Tag: RESOURCES

  • But What Can We Actually Have?

    But What Can We Actually Have?

    This is one of the most honest and important questions I get from readers of Waking Up – A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity.

    People ask:

    “But what can we actually have in a world like that?”

    And it’s a fair question.

    Because when you hear about a world beyond both capitalism and communism, this is exactly where your mind goes.

    So here, I’ll try to answer it.

    Because let’s be clear:

    • In communism, everything was collected, measured, and distributed by the state.
    • In capitalism, we can accumulate as much as we can manage to control — money, land, resources — often far beyond what we could ever use.

    And many people instinctively reject both.

    They don’t want to stand in line for a ration.
    They don’t want to live in a world where a few own everything either.

    So the real question becomes:

    What can we actually have in the new kind of world described in the novel?

    The False Choice

    We have been taught that there are only two options:

    1. Central control → where someone else decides what you get
    2. Unlimited accumulation → where individuals compete to take as much as possible

    But both models share the same flaw:

    They disconnect access from actual use.

    • In communism, access is restricted regardless of abundance
    • In capitalism, access is expanded regardless of need — yet still restricted for many despite abundance

    Neither asks the most important question:

    What is actually needed, possible, and sustainable?

    A Different Starting Point

    In a resource-based, post-monetary world — like the one explored in Waking Up — the question shifts entirely.

    Instead of asking:

    “What are you allowed to have?”

    We ask:

    “What can be provided — for everyone — without harming the environment that supports us?”

    This is not ideology.
    This is engineering.

    In Waking Up, Aweena — a guide in the future world — puts it simply when guiding Benjamin, the protagonist who has awakened into it and is made of questions:

    “It’s really just simple accounting. If we have the resources and they can be utilized sustainably and at no one else’s expense, why shouldn’t everyone have what they want and need?”

    That’s it.

    But What About Unlimited Desire?

    Today, voices like Elon Musk suggest that in the future, technology — AI and robotics — may be able to fulfill almost any human desire.

    And that raises a natural question:

    What if I want something extreme?

    What if I want a gold-plated castle… just for me and my family?

    Clearly, not everyone can have that in the physical world.

    So does that mean we go back to limitation, rationing, or hierarchy?

    Not necessarily.

    Two Layers of Reality

    In Waking Up, this challenge is approached differently.

    There is a distinction between:

    • Physical reality (what actually consumes resources)
    • Experienced reality (what we perceive and feel)

    Through advanced nano-lens technology, people can experience environments that feel completely real — including living in a golden castle, if they wish.

    It looks real.
    It feels real.
    But it does not require vast physical resources.

    Meanwhile, the actual physical world is designed intelligently and sustainably.

    So instead of forcing reality to match every fantasy…

    we expand experience —
    while keeping physical systems in balance.

    The Real Constraints

    When it comes to the physical world, the limits are not political — they are practical.

    How much land do we actually have?

    The world has about 104 million km² of habitable land.

    But not all of that should be used by us.

    We want to preserve:

    • natural reserves
    • as much forest as possible
    • biodiversity and ecosystems

    So instead of looking at all habitable land, let’s focus on what is already part of human use:

    • cities and settlements
    • agricultural land (which in many cases can be regenerated and optimized)

    And let the rest remain for nature.

    It’s also worth noting that some currently barren or desert areas are already in the process of being regenerated — for example in parts of Africa and China — meaning that over time, additional land could become both habitable and productive again. This also means that the percentage of land available for dwellings could increase over time, without encroaching on forests or natural reserves.

    So let’s do a simple thought experiment

    If we kept the global population stable at 10 billion people, and we assume an average of 4 people per household, that would mean about 2.5 billion families. The UN’s household database defines household size as the average number of usual residents per household, which is the basis for this kind of estimate. (unstats.un.org)

    If we reserved:

    • 5% of habitable land for homes, gardens, and local community space, that would give about 2,080 m² per family
    • 10% of habitable land for that purpose, it would give about 4,160 m² per family

    Those figures are simple arithmetic based on global land area and assumed household size. They are not a prescription, but they show something important:

    even with 10 billion people, the question is not only whether there is space — but how intelligently we choose to use it.

    So what does this actually mean in real terms?

    Let’s take a clear, tangible example:

    What if every family on Earth had around 4,000 m² of land?

    Let that sink in.

    EVERY FAMILY ON EARTH could have this if we simply divided land and distributed resources intelligently.

    And of course — not every family would even want or need this much.

    And that’s the point.

    In a world designed around reality instead of scarcity and competition, we could actually have what we want — at least, for the most part.

    On that land, a family could have:

    • a 500 m² house — spacious, well-designed, lasting quality and highly functional
    • built to stay cool in the summer and warm in the winter
    • with room for the whole family — and guests

    And still have:

    • a large garden with trees, food production, and open space
    • privacy, swimming pool, nature, and room to breathe

    And this is not an extreme scenario.

    It fits within a framework where we:

    • preserve natural reserves
    • keep large forest areas intact
    • maintain efficient agriculture
    • and even expand usable land over time through regeneration

    So the real realization is this:

    we are not lacking land.

    We are lacking intelligent distribution and use of it.

    That is the difference.

    What About Location?

    Of course, this raises another very human question:

    What about where people live?

    We would have to be adults about this — not fall back into fighting over the most desirable locations.

    A fair approach could combine belonging and chance:

    • If a family is native to a place, or has lived on a piece of land for generations, they should have first choice to remain there.
    • For new allocations, or when multiple families want the same location, there could be a transparent draw.

    If two families want the exact same spot, a simple, fair draw resolves it — not wealth, not power, not influence.

    This may feel unfamiliar at first.

    But compare it to today:

    Access to the best locations is already decided — just by money.

    A fair system would simply replace that with belonging, transparency, and equality of opportunity.

    Available Resources

    If we stop wasting, hoarding, and duplicating unnecessarily, the equation changes dramatically.

    We must look at:

    • Food production
    • Materials
    • Energy
    • Manufacturing

    And ask:

    What is truly possible when everything is designed for efficiency instead of profit?

    From Ownership to Access

    Today, we ask:

    “Who owns this?”

    In the new model, we ask:

    “Who needs this — and how do we provide it intelligently?”

    You don’t need to own ten houses. You need access to the space you actually use.

    You don’t need to hoard goods.
    You need reliable access to what improves your life.

    When systems are designed properly:

    Access becomes more abundant than ownership ever was.

    An Example From Reality

    Think about it this way:

    Today, a billionaire might own five tropical islands — but only has access to those five.

    In a system based on shared access instead of ownership, that same person could potentially enjoy thousands of tropical islands.

    In other words, when we share, everyone will have more.

    Less ownership.
    More access.

    And in the end — more freedom.

    So… What Can You Have?

    You can have everything that can exist:

    • within physical limits
    • without harming ecosystems
    • without depriving others

    And beyond that?

    You can experience far more than physical reality alone could ever provide.

    What You Cannot Have

    Let’s be equally honest.

    You cannot have:

    • Unlimited private control over shared resources
    • Excess that comes at the expense of others
    • Systems that degrade the planet for personal gain

    Not because of ideology.

    Because it simply doesn’t work.

    The Real Answer

    So what can you actually have?

    You can have:

    Everything that can be created, sustained, and shared — without taking it from someone else or from the future.

    That’s the boundary.

    And within that boundary:

    There is far more available than we have ever allowed ourselves to imagine.

    A Final Thought

    This is not about less.

    It is about alignment with reality.

    Because when access is based on what is possible — rather than what can be bought or controlled —

    we stop fighting over pieces…

    and start building a world that actually works.

    Curious what such a world could really look like, what it would be like to live in one?

    If so, read Waking Up – A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity

    And if this article resonates with you — feel free to share it. I would appreciate that immensely, and thank you.

  • What do we actually have?

    What do we actually have?

    We often hear the same sentence repeated again and again in political debates, budget meetings, and everyday conversations:

    “There isn’t enough money.”

    Not enough money for better schools.
    Not enough money for safer infrastructure.
    Not enough money for healthcare, climate transition, or protecting children.

    But do we actually have enough resources if money is not the obstacle?

    Money is not a resource.

    Money is a permission system. A token. A bookkeeping layer placed on top of physical reality. And it is man-made. We create it from nothing — mostly as debt — and inject it into circulation as loans that must be repaid with interest.

    Yet repayment does not come from money itself.

    It comes from extracting, producing, transporting, consuming — from the planet. The main resource depletion comes from trying to repay the never ending debt.

    So for a moment, let’s remove money entirely.

    If we omit it completely, what do we actually have?

    We have energy.
    We have land.
    We have water.
    We have materials.
    We have technology.
    We have knowledge.
    We have human time and skill.
    And we have ecological regeneration rates.

    That is the real inventory of civilization.

    Do We Physically Have Enough?

    For basic human wellbeing, the answer is clearly yes.

    Food

    We already produce more than enough food globally to feed every human being on Earth. Several times over. Hunger today is not caused by insufficient production. It is caused by distribution systems, purchasing power, conflict, and waste. In other words, it is caused by the monetary system itself.

    Energy

    The amount of solar energy striking Earth each day exceeds total global human energy consumption many times over. Wind, geothermal, hydro, and storage technologies are already capable of supplying far more than we currently harness. The constraint is not energy availability — it is infrastructure, investment priorities, and political will.

    Housing

    In many countries, empty homes coexist with homelessness. We have the materials, the construction knowledge, and the technical capacity to house everyone safely. The bottleneck is not bricks, timber, or engineering. It is access.

    Water

    The planet holds vast freshwater reserves, and we possess desalination, purification, recycling, and distribution technologies. Water itself is part of a continuous planetary cycle — it evaporates, condenses, falls, flows, and can be cleaned and reused again and again. The issue is not that water does not exist. It is how it is managed, allocated, polluted, and whether we choose to treat it as a renewable flow rather than a disposable commodity.

    Technology & Coordination

    Never in history have we had this level of technical sophistication. We can monitor ecosystems from satellites, design regenerative agriculture systems, 3D-print buildings, coordinate global logistics in real time, and model climate systems with advanced computation.

    The limiting factor is not capacity.

    The limiting factor is organization.

    The Real Constraint: Regeneration Rates

    There is, however, a physical boundary.

    The planet regenerates forests, fisheries, soil, and freshwater at measurable rates. It absorbs waste and carbon at measurable rates.

    If extraction exceeds regeneration, systems destabilize.

    This is not ideological. It is biological and thermodynamic.

    So the real resource question is not:

    “Is there enough money?”

    It is:

    “Are we operating within ecological renewal rates?”

    If we align civilization with regeneration rather than with financial return, abundance becomes possible.

    Not infinite growth — but sustainable sufficiency.

    What We Have, In Reality

    We have:

    • Enough food production capacity
    • Vast renewable energy potential
    • Sufficient material resources for safe housing
    • Advanced global coordination technology
    • Knowledge accumulated across centuries
    • Billions of skilled human beings capable of contribution

    What we lack is not resources.

    We lack alignment.

    Money often makes scarcity appear natural. But most of today’s scarcity is structural — created by ownership systems, pricing mechanisms, debt pressures, and competitive growth incentives.

    When money becomes the primary lens, access is rationed by purchasing power.

    When physics becomes the lens, access is organized by availability and regeneration.

    Remove the permission-token layer, and civilization must face physical reality directly.

    That may sound restrictive.

    In truth, it may be clarifying.

    Because once we look at what we actually have — energy, land, materials, knowledge, and human capability — it becomes difficult to argue that poverty, homelessness, and ecological collapse are caused by a lack of resources.

    They are caused by how we choose to organize them.

    So perhaps the real question has never been:

    “Do we have enough money?”

    Perhaps the real question is:

    Do we have enough wisdom to use what we already have?

    If this reflection resonates with you, I invite you to explore these ideas further in Waking Up – A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity, where a future civilization has already reorganized itself around physical reality rather than financial abstraction.

    And please share this article if it resonates. The conversation about resources, value, and our collective future is one worth expanding. Don’t you think?