How do we organize food?

    Water?

    Energy?

    Housing?

    Healthcare?

    Education?

    Knowledge?

    Technology?

    Without depending upon an accounting system whose only value comes from our collective confidence in it.

    If confidence is what gives money value…

    …perhaps confidence itself is the real currency.

    The only remaining question is where humanity chooses to invest it.

    In paper.

    In numbers.

    In financial markets.

    Or in ourselves.

    In science.

    In technology.

    In the Earth.

    In stewardship instead of ownership.

    In the extraordinary abundance of this planet.

    And in each other.

    Maybe the death of money is not the death of our world, but rather the birth of a new one…

    And this world is exactly the one explored in the novel Waking Up: A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity. It is a novel, not describing yet another post-apocalyptic dystopian future, but rather a future protopia, a world that that works for all and is constantly being improved.

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

    Instead, he discovers something he never imagined possible.

    Money is gone.

    Ownership is gone.

    Yet humanity has never been wealthier.

    Not because it created even more money.

    But because it finally learned to organize the real wealth of the Earth itself.

    Perhaps the death of money will turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to humanity…

    Discover his story

  • The Problem with Money

    The Problem with Money

    Most people think the problem with money is that they don’t have enough of it. And it is needed for almost everything. 

    We spend most of our lives trying to earn it, save it, invest it, borrow it, and protect it. Governments want economic growth. Companies want higher profits. Individuals want larger salaries. Everywhere we look, the answer seems to be the same:

    More money.

    If people are struggling, we need more money.

    If businesses are struggling, we need more money.

    If economies are slowing down, we need more money.

    Money has become the universal solution to almost every problem.

    But what if the problem with money is not that there is too little of it?

    What if the problem is that we have misunderstood what money actually is?

    Money is not food.

    Money is not water.

    Money is not energy.

    Money is not housing.

    Money is not healthcare.

    Money is not wealth.

    Money is simply a symbol that represents wealth.

    And once we understand that distinction, two fundamental problems become impossible to ignore.

    Problem #1: More money does not create more resources

    Imagine that every person on Earth woke up tomorrow with twice as much money in their bank account.

    Would there suddenly be twice as much food?

    Twice as many houses?

    Twice as much fresh water?

    Twice as much farmland?

    Twice as much energy?

    Twice as many doctors, teachers, engineers, and builders?

    Of course not.

    The amount of real wealth on Earth would remain exactly the same.

    Not a single additional resource would have been created.

    This is because money is not the thing itself. It is merely a claim on the thing.

    The real wealth is the food, the water, the energy, the housing, the technology, the knowledge, and all the natural resources that support life.

    Creating more money does not automatically create more of any of these.

    In fact, the opposite often happens.

    More money encourages more consumption.

    More consumption encourages more production.

    More production requires more extraction of resources.

    The result is a faster depletion of the very wealth upon which our lives depend.

    Yet we continue to act as though creating more money somehow creates more wealth.

    It doesn’t.

    If humanity printed ten trillion dollars tomorrow, the forests would not become larger.

    The resources would remain exactly as they are.

    Money can only redistribute claims on wealth.

    It cannot create wealth by itself.

    Problem #2: Too much money reduces the value of money itself

    The second problem is equally important.

    Money is strange because the more of it we create, the less valuable it becomes. The fact is that money only has value if there isn’t too much of it. Imagine you had a yearly income of 10 million dollars every year after tax. Sounds wonderful? You could buy everything you want. Now imagine everyone else also having the same income. What would happen if? Prices would rise accordingly and inflation would skyrocket. A bread would no longer cost 3 dollars, but probably closer to 300…

    When money is created faster than goods and services are produced, inflation follows.

    Prices rise.

    Purchasing power falls.

    The numbers in our bank accounts may become larger, but those numbers buy less.

    In other words, creating more money will actually make money itself less valuable.

    The proposed solution to a lack of money is often more money.

    Yet too much money weakens the value of money.

    This creates a bizarre situation.

    We are constantly chasing larger numbers while the meaning of those numbers gradually declines.

    People demand higher wages because prices have increased.

    Businesses raise prices because costs have increased.

    Governments inject more money into the economy because it needs “stimulation“. 

    And the cycle continues.

    The irony is that if money truly were wealth, creating more of it would make everyone richer.

    But because money is only a symbol of wealth, creating more symbols does not increase the wealth itself.

    The Great Confusion

    Perhaps the deepest problem with money is that we have confused the symbol with reality.

    We talk about wealth when we often mean money.

    We talk about prosperity when we often mean financial growth.

    We talk about economic success while paying less attention to the condition of the real world beneath the numbers.

    It is a little like mistaking a map for the territory.

    Or a menu for the food itself. 

    A map can be useful.

    But nobody can eat a map.

    Nobody can drink a menu.

    Nobody can live inside a map.

    Likewise, money can be useful.

    But money itself cannot feed us, shelter us, heal us, or sustain us.

    Only real wealth can do that.

    And true wealth is not found in bank accounts.

    True wealth is clean water.

    True wealth is fertile soil.

    True wealth is healthy ecosystems.

    True wealth is knowledge.

    True wealth is healthcare.

    True wealth is housing.

    True wealth is community.

    True wealth is meaningful relationships.

    True wealth is time.

    Perhaps humanity’s future depends on recognizing the difference between the symbol and the reality.

    Because once we do, we can stop asking how to create more money and start asking a far more important question:

    How do we create and manage real wealth for everyone?

    ⸻

    Call to Action

    Can you imagine a world that no longer measures success by money?

    A world where the goal is not endless economic growth, but the intelligent management of resources, the well-being of people, and the health of the planet itself?

    What if humanity eventually realized that creating more money does not create more wealth—and that true wealth has been here all along?

    This is exactly the question explored in the novel Waking Up: A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity.

    The book follows Benjamin Michaels, a billionaire from our time who awakens one hundred years in the future to discover a world that has moved beyond money, profit, and artificial scarcity. A world built around cooperation, stewardship, advanced technology, and the shared prosperity of our planet.

  • Culture vs. Money — What Came First?

    Culture vs. Money — What Came First?

    Watching Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted travel through Galicia Spain, harvesting percebes from wave-beaten rocks, bidding on fish at early-morning auctions, and cooking food rooted deeply in place, a simple question naturally arises:

    Would people still do all this if there were no money?

    It’s a fair question — and also a revealing one.

    Because what we are actually watching in Galicia is not an economy.

    We are watching a culture.

    Culture came first

    Fishing cultures, farming cultures, herding cultures, food cultures, craft cultures — all of them existed long before the modern monetary system. People did not begin fishing because of auctions. They did not start making cheese because of profit margins. They did these things because:

    • it was who they were

    • it was how knowledge was passed down

    • it created belonging and pride

    • it connected them to land, sea, and community

    • it gave meaning to daily life

    • it gave them food on the table

    Money arrived later. Much later. And when it arrived, it wrapped itself around these activities as a coordination layer — not as their source.

    Money coordinate — it does not motivate

    We often confuse coordination with motivation.

    Auctions, prices, bids, and markets help coordinate distribution under scarcity. They do not explain why people go out into dangerous seas, master difficult skills, or continue traditions that take decades to learn.

    Those motivations are older and deeper:

    • identity

    • mastery

    • contribution

    • respect

    • continuity

    • love of the craft

    Remove money, and the need for coordination remains — but the reasons for doing the work do not disappear.

    What disappears without money — and what doesn’t

    What disappears:

    • artificial scarcity

    • speculative bidding

    • over-extraction for profit

    • middlemen extracting value

    • pressure to work dangerously because of debt

    What remains:

    • fishing

    • cheesemaking

    • farming

    • cooking

    • skill and pride

    • reputation based on excellence

    • rituals, festivals, and traditions

    In fact, many cultures would function better without monetary pressure distorting them.

    Coordination without coercion

    In a post-monetary world, coordination would be based on:

    • real needs instead of price signals

    • logistics instead of competition

    • reputation instead of wealth

    • cooperation instead of bidding wars

    People would still want good food, beautiful craft, and skilled work. They just wouldn’t need financial scarcity to decide who deserves access.

    Play survives economics

    Interestingly, some old systems might even survive — but as play.

    Mock auctions, ritualized bidding, historical reenactments, and LARP(Live Acton Role Playing)-like traditions could remain because humans enjoy drama, ritual, and performance. The difference is simple but profound:

    No one’s survival would depend on winning the game.

    The deeper misunderstanding

    The hardest idea for many people to release is the belief that:

    “Without money, nobody would do the work.”

    But this is contradicted every day by:

    • parenting

    • art

    • volunteering

    • caregiving

    • community building

    • cultural preservation

    Humans are not motivated primarily by money.

    We are motivated by meaning.

    ⸻

    Pono — An Example of the Future That Already Exists

    Watching Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted again. In Hawaii this time there are several quiet moments that say more about humanity’s future than a thousand economic theories. Not because Hawaii is unique or superior — but because it preserves something that exists everywhere, once you know how to see it.

    Ramsay learns to make a knife from a Hawaiian knife smith. No factory. No production line. Just hands, fire, steel, patience — and pride in the craft.

    Earlier, he is introduced to pono by a local chef. Hawaiian culture becomes the lens here — not as an exception, but as a clear example of something fundamentally human. He visits coffee farms where every single bean is hand-picked — not because it is efficient in monetary terms, but because care, respect, and right relationship matter.

    That moment already carries the essence of pono.

    Then the thought arises naturally:

    If this knife smith were not paid for his knives, would he still make them?

    Anyone paying attention already knows the answer.

    Yes.

    Craft does not originate in money

    People like this knife smith do not exist because of money. They exist because of:

    • curiosity

    • mastery

    • identity

    • interest

    • the simple joy of doing something well

    Money comes later, as a translation layer — a blunt instrument used to move objects through a system that no longer trusts relationships.

    Take money away, and the craft does not disappear.

    What changes is how the craft flows.

    Without money, distribution becomes personal

    If the knife smith were not selling knives to an anonymous market, he would still make them — but he would make them for someone.

    A fisherman.

    A cook.

    A farmer.

    A neighbor.

    Each knife would have a face attached to it.

    Each knife would have a story.

    The question would no longer be:

    What can I get for this?

    It would become:

    Who is this for, and what do they need?

    That is not sentimentality.

    It is precision.

    Fewer knives, perhaps — but each one more exact, more fitting, more meaningful.

    Pono as systems intelligence

    In Hawaiian culture, pono means balance, right relationship, and corrective harmony — not moral purity or rule-following.

    The hand-picked coffee beans matter here. Not as a luxury product, but as a signal: how something is done matters as much as what is produced.

    An action is pono if it restores balance:

    • between people

    • between people and land

    • between effort and need

    The traditional Hawaiian ahupuaʻa system worked this way. Resources were not owned, priced, or extracted for growth. They were stewarded as flows — from mountain to sea — with the understanding that excess in one place meant harm elsewhere.

    That is not nostalgia.

    That is systems intelligence.

    Culture precedes money — and survives without it

    Fishing, farming, cooking, building, teaching, caring.

    These activities existed long before money — and they continue today wherever culture is allowed to breathe.

    This quietly answers the question critics always ask:

    “But why would people do anything without money?”

    Because they already do.

    You just have to stop filtering reality through price tags.

    Money did not create meaning.

    It replaced relationship with abstraction.

    Culture outlives systems

    Economic systems rise and fall.

    Cultures endure.

    Galician fishers will still fish.

    Not because of auctions.

    But because it is who they are.

    And once that is truly understood, the idea of a good life without money stops sounding radical — and starts  sounding natural and deeply human.

    ⸻

    If this way of thinking resonates, the novel Waking Up – A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity explores what happens when humanity organizes around cooperation, culture, and care instead of money — and reveals that the future we imagine may already be quietly alive among us. Dive into the story through Benjamin Michaels, the lost billionaire waking up in a future like this.

  • The Great Unveiling – Awakening to the Real World

    The Great Unveiling – Awakening to the Real World

    What would actually happen if the world erased all debt overnight?

    ⸻

    1. The Starting Point

    Let’s start with a fact, not an opinion.

    As of 2025, total global debt is about $340 trillion — every mortgage, every student loan, every government bond, every corporate IOU combined.

    It is, quite literally, the sum of what humanity owes to itself.

    Let that sink in.

    To itself.

    How can a species owe itself money?

    How can the left hand be in debt to the right?

    The numbers are real enough on paper — but the logic behind them is absurd.

    We’ve built a global system in which humanity as a whole is perpetually indebted to… humanity as a whole.

    Meanwhile, the world’s annual GGP, Gross Global Product— the total value of everything we actually create and produce — is about $110 trillion.

    So globally we owe more than three times what we make in a year.

    We are, in effect, trying to pay ourselves with our own promises, and calling the shortfall “growth.”

    ⸻

    2. The Paradox of Debt-Money

    Here’s the strange truth of modern economics:

    Money isn’t printed first and then lent — it’s created by lending.

    When a bank issues a loan, it simply types numbers into an account.

    Those digits are new money, but they exist only because someone has agreed to owe them back.

    For every dollar of money, there’s a dollar of debt somewhere else. So of course, since we are constantly creating new money mostly by loans that needs to be repaid with interest which is not created, we constantly need to create new debt perpetually. If everyone repaid their loans tomorrow, almost every dollar in existence would vanish.

    The economy wouldn’t just slow down — it would cease to exist. Because money = debt.

    Debt isn’t a flaw in the system.

    Debt is the system.

    ⸻

    3. The Absurd Scale

    Three hundred and forty trillion dollars.

    A number so large it almost loses meaning.

    To “repay” it, we’d need about three more Earth-sized economies operating at today’s output — three planets producing, mining, farming, shipping, and consuming at full speed just to settle our existing balance sheet.

    But we have only one planet, and it’s already showing the strain: melting ice caps, depleting soils, rising seas.

    We’ve mortgaged the future to pay for the present, and even the collateral — the planet itself — is running out.

    The debt can never be repaid, because repayment would destroy the very money supply that makes repayment possible. The paradox is profound

    It’s a snake eating its own tail.

    ⸻

    4. The Thought Experiment

    So what if, instead of running faster on the treadmill, we simply stopped?

    What if: every government, bank, and individual agreed to wipe the slate clean — erase all debt at once?

    Technically, it would be easy.

    After all, when a bank issues a loan, it simply types numbers into an account.

    Those digits appear from nowhere, authorized by nothing more than confidence in the story.

    And just as easily as they’re created, they can be erased.

    The same keyboard that made them has another key — 

    backspace.

    Press it once for a typo.

    Press it a few more times, and the world is debt-free.

    Thus: the so-called global “debt crisis” is nothing more than a collection of keystrokes. 

    The difficulty isn’t technical. 

    It’s psychological.

    The moment those numbers disappear, the story humanity believes about itself — the story of credit, ownership, and fake obligation — vanishes with them.

    For a few hours, maybe days, the world would panic.

    Markets would freeze. Banks would have no assets. Governments would have no bonds.

    It would look like collapse.

    But collapse of what, exactly?

    ⸻

    5. What Would Still Exist

    Would the roads disappear?

    Would the houses crumble?

    Would the hospitals and schools evaporate?

    Would the oceans stop moving or the sun fail to shine?

    No.

    Every physical thing humanity has built and nature has created would still be there:

    every bridge, every farm, every power plant, every tool, every ship.

    The forests, the animals, the wind and rain — all still exactly as before.

    The real world would remain completely intact.

    The only thing missing would be the numbers we used to measure it.

    That’s the realization: the “economy” we thought sustained us was only a layer of code floating above what was real.

    When the code is erased, the world itself doesn’t vanish

    — it appears.

    ⸻

    6. The Great Unveiling

    That’s the unveiling — the moment when the illusion drops and we see what was always there.

    The money world was never the world.

    It was a veil — a story of ownership drawn over nature, over work, over life itself.

    When that story ends, nothing real is lost.

    In fact, reality becomes visible again.

    The forests keep breathing.

    The clouds still drift and drop rain.

    Birds still fly, insects still hum, whales still cross the oceans.

    People still wake up, stretch, laugh, argue, cook, and create.

    All of it continues as if nothing happened — because to the real world, nothing did.

    ⸻

    7. Seeing the Illusion for What It Was

    Imagine standing in a field the morning after the Great Erasure.

    The banks are silent, the stock tickers blank, but the sun still warms your skin.

    You realize how strange it was to think that this — sunlight, air, grass, breath — could ever be “priced.”

    The absurdity becomes obvious: we built a system that claims ownership over everything that already belongs to life.

    We invented scarcity in the middle of abundance. Saying only those with enough numbers in their accounts would have an abundance of time to really enjoy life.

    We called debt wealth and competition progress.

    We covered the real world with a mirage of money — and then forgot it was a mirage.

    And yet, beneath that mirage, everything real has been patiently waiting.

    ⸻

    8. What Happens Next

    At first, confusion.

    If no one owns anything, who decides?

    But slowly, reason returns.

    People realize they don’t need permission to use what already exists. 

    Food still grows. Tools still work. Knowledge still lives in every mind. We can peacefully agree to create abundance for all.

    Communities reorganize — not around money, but around contribution, skill, and trust.

    Value shifts from possession to participation.

    Humanity begins to live again as nature does — through exchange without debt, through cycles of giving and renewal.

    ⸻

    9. The Realization

    The true catastrophe isn’t the collapse of the money world — it’s that we mistook it for the real one.

    The true awakening is realizing the world doesn’t need to be rebuilt — only remembered.

    Everything that matters survives the erasure:

    the land, the oceans, the people, the animals, the insects, the sky, the sun.

    When the numbers vanish, what remains is life — unpriced, unowned, unending.

    ⸻

    10. The Invitation

    This is the Great Unveiling: not the end of civilization, but the end of its disguise.

    A collective seeing — that the wealth of the world was never in banks, but in being.

    Step outside.

    Feel the ground.

    Everything real is still here.

    The world is Waking Up.

    Are you?

    Follow the former billionaire Benjamin Michaels as he wakes up in a world where this has already happened. Shaken and shocked he staggers out of the hospital where he has been sleeping for a century, only to find his old world of money and numbers completely vanished… Only the real world remains.

    order the book here

  • The Idiocracy of Our Time

    The Idiocracy of Our Time

    The United States just shut down parts of its government. Not because the farmers stopped farming. Not because the engineers forgot how to build. Not because the doctors ran out of knowledge.

    But because two groups of politicians couldn’t agree on numbers in a spreadsheet.

    750,000 people furloughed. Families in limbo. Services halted. The world’s “biggest economy” brought to its knees by idiotic accounting games.

    Money as Oxygen

    This is the Idiocracy of our time: we treat money as if it were oxygen. We act as if society cannot breathe without it. Yet money produces nothing. It grows no food, builds no homes, heals no bodies. It is only the token system we invented and forgot was fiction. Time to call it a day?

    History shows us that human societies have not always been shackled to money:

    • Indigenous cultures across the Americas and Australia sustained themselves for millennia through direct sharing of food, tools, and shelter — no coins, no ledgers.

    • Medieval villages in Europe often relied on collective effort and community support, where needs were met without currency.

    • Disaster relief today shows the same principle: when hurricanes, earthquakes, or floods strike, people don’t wait for budgets to be approved. Neighbors help neighbors, resources flow, and life continues.

    What if instead of shutting down when the tokens run out, we simply looked at what is real..?

    • Resources

    • Skills

    • Needs

    • Collaboration

    The things that actually make life work

    Imagine a world where monetary budgets don’t exist, but abundance does. Where we don’t ask, “Can we afford it?” but rather, “Do the resources exist, and does it serve life?”

    That’s not a fantasy. It’s the next step for humanity. Because as long as we play by the rules of monopoly money, we’ll keep watching governments collapse over nothing.

    Time to step out of the Idiocracy — and into a world that works for all

    We could create such a world if we really wanted to, as long as enough people become aware of the possibility. And that is exactly what the book,Waking Up – A journey towards a new dawn for humanity, is about. Making people aware through story.

    Are you curious?

    If you want to glimpse what such a future might look like, step into the story of Waking Up. Follow Benjamin Michaels, a former billionaire who opens his eyes 100 years in his future in a world where money has been abandoned — where access, cooperation, and abundance have replaced scarcity and competition. No more fight over budgets. No more polarization. Humanity has realized we have to work together to keep living on this planet. Ben’s  journey is a window into what life could be like beyond the illusion of money and scarcity.

    👉 Read the novel Waking Up — a journey towards a new dawn for humanity:

    ORDER HERE

    ⸻

  • Can More Money Save the World?

    Can More Money Save the World?

    We think that money is the solution to everything. Pouring more of it over problems should make them go away, right?

    A Billionaire’s Promise

    When Bill Gates pledged to give away 99% of his fortune — over $200 billion — to be spent by 2045, headlines called it one of the greatest philanthropic commitments in history. Health, hunger, education, climate: the problems are massive, and Gates believes that with enough money, the right science, and smart management, they can be solved.

    But can they?

    The Promise of Money

    At first glance, it’s hard not to be impressed. $200 billion could vaccinate entire regions, build schools, fund green energy projects, and support struggling farmers. Money, in this sense, looks like a universal key — a tool that can unlock progress wherever it is directed. That’s the belief that fuels philanthropy on this scale: the more dollars we mobilize, the faster we can fix the world.

    The Contradiction at the Core

    Yet beneath the surface lies a contradiction too big to ignore. If money created these problems, can money really be the solution?

    Poverty Is Built Into the System

    Consider poverty. Philanthropy can deliver food, medicine, or shelter to people in need — and it does save lives. But poverty itself is not a shortage of money; it is the direct result of how money organizes society.

    Money only works when it is scarce. If everyone had an abundance, it would stop functioning altogether. Its value comes from the fact that not everyone has it, and that you must trade your time, labor, or resources to get it. If everyone suddenly had “enough,” prices would simply rise until scarcity returned.

    In other words, poverty is not a tragic accident of the system — it is a requirement. For money to keep its value, some people must always be excluded. The system itself ensures that wages are kept low, debts are enforced, and resources are concentrated, not because there isn’t enough food, housing, or energy, but because without inequality, money itself would collapse. Wealth and poverty are not opposites; they are two sides of the same coin.

    Climate Change and Profit Logic

    The same is true of climate change. Gates has invested in carbon capture, nuclear power, and green innovation. But climate chaos is not only an energy problem — it is a system problem. Our economy thrives on extraction, waste, and endless growth. Injecting more money into cleaner versions of the same system does not change its core logic: profit above planet.

    The problem is not that we lack the technology to live sustainably, but that our economic model rewards short-term gain and punishes restraint. As long as money drives the logic, even philanthropy cannot stop industries from consuming the Earth in pursuit of growth.

    Power and Inequality

    And then there’s power. When one man, no matter how well-intentioned, can decide how hundreds of millions of people will live, we face another paradox. The very act of giving away billions reinforces the inequality it claims to fight.

    We still live in a world where the fate of the poor depends on the choices of the ultra-rich. This is not justice — it is benevolence within the boundaries of a system that demands inequality to exist. Charity may soften the edges, but it leaves the structure untouched.

    The Scarcity Trap

    As mentioned above, there is the deeper truth of money itself: it only has value when it is scarce. History shows us what happens when everyone suddenly has “enough.”

    In Weimar Germany in 1923, and again in Zimbabwe in the 2000s, governments flooded their economies with banknotes. Very quickly, everyone had them — bundles, wheelbarrows, even trillions of dollars in salaries. But prices rose just as fast, until the money became worthless.

    Or take a thought experiment: tomorrow, every person on Earth receives ten million dollars. At first it feels like paradise, right? — no one is poor, no one needs to struggle. But within days, no one will grow food, clean streets, or drive buses. Why would they? Prices for essentials skyrocket, demand outstrips supply, and within weeks the “universal millionaire” dream collapses. The currency itself becomes meaningless, and people return to barter or invent a new token of scarcity.

    The logic is unavoidable: money only has value when NOT everyone has it. Its purchasing power depends on someone else not having it. If everyone did, it would be impossible to buy or sell anything at all.

    This is why poverty never disappears in a money-based system. It isn’t a flaw to be fixed with more philanthropy. It is the very mechanism that keeps the system alive.

    Treating Symptoms, Not the Cause

    So while philanthropy can ease suffering, it cannot cure the disease. It can treat symptoms, but it cannot touch the root. More billions will not change the fact that the monetary system itself depends on exclusion, competition, and scarcity. And we are talking about THE MONETARY SYSTEM here, not capitalism, socialism or any other -ism. As long as the basis is money it will always be like this.

    A Glimpse Beyond Money

    And this is where fiction becomes a mirror.

    In the novel Waking Up – A journey towards a new dawn for humanity, Benjamin Michaels opens his eyes in a world one hundred years in the future. He expects the familiar battles of wealth and survival. Instead, he finds something shocking: money itself is gone.

    The Human Shock of Abundance

    At first, his instincts betray him. He looks for a wallet, wonders who is profiting, suspects that someone must be in control. But slowly, the reality dawns: the old logic is gone. Here, life is organized not by money but by access, collaboration, and care.

    Two Paths Forward

    And so the real question emerges: if this world is possible in fiction, why not in reality?

    Bill Gates believes more money can save the world. But what if the opposite is true? What if the world can only be saved when money itself is no longer the measure of value?

    Philanthropy looks noble, but it is still locked inside the paradigm that created the problems. Ben’s awakening suggests another path: one where humanity organizes around need, not profit; where innovation is driven by curiosity, not patents; where survival is a birthright, not a market exchange.

    The Choice Before Us

    Imagine if even a fraction of Gates’ billions were not used to patch up the old system, but to prototype the new — communities, technologies, and models of living that no longer depend on money at all. The change would not just be charitable; it would be transformational.

    So we return to the question: can more money save the world? Or will we only truly wake up when we dare to imagine a future beyond money itself? If you want to experience a world of abundance without money I invite you to read the book:

    ORDER THE BOOK HERE

  • Starving at the Banquet: Why a Moneyless World Makes More Sense

    Starving at the Banquet: Why a Moneyless World Makes More Sense

    💸 Today’s Monetary Myth

    Today we have the most advanced and complex monetary system in the history of mankind. Global markets run on lightning-fast digital transactions. Central banks manipulate economies with a few keystrokes. And most people—governments included—believe that money is as essential as air.

    Money is debt

    We often think of money as wealth—but in reality, money is debt. Nearly every dollar, euro, or yen in circulation was created as a loan, to be paid back with interest. Institutions like the World Bank and IMF lend vast sums to poorer nations, expecting repayment in a currency they don’t control—plus interest. But here’s the catch: if all debt were repaid, there would be no money left. The system demands endless borrowing just to stay afloat. It’s not just flawed—it’s structurally insane. Absurdity without limits.

    We can’t live without it, they say.

    We need it for everything:

    • To buy food, water, shelter.
    • To travel, learn, communicate.
    • To build roads, fund hospitals, fix schools.

    If our lives aren’t good, we blame a lack of money.
    If governments fall short, we say they’re out of money.

    But is that really true? Will more money actually help?

    Has humanity always been dependent on money?

    Let’s dig deeper.

    🌿 The Origins of Money: Barter or Gifting?

    We’ve all heard the story: that money evolved from barter. That people once swapped chickens for carrots and apples for arrows, until someone invented money to make things easier.

    But that story is a myth.

    Anthropologists have found little evidence that barter was ever the dominant system in early human communities. Instead, many societies operated on gift economies—systems based on mutual aid, trust, and social bonds. People shared what they had, not because they expected direct trade, but because the survival of the group depended on it.

    Barter likely emerged later, in fringe interactions between strangers. But money didn’t evolve because it was natural. It arose because it was useful for control—as agriculture created surplus and hierarchies, rulers needed a way to tax, store, and regulate that surplus. Thus, money became a tool of power, not just convenience.

    🏛 From Gifting to Control

    As human societies grew, so did the complexity of exchange. Early forms of money—cattle, grain, shells—were gradually replaced by precious metals, then paper notes backed by gold, and finally, abstract digital numbers backed by nothing but belief. And that is all it is.

    Belief.

    If people stop believing money or stocks have value, the value will vanish instantly. We see it in the stock market every day. That is why the value of stocks go up and down and currencies fluctuate.

    At first, money facilitated trade. Over time, it became a mechanism for hoarding and controlling resources. The more abstract it became, the more power it gave to those who controlled its flow.

    Money stopped being a tool and became the gatekeeper of life.

    💣 The Paradox of Money: Too Much, and It Breaks

    Here’s the uncomfortable truth:

    If there’s enough money for everyone to get what they need, the system collapses.

    Why? Because the system is built on artificial scarcity. Too much money in the system makes money loose its value. That’s why it must be kept scarce for the common man. If everyone had enough, they’d stop tolerating soul-crushing jobs. Prices would surge, inflation would rise, and the economy would “overheat.” In other words: it only “works” if most people never get enough.

    The system isn’t broken.
    It’s functioning exactly as designed.

    💰 Scarcity in the Age of Abundance

    Today, we live in a world of technological abundance:

    • Automation can replace repetitive labor.
    • Renewable energy can power the planet.
    • Communication tools connect billions.
    • We produce enough food to feed everyone and more.

    And yet…

    • Food is wasted while people starve.
    • Homes sit empty while people sleep outside.
    • Clean tech is stalled to protect profits.
    • People work meaningless jobs just to survive.

    It’s as if we’re starving while guarding a pile of food stamps, arguing over who should get how many—while the banquet behind us is rotting.

    🧾 The Tax Illusion: Fairness in a Rigged Game

    People think we can get a just world by dividing money better, but that is impossible as money only have value if it is scarce. If everybody had enough money it would have no value…

    Some argue, “We don’t need to get rid of money—just tax the rich!”

    But look closer:

    • Jeff Bezos spends £34 million on a wedding.
    • Amazon UK pays £0 in taxes in 2022.

    That’s not a glitch. That’s the design.

    The rich don’t evade taxes—they avoid them legally, using laws crafted by the very lobbyists they fund. And even if they did pay more, what then?

    We’d still be:

    • Tying basic needs to income.
    • Valuing GDP over human well-being.
    • Accepting poverty as normal.
    • Overshoot our natural resources.

    Taxes just move tokens around in a broken game. The problem isn’t who pays—it’s that we’re still playing the game of scarcity when the Earth already provides an abundance for all.

    🤯 Rethinking the Whole Question

    We ask, “How will we pay for universal healthcare, housing, or education?”

    But maybe we’re asking the wrong question.

    Instead, ask:

    • Do we have the resources?
    • Can they be utilized at noe one else’s expense?
    • Do we have the technology?
    • Do we have the will?

    If the answer is yes, cost becomes irrelevant. We don’t need permission from money—we need to organize wisely, optimize and share.

    🌍 A Moneyless World: Not Utopia—Just Sense

    Let’s be clear: this isn’t about going back to the stone age and barter. It’s about evolution. Move into a just and sane future together.

    A moneyless world isn’t a fantasy. It’s a system where:

    • Resources are accessed by need, not price.
    • Collaboration replaces competition.
    • Well-being for all, not profit, becomes the goal.

    And it’s already emerging:

    • Open-source communities.
    • Gift economies.
    • Peer-to-peer sharing.
    • The dream of Resource-Based Economies.

    The shift starts with one question:

    Why are we still doing this to ourselves?

    Final Thought

    Money is not air.
    It’s not food.
    It’s not shelter.

    It is a manmade invention.

    A symbol. A belief. A story we tell.

    But maybe it’s time to tell a new story—
    one where no one starves at a banquet of abundance.

    If this resonates with you—if you’ve ever questioned the system we live by—then Waking Up – A journey towards a new dawn for humanity might just be the novel you didn’t know you needed. It follows Benjamin Michaels, once a multi-billionaire and master of the old world, who suddenly wakes up in a future where money no longer exists. Ownership is gone. Profit is irrelevant. Scarcity has been replaced by intelligent sharing and stewardship of the Earth.

    At first, he’s more than confused—he’s shaken to the core. Everything that once defined his worth, his power, his identity… has vanished. And yet, the world he finds is peaceful, abundant, and profoundly human.

    Ben’s journey mirrors our own potential transformation: What happens when we let go of the old story—and begin to trust that there really is enough for all?

    ORDER THE BOOK HERE