Tag: utopia

  • The Global System

    The Global System

    We live on one planet. One interconnected world, with one atmosphere, one global ocean, and countless ecosystems that together sustain life on Earth.

    Yet human civilization is divided into nearly 200 countries, each with its own political system, government, economic interests, and competing priorities.

    Every few years, people are encouraged to vote for new politicians, new parties, and new governments. Red or blue. Republican or Democrat. Socialist or capitalist. Political campaigns promise change, and sometimes change does happen.

    But while politicians come and go, the fundamental structure of human civilization remains largely the same.

    And the planet doesn’t care who wins the next election.

    Climate change doesn’t recognize national borders. Neither do ocean currents, atmospheric circulation, biodiversity loss, or the consequences of environmental destruction.

    A decision made in one country can affect people on the other side of the world. One government may spend decades reducing pollution, only to see another government reverse its environmental policies after their next election.

     The American government’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement and pursue policies favoring greater fossil fuel production and consumption has consequences extending far beyond the borders of the country.

    The burning of fossil fuels releases greenhouse gases into an atmosphere shared by the entire planet. Policy changes that encourage additional fossil fuel consumption can therefore result in millions of additional tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, contributing to global warming regardless of where those emissions originate.

    The consequences are not confined to American territory. They become part of a global climate problem affecting people, ecosystems, agriculture, water supplies, and future generations throughout the world.

    And yet decisions with such far-reaching consequences can be made by a single national government, according to its own political priorities.

    How can the environmental future of the entire planet depend so heavily on the political decisions of individual countries?

    How can humanity possibly manage a single interconnected planet through hundreds of fragmented and competing political systems?

    Perhaps the problem isn’t primarily who governs each country.

    Perhaps the problem is the way human civilization itself is organized.

    The Planetary System

    Long before humanity invented countries, governments, ownership, trade, or money, there was already a global system in place:

    The planetary system.

    It consists of the atmosphere, oceans, forests, rivers, mountains, soil, climate, weather patterns, and the extraordinary diversity of life that has evolved on Earth.

    These are not separate, independent entities. They are interconnected parts of a vast and dynamic natural system.

    The oceans influence the atmosphere. Forests influence rainfall. Plants absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen. Microorganisms maintain soil fertility. Water continuously circulates through oceans, clouds, rivers, and living organisms.

    Everything is connected.

    And although this system has changed enormously throughout Earth’s history, it has sustained life for billions of years.

    Humanity is part of this system, not separate from it.

    Every breath, every meal, every drop of water, every material used to construct our homes and cities comes from this system and ultimately depends on the functioning of the natural world.

    The planetary system is therefore not merely our environment.

    It is the very foundation of our existence.

    And yet humanity has constructed a civilization that frequently behaves as though this foundation were simply a collection of commodities waiting to be exploited.

    We need a unifying global human system that recognizes and protects the planetary system.

    The Monetary System

    Interestingly, humanity has already established something resembling a global operating system:

    The monetary system.

    Despite all the political divisions, economic ideologies, national borders, and cultural differences, money connects almost every country and community on Earth.

    International trade, banking, investments, production, transportation, and distribution are all coordinated to a remarkable extent through monetary transactions.

    A product manufactured in China may contain materials extracted in Africa, components produced in Europe, and technology developed in America before being sold to someone in Australia.

    The monetary system makes this extraordinary global coordination possible.

    But there is a profound paradox.

    The system that connects humanity economically is also the system that encourages activities capable of destroying the planet and ecosystem  upon which humanity depends.

    The monetary system does not inherently recognize a forest as an essential part of the planetary ecosystem.

    It recognizes timber, land values, commercial opportunities, and potential profits.

    A river becomes a source of economic value. Land becomes property. Minerals become commodities. 

    Of course, money can also be used to protect nature to some degree. Forests can be conserved, pollution can be reduced, and renewable energy can be developed through financial investment.

    But ecological sustainability is not the fundamental organizing principle of the monetary system. It is rather financial profitability, which is a powerful driver of economic decisions, even when profitable activities create environmental damage.

    And this is where the contradiction becomes particularly serious. 

    We try to alleviate the contradiction through rules and regulations, but as long as the monetary system inherently rewards economic expansion, increasing production, growing consumption, and accumulating financial wealth, the planet and ecosystems  will always be at risk.

    The planet has physical limits.

    Natural resources cannot be extracted indefinitely at ever-increasing rates. Ecosystems cannot absorb unlimited amounts of pollution. And economic growth cannot automatically be equated with improvements in human well-being.

    A forest can contribute to economic growth when it is cut down. Pollution can create profitable industries dedicated to cleaning it up. Products can be manufactured, discarded, and replaced long before their useful lives have ended.

    All of this can generate monetary activity.

    But does it generate actual prosperity?

    Does it improve the health of the planet?

    Does it make human civilization more sustainable?

    Not necessarily.

    And beyond environmental destruction, the monetary system can intensify competition over resources, markets, territories, and economic power.

    Ownership becomes something to defend. Resources become something to control. Economic advantage becomes something to fight for.

    Money is certainly not the only cause of human conflict, but the competition surrounding ownership and economic power has played a significant role in conflicts throughout history.

    The irony is extraordinary.

    Humanity has managed to globalize its economy without globalizing its responsibility for the planet.

    The one system that connects nearly everyone on Earth and affects almost every ecosystem is not fundamentally designed to ensure that every being can continue living and thriving on Planet Earth.

    The Fragmented Civilization

    Meanwhile, humanity continues trying to solve global problems through national political systems.

    One country introduces ambitious environmental policies. Another prioritizes industrial expansion. A third withdraws from international commitments after an election.

    And every few years, the political priorities may change again.

    International agreements attempt to coordinate these efforts, but their effectiveness still depends heavily on individual governments and their willingness to cooperate.

    The result is a civilization that recognizes the existence of global problems but continues to manage them largely through fragmented national interests.

    This is not to suggest that elections are meaningless or that political decisions cannot make a difference.

    They certainly can.

    But changing politicians does not necessarily change the underlying principles upon which civilization operates.

    Whether a government calls itself socialist or capitalist, conservative or progressive, it still operates within an international economy dominated by an all encompassing devastating monetary system that perpetuates pollution and inequality. 

    The fundamental question remains largely unanswered:

    How should humanity organize its civilization to ensure that everyone can live prosperous, fulfilling lives on this planet indefinitely?

    That is not merely a national political question.

    It is a planetary question.

    And perhaps it requires an entirely different kind of global system.

    The Humanitary System

    A system in which humanity recognizes its role on Earth as its caretakers, not its exploiters.

    Imagine a global system of operations designed around the reality of the planet itself.

    A system that recognizes the atmosphere, oceans, ecosystems, climate, and natural resources as interconnected parts of the planetary foundation upon which all human life depends.

    A system that does not begin by asking who owns what, how much something costs, or how much profit can be generated.

    Instead, it begins with two fundamental questions:

    1. What do human beings need to live prosperous and fulfilling lives?

    2. And how can those needs be met while maintaining the health and sustainability of the planetary system?

    This is the foundation of what I call the Humanitary System.

    It would be a global operating principle for human civilization, based on stewardship rather than ownership, cooperation rather than economic competition, and the sustainable management of resources rather than the accumulation of monetary wealth.

    Its purpose would not be to replace hundreds of national governments with one enormous centralized authority controlling everyone’s lives.

    Quite the opposite.

    Glocal Communities

    Local communities would retain extensive autonomy, adapting their activities to their own cultures, environments, needs, and circumstances.

    But they would operate within a shared global framework that recognizes the interconnected nature of the planet.

    Climate, biodiversity, resource availability, ecological regeneration, production, transportation, agriculture, energy, and distribution would be understood as parts of one coordinated planetary operation.

    Modern science, global communications, automation, and artificial intelligence could help humanity understand these relationships and coordinate activities accordingly.

    Maximizing Life

    Instead of measuring success primarily through financial growth, civilization could measure its progress through actual human well-being, ecological health, resource availability, and long-term sustainability.

    Instead of treating nature as property to be exploited, humanity could assume responsibility for its stewardship.

    And instead of forcing people to compete financially for access to the necessities of life, resources could be managed and distributed according to genuine needs, availability, and ecological feasibility.

    This would not eliminate every problem, disagreement, or limitation.

    But it would establish a fundamentally different purpose for human civilization.

    Not to maximize financial returns, but to maximize life.

    One Planet One Civilization

    The planetary system already exists.

    It does not need to be invented, negotiated, or approved by any government.

    It is the natural reality within which humanity has evolved and upon which its continued existence depends.

    The monetary system, on the other hand, is a human invention.

    Ownership, prices, financial markets, national economies, and monetary obligations are not laws of nature. They are arrangements humanity has developed over thousands of years.

    And what humanity has invented, humanity can change.

    The purpose is not to eliminate cultural diversity, local independence, or individual freedom.

    It is to recognize that humanity shares one planet and that the organization of human civilization must reflect this fundamental reality.

    The Humanitary System is a proposal for doing precisely that.

    A global system of operations that reflects, respects, and protects the planetary system.

    A civilization that recognizes that the prosperity of humanity cannot be separated from the health of the natural world.

    A civilization in which the resources of the planet are no longer regarded primarily as commodities to be owned and traded, but as the shared foundation of life to be responsibly stewarded.

    An Extraordinary Ability

    Humanity has already demonstrated an extraordinary ability to coordinate activities across the entire planet through the monetary system.

    Imagine applying that same capacity for global coordination to a fundamentally different purpose.

    Not the endless pursuit of financial growth.

    Not the competition for ownership and economic dominance.

    But the flourishing of humanity and the protection of the planet that makes it possible.

    The planetary system sustains life.

    The monetary system sustains economic transactions.

    The Humanitary System would organize human civilization to prosper while sustaining life.

    Humanity does not need to move to a new planet.

    It needs to create a new way of living on the one it already has.

    And perhaps the first step is simply recognizing something that has

     Waking Up in a Different World

    What would life actually be like in a civilization that had replaced the monetary system with a Humanitary system? A world without money, poverty, economic competition, or the constant struggle to earn a living? A world where humanity had finally learned to live in harmony with the planet?

    Imagine falling asleep in today’s world and waking up a hundred years later to discover that everything had changed.

    That is exactly what happens to Benjamin Michaels in the novel, Waking Up: A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity.

    Through his eyes, you can explore a future in which humanity has transformed its civilization beyond anything he could have imagined.

    What would you do if you woke up in such a world?

    Discover the story

  • How to Save Our Planet

    How to Save Our Planet

    Inspired by David Attenborough’s documentary Our Planet and his vision for restoring biodiversity.

    In the documentary Our Planet, David Attenborough delivers a powerful message about the state of our world. Biodiversity is disappearing at an alarming rate, threatening the stability of the ecosystems upon which all life depends.

    But it is not too late if we don’t delay too much more.

    His message is remarkably simple: 

    humanity must reduce its impact on the natural world until everything we do can be sustained indefinitely.

    He presents four major solutions:

    1. Phase out fossil fuels and replace them with renewable energy.
    2. Transform agriculture by producing food more efficiently, reducing meat consumption, and allowing more land to return to nature.
    3. Restore our oceans through international cooperation, sustainable fishing, and marine protected areas where fish populations can recover.
    4. Rewild the planet, restoring forests, wetlands, grasslands, and other natural habitats so biodiversity can flourish again.

    These are not impossible goals. Humanity already possesses all of the knowledge, technology, and resources needed to accomplish them.

    So why haven’t we done it?

    The Invisible Obstacle – The Money Monster

    It should be obvious what we need to do, but most foundational change is effectively stopped by one entity:

    The monetary system. 

    We know what we need to do as we have done it before, but this time more groundbreaking change is needed than ever before in human history.

    The Ozone Layer

    When the world discovered that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were destroying the ozone layer, governments came together and agreed to phase them out through the Montreal Protocol in 1987. 

    It was an extraordinary example of global cooperation, and the ozone layer has been recovering ever since and is still slowly recovering.

    Fossil Fuels

    But even though fossil fuels are even more crucial as CFCs were, replacing them has proven considerably more difficult.

    Why?

    Because fossil fuels are deeply embedded in the global monetary economy. 

    Enormous corporations, investors, governments, and entire industries depend on the continued extraction and sale of oil, coal, and natural gas.

    The financial interests involved are staggering. CFCs made up a relatively small part of our economy and was thus no problem to eliminate. Fossil fuels on the other hand risks collapsing our entire economy if they are removed. But maybe that is exactly what we need. To collapse our current economic system and replace it with a sustainable one.

    Even though renewable energy technologies have advanced enormously, the fossil fuel industry continues to exert political and economic influence to protect its interests. They even influence the green energy revolution by producing such fuels as hydrogen by using the very fossil fuels we need to phase out. Hydrogen ends up being just as polluting as gasoline.

    Industrial Agriculture

    The same problem appears in agriculture. For decades, industrial agriculture has expanded vast monocultures, replacing diverse natural ecosystems with enormous fields of single crops. Forests have been cleared, habitats destroyed, and biodiversity diminished.

    Meanwhile, an enormous commercial industry has developed around pesticides, herbicides, synthetic fertilizers, patented seeds, and GMOs.

    Some of these technologies can serve useful purposes. But in a monetary economy, their development and application are heavily influenced by profitability rather than exclusively by ecological consequences and genuine human needs.

    Marine Ecosystems

    The oceans face similar pressures. Fishing companies must remain profitable, investors expect returns, and entire coastal economies depend on continued commercial activity. Protecting marine ecosystems can therefore become a financial conflict rather than simply a question of responsible stewardship. All of it resulting in over fishing, trying to extract as much profit as possible from the oceans.

     Rewilding Nature

    Land is property. 

    Forests represent timber. 

    Fields represent agricultural income. 

    Natural habitats compete with commercial development.

    Again and again, the same obstacle appears.

    Humanity is trying to save a planet within an economic system that rewards its continuous destruction.

     Overconsumption

    But the problem goes much further than fossil fuels, agriculture, and fishing.

    Consider the extraordinary quantities of resources consumed simply to keep the global monetary economy expanding.

    Products are manufactured, marketed, purchased, discarded, and replaced in an endless and increasing cycle.

    Advertising encourages people to consume things they may never have wanted otherwise. Products are oftentimes deliberately designed with limited lifespans. Perfectly functional goods become obsolete because newer models promise slightly improved features. Or because the old is out of fashion. 

    Enormous quantities of food are wasted while millions of people go hungry.

    And behind all of this lies a fundamental economic requirement: 

    businesses must generate revenue, debts must be serviced, investments must produce returns, and economic growth must continue.

    The monetary system doesn’t merely distribute the things humanity needs. It also creates an enormous additional demand for production and consumption simply to sustain itself and grow.

    Think about that. 

    The monetary system is literally a self-sustaining entity that stays alive by eating our planet. In effect, a monetary monster.

    Every additional product requires materials, energy, transportation, and often packaging. Every unnecessary replacement consumes another portion of Earth’s finite resources.

    And every forest cleared, habitat destroyed, and ecosystem disrupted comes at a cost that cannot always be expressed in money.

    What an extraordinary contradiction.

    Humanity has developed the intelligence to understand the consequences of its activities, yet continues operating an economic system that frequently rewards the very activities threatening its future.

    The Solution Was Bigger Than the Problem

    Are we doomed?

    Not according to this novel: Waking Up – A journey towards a new dawn for humanity.

    Eventually, humanity began to understand something remarkable.

    The problem wasn’t that people lacked the intelligence to save the planet.

    Nor was it that Earth lacked sufficient resources to provide everyone with a fulfilling life.

    The problem was the way civilization had organized its relationship with those resources.

    Stewardship

    For thousands of years, humanity had gradually divided the planet into billions of ownership claims. Land, forests, minerals, water, and virtually everything else had become commodities to be bought, sold, and controlled.

    And the monetary system had become so deeply embedded in human civilization that people struggled to imagine any other way of organizing their lives.

    But ownership, money and trading were human inventions.

    They were not laws of nature.

    And what humanity had invented, humanity could also change.

    Instead of continuing to fight the financial obstacles to environmental restoration one by one, humanity gradually began replacing the system that created those obstacles in the first place.

    A new understanding emerged.

    The Earth was not a collection of commodities waiting to be exploited.

    It was a living, interconnected system upon which every human being and every other living creature depended.

    And humanity’s role was not to own and consume that system, but to become its responsible steward.

     We Finally Saved Our Planet

    So how did we do it?

    We gradually abandoned the outdated monetary system and established a global resource-based economy founded on stewardship, cooperation, and intelligent resource management.

    And everything changed.

    The financial incentives that had obstructed environmental restoration disappeared along with the monetary system itself.

    There were no longer fossil fuel profits to protect, shareholders demanding continuous growth, or agricultural corporations dependent on ever-increasing sales of chemicals and patented products.

    There was no longer any economic necessity to manufacture enormous quantities of unnecessary goods or encourage people to consume much more than they needed.

    Instead, production was organized around actual needs.

    Products were designed to last, to be repaired, upgraded, reused, and eventually recycled. Resources were managed according to their availability, environmental consequences, need and usefulness to society.

    Agriculture was transformed. Vast monocultures were gradually replaced where appropriate by more diverse and regenerative systems. Food production became increasingly efficient, while unnecessary chemical use and food waste were dramatically reduced.

    Humanity could finally concentrate on feeding everyone while restoring the ecosystems upon which food production itself depended.

    The oceans were given the opportunity to recover. Extensive marine protected areas allowed fish populations and entire ecosystems to regenerate. Fishing was coordinated according to ecological knowledge rather than commercial pressure.

    Fossil fuels were progressively replaced with renewable energy, supported by improved storage, efficient infrastructure, and intelligent global coordination.

    And enormous areas of land were returned to nature.

    Forests regenerated. Wetlands were restored. Wildlife corridors reconnected fragmented habitats. Species that had been pushed toward extinction were given the opportunity to recover.

    Of course, the physical work still required enormous effort, knowledge, technology, and cooperation. Technology that we had available through AI, automation and robotics.

    But humanity was no longer fighting against its own economic incentives at every turn.

    The question was no longer whether restoring an ecosystem would be profitable.

    The question was simply whether it was beneficial to life on Earth.

    And when it was, humanity could organize the resources needed to accomplish it.

    A World That Works for All Life

    Perhaps the greatest transformation was not technological or environmental.

    It was a transformation of understanding.

    Humanity finally recognized that its own well-being could never be separated from the well-being of the natural world.

    The forests were not merely sources of timber. The oceans were not merely fishing grounds. Animals were not merely commodities. And the Earth was not merely a warehouse of resources waiting to be converted into money.

    Everything was connected.

    Biodiversity created resilience. Resilience created stability. And stability provided the foundation for a flourishing civilization.

    The extraordinary thing was that humanity did not have to sacrifice its own well-being to restore the planet.

    Quite the opposite.

    By eliminating unnecessary production, waste, competition for profit, and the enormous machinery required to maintain the monetary system, humanity could direct its intelligence and resources toward improving life for everyone.

    A world where nobody had to earn the right to exist.

    A world where technology served life rather than financial accumulation.

    A world where humanity could enjoy the extraordinary abundance of Earth without destroying the natural systems that made that abundance possible.

    David Attenborough reminded humanity that it possessed an extraordinary ability to change the world.

    And that was precisely what humanity finally did.

    But this time, instead of changing the world primarily to serve its own economic ambitions, humanity changed the way it lived so that the entire living planet could flourish.

    We stopped trying to make the Earth work for our economy.

    Instead, we created a true economy that worked for the Earth, for humanity, and for all life.

    And that was how we saved our planet.

    The Bewildered Billionaire

    In 2015, a billionaire suffering from terminal cancer chose cryogenic preservation after death in the hopes of some day waking up in a future where he would be cured and be able to expand his empire.

    Imagine his surprise when he wakes up 100 years later only to find that money, ownership and trading is a thing of the past. And not only that. He encounters both friends and foes on his journey through this strange new world.

    If you want to experience that world too, you can. Just click below.

    Discover the story of Benjamin Michaels, the bewildered billionaire

  • Power to the People

    Power to the People

    “Power to the people!”

    For generations, this famous political slogan has been a rallying cry for democracy, social justice, popular sovereignty, and collective action. It has echoed through demonstrations, political campaigns, and movements demanding freedom and equality.

    And now, with another election approaching in the United States, the struggle for political power continues. But will the people really get anymore power?

    Politicians promise change, better lives, greater freedom, and more power to ordinary people.

    But how much power do the people really have? And will ever get?

    Presidents come and go. Governments change. Political parties replace one another, promising lower taxes, higher wages, cheaper gasoline, more jobs, and greater prosperity.

    And sometimes they deliver on those promises. And sometimes not.

    But one thing remains largely unchanged, regardless of who wins the election.

    The monetary system

    And as long as that system remains in place, the extraordinary concentration of economic power in the hands of a relatively small number of people and institutions remains largely untouched.

    Who Really Holds the Power?

    We like to believe that democracy means the people are in charge. That by electing representatives, we determine the direction of our civilization.

    But consider this.

    A relatively small number of individuals, corporations, financial institutions, and investment organizations control enormous amounts of wealth, land, infrastructure, and productive resources.

    Through this control, they possess an extraordinary influence over the lives of billions of people. And nature itself.

    They don’t necessarily need to become presidents or prime ministers. They don’t even need to agree with one another. Their economic power exists independently of whoever happens to occupy political office.

    And the fascinating part is that this power doesn’t primarily depend on force.

    It depends on the system itself, and humanity’s collective belief that we cannot live without it.

    As long as most people believe that money is absolutely necessary for civilization to function, the monetary system will continue to perpetuate itself. 

    And those who control the greatest concentrations of monetary wealth and resources will continue to possess enormous power.

    No matter who wins the next election.

    No matter how many protests there are.

    The Ultimate Trap

    What makes the monetary system so extraordinarily effective is that it creates the very conditions that convince people of its necessity.

    You need money to buy food. You need money to pay your rent or mortgage. You need money for electricity, water, transportation, healthcare, and almost everything else.

    So naturally, you conclude that we need money to survive.

    And within the system we have created, you are absolutely right.

    You cannot simply decide tomorrow that money is unnecessary and stop paying your bills. Your landlord will still demand rent. Your bank will still expect mortgage payments. The supermarket will still expect money for your groceries.

    This is what makes the monetary system such an ingenious, self-perpetuating mechanism.

    We need money because the system requires money. And because we need money, we believe the system itself is necessary.

    The system becomes its own proof of necessity.

    And the trap extends far beyond everyday transactions.

    Imagine deciding to become completely self-sufficient. You acquire a piece of land, build a modest home, grow your own food, generate your own electricity, and collect your own water.

    You no longer need an employer. You hardly need to buy anything.

    Yet you may still have to pay property taxes, permits, fees, and other legally required expenses.

    Even though you provide for virtually all your physical needs, you will still be legally required to obtain money.

    The monetary system is not merely embedded in our economy. It is embedded in our laws, regulations, institutions, and, perhaps most importantly, our minds.

    We have created a civilization in which it can be extraordinarily difficult to live outside the monetary system, even when we have no practical need for most of its services.

    And because virtually everyone must participate, virtually everyone helps perpetuate it.

    Humanity has created the ultimate trap for itself.

    The Illusion of Freedom

    Most people want to be free.

    And when politicians promise greater freedom, people listen.

    Perhaps a new president promises cheaper gasoline. Another promises lower taxes. Someone else promises higher wages or more affordable housing.

    These improvements might seem good and can certainly make people’s lives easier.

    But do they fundamentally change the relationship between people and the monetary system?

    Not really.

    You might have a little more money left at the end of the month, but you still have to earn money to survive.

    You still have to pay your bills. You still have to compete for income. You still have to fulfill your financial obligations.

    You may have gained a little more freedom within the system, but you haven’t become free from the system itself.

    And that raises a fundamental question.

    How free are you when your ability to live depends on obtaining money from a system controlled disproportionately by others?

    The truth is that the people have no power as long as we are trapped in the system of money.

    A billionaire and a person struggling to pay rent may enjoy the same formal democratic rights, but their practical freedom to choose how to live is vastly different.

    One can travel, create, explore, and pursue almost any interest without worrying about survival.

    The other may spend most of their waking hours simply trying to earn enough money to remain housed and fed.

    Is that really power to the people?

    Or is it power to those who possess the money?

    The Power of Belief

    Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of this entire arrangement is that most people don’t even recognize it as an arrangement.

    Money has become so thoroughly integrated into civilization that it appears to be part of reality itself.

    People say they must earn a living.

    Think about that expression.

    Earn a living.

    As though the right to live on this planet were something that had to be earned!

    Yet the physical foundations of life have nothing to do with money.

    Food grows from soil, water, sunlight, and biological processes.

    Houses are built from materials, energy, knowledge, and human effort.

    Electricity comes from physical energy sources.

    Healthcare depends on knowledge, equipment, medicines, and people.

    None of these things fundamentally requires money to exist.

    Money is merely the mechanism humanity currently uses to organize much of their production, distribution, and access.

    A Human Invention

    And because we have organized civilization this way, we have come to believe that the mechanism itself is indispensable.

    But it isn’t a law of nature.

    It is a human invention.

    And human inventions can be changed.

    Power Without Domination

    Now, I am not suggesting that every form of currency or exchange must necessarily disappear.

    Perhaps people in a future civilization will still enjoy trading things. Perhaps some communities will use time credits or other voluntary systems for coordinating contributions and activities.

    There is nothing inherently wrong with that, even though everything is freely available.

    The crucial question is whether these arrangements allow some people to accumulate vast power over the lives of others.

    Accumulated Wealth

    In our present monetary system, accumulated wealth can be transformed into ownership of land, housing, industries, infrastructure, and essential resources.

    Ownership can then generate additional wealth, which can purchase even more ownership.

    And so the concentration of power continues.

    What if humanity designed a civilization where that mechanism no longer existed?

    Where nobody could accumulate control over the resources necessary for everyone else’s survival?

    Where the purpose of organizing resources was to satisfy human needs and preserve the natural world, rather than to continually expand financial wealth?

    This is the foundation of the global resource-based economy I envision.

    A civilization based on stewardship rather than exclusive ownership, cooperation rather than compulsory competition, and access rather than purchasing power.

    A world in which resources are managed intelligently for the benefit of humanity and the rest of nature.

    A world where people can contribute according to their interests and abilities without having to earn the right to exist.

    And most importantly, a world where nobody can use accumulated monetary wealth to exercise extraordinary power over billions of other people. Because wealth in that system cannot be accumulated with only a few people. Both because all resources are distributed according to need instead of purchasing power, and because “wealth” has a completely different meaning. Instead of personal accumulation of material wealth it can mean a wealth of time, resources and experiences for everyone.

    The Real Meaning of Power to the People

    The transformation I envision is not about taking power away from one wealthy group and handing it to another.

    Nor is it about replacing elected governments with some new authority controlling everything.

    That would simply recreate the same fundamental problem under a different name.

    It is about distributing the ability to participate in civilization so broadly that nobody needs to possess disproportionate power over anybody else.

    Imagine a World

    Imagine a world where access to food, housing, healthcare, education, transportation, energy, and the other necessities of life is no longer dependent on your financial circumstances.

    Where people can participate directly in decisions affecting their communities.

    Where knowledge, technology, automation, and intelligent resource management are used to improve life for everyone.

    Where nobody needs to become a billionaire to enjoy freedom, security, and opportunity.

    And where the extraordinary resources of this planet are understood as a shared foundation of life rather than commodities to be accumulated and controlled.

    Such a civilization would still need coordination, agreements, responsibilities, and ways to resolve disagreements.

    But it would no longer need to organize human survival around the accumulation and circulation of money.

    And perhaps most importantly, it would no longer need to concentrate economic power in a few hands.

    The Revolution of Understanding

    Of course, such a transformation cannot happen simply because someone declares the monetary system obsolete.

    People have real obligations today. They need to pay their bills, feed their families, and maintain their homes.

    The trap is real because we have made it real.

    But its necessity is not permanent.

    And that is why I believe the most important transformation must begin with understanding.

    Understanding that money is not a natural resource.

    Understanding that ownership is a human arrangement, not an immutable law of the universe.

    Understanding that humanity already possesses extraordinary knowledge, technology, productive capacity, and the ability to cooperate on a global scale.

    And understanding that the purpose of civilization should be to support life, and not to perpetuate an economic mechanism.

    As this understanding spreads, practical alternatives can begin to develop. Communities can experiment with shared resources, voluntary stewardship, cooperative production, and new ways of organizing access to what people need.

    Gradually, the necessity of money could diminish as these alternatives become more capable of meeting human needs.

    The monetary system would not need to be overthrown by force.

    It could eventually become obsolete because humanity had learned to organize civilization in a better way.

    Elections

    And that brings me back to the approaching elections.

    People will vote. Politicians will win and lose. Promises will be made, and some will be fulfilled. Others not.

    The monetary machinery will most likely continue trundling along.

    Meanwhile, here I am, sitting on the sidelines, writing articles and stories, trying to give that enormous machinery a little kick in the chin.

    Perhaps it doesn’t even notice.

    The Machine

    But I am not really trying to fight the machinery.

    I am trying to help people recognize that it is a machine humanity created, and that humanity is perfectly capable of creating something different.

    Because genuine power to the people is not about giving people a little more purchasing power, or allowing them to choose who supposedly operates the monetary machinery.

    In fact, choosing who operates that machinery is hardly an option at all. Politicians may believe they are operating it, and the people who elect them may believe so too. But the real operator is largely invisible.

    It is our collective belief in the necessity of the monetary machine itself.

    Those who possess the greatest concentrations of wealth and power within the system may understand how to use it to their advantage. But that doesn’t necessarily make them evil or part of some grand conspiracy. They are just as conditioned by the monetary mindset as everyone else. They too have grown up believing that this is simply how civilization works.

    And so they do what seems natural and necessary to protect their wealth, their interests, and the system that sustains them.

    The extraordinary irony is that even those who appear to control the monetary machinery are themselves controlled by the belief that the machinery must continue running.

    And as long as that belief prevails, the machinery will keep running, regardless of who wins the next election.

    Genuine power is about creating a civilization in which nobody needs monetary power over anybody else.

    And this is exactly what we did

    We gradually replaced the monetary system with a global resource-based economy, where the resources of our planet are managed through stewardship and cooperation rather than ownership and monetary exchange.

    We stopped organizing civilization around the accumulation of wealth and began organizing it around the needs of humanity and the natural world.

    And something extraordinary happened.

    The enormous concentration of economic power that had dominated human civilization for centuries simply lost its foundation. Nobody could accumulate billions and use that wealth to control the resources upon which others depended.

    People no longer have to earn the right to live. They are free to contribute, create, explore, learn, and enjoy life without the constant pressure of financial obligations.

    Of course, civilization still needs coordination, decisions, and responsibilities. But these are no longer dictated by the need to generate profits or protect accumulated monetary wealth.

    And perhaps the greatest revelation was that nobody had actually lost anything essential when the monetary system disappeared.

    The land was still there. The food was still growing. The buildings, technology, knowledge, and resources were still available.

    Only the artificial barriers that had prevented humanity from sharing them intelligently had been removed.

    We had finally understood that power was never something that needed to be concentrated in the hands of a few.

    And for the first time in human history, power to the people was no longer a political slogan.

    It is now a reality.

    And our new friend the bewildered billionaire Benjamin Michaels is starting to get used to it as well. And we thank him for stopping a despot we shouldn’t have awakened from trying to ruin everything.

    Discover the story

  • Do You Really Want to See Change?

    Do You Really Want to See Change?

    I have a confession to make.

    I want millions of people to read my novel Waking Up: A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity. I want it to reach mainstream media, become the subject of discussions and debates around the world, and hopefully even become a major motion picture with the message eventually  reaching hundreds of millions of people.

    That might sound like hubris. Or perhaps you think I simply want to sell a lot of books.

    Probably a little bit of both.

    Yes, I would love to sell a lot of books. I’m not going to pretend otherwise.

    But there is something far more important behind my ambition.

    I genuinely, honestly, and deeply want to see change in this world.

    Not just another political reform. Not another government promising to fix what the previous government failed to fix. Not just another redistribution of wealth that leaves the detrimental structures of civilization untouched.

    I want humanity to begin questioning the very foundations upon which our civilization has been built.

    Because I truly believe that many of our greatest problems have a common denominator: 

    a system based on money, trading, and ownership of the resources upon which everyone depends.

    And I believe there is another way.

    What If We Could Actually Do This?

    Imagine a world where nobody has to worry about having enough money to survive. Where food, housing, healthcare, education, transportation, and everything else people need are available through cooperation and intelligent resource management assisted by AI.

    Imagine a world where ownership has been replaced by stewardship. Where the resources of our planet are no longer treated primarily as commodities to be bought, sold, accumulated, and exploited, but as a shared inheritance to be cared for and managed for the benefit of everyone.

    Imagine a civilization where advanced technology, artificial intelligence, robotics, and automation are used to liberate humanity from unnecessary labor rather than simply to increase profits for those who own the technology.

    A world where people are free to contribute according to their interests, talents, and passions, rather than being forced to sell their time simply to have a life.

    A world where humanity cooperates to create abundance, restore nature, eliminate poverty, and make life on Earth as wonderful as possible for everyone.

    Does that sound impossible?

    Perhaps it does.

    But what if it isn’t?

    the greatest obstacle

    What if the greatest obstacle isn’t a lack of resources, technology, or intelligence, but our inability to imagine organizing civilization differently?

    What if money, trading, and ownership are the very culprits of our problems and not indispensable foundations of civilization, but rather human inventions that have served their purposes and are now increasingly standing in the way of what humanity could become?

    What if we could actually create a world that works for everyone?

    A Novel, Not a Manifesto

    This is why I wrote Waking Up.

    Not as a political manifesto. Not as an economic textbook. And certainly not as a detailed blueprint for a new civilization.

    It’s a novel.

    A story about the bewildered billionaire Benjamin Michaels, a contemporary man who wakes up a hundred years into the future and discovers that humanity has created a civilization completely beyond his imagination.

    Money has disappeared. Trading has become obsolete. Ownership has been replaced by stewardship. Humanity has learned to organize its resources cooperatively, guided by advanced artificial intelligence and a fundamentally different understanding of what civilization is supposed to accomplish.

    Through Benjamin’s eyes, readers discover this world gradually, along with its history, its technologies, its relationships, its challenges, and its extraordinary possibilities.

    And, of course, not everyone is happy with the new world. There  is an antagonist who would prefer to return to the old system.

    Because Waking Up is, first and foremost, a story.

    But behind that story is an invitation.

    An invitation to imagine something different.

    I don’t expect readers to agree with everything in the book. I don’t expect them to believe that every technological or social development I describe will become reality.

    What I hope is that, somewhere along the journey, readers might begin to think:

    Wait a minute. This could actually work.

    And perhaps, by the time they finish the book, they might find themselves thinking:

    This is the world I want to live in. This is the future I want for my children.

    That is the seed I want to plant.

    When an Idea Takes Root

    I believe true and lasting change begins with an idea.

    And mind you, this is not my idea. I didn’t wake up one morning with a sudden eureka moment, realizing that money, trading, and ownership were at the root of so many of humanity’s problems. No, throughout my life, I had a growing feeling that something was fundamentally wrong with the way our civilization was organized. I felt that humanity could do so much better, but I couldn’t quite see how. That changed in 2008, when I discovered The Venus Project and its vision of a global resource-based economy. Suddenly, so many things fell into place. It gave shape to something I had felt for years but hadn’t been able to articulate. That discovery eventually inspired me to write Waking Up, a novel that I now genuinely believe could help change the world if enough people read it. Not because I have invented some revolutionary new idea, but because I hope to help an existing idea take root in the minds and hearts of humanity.

    Not just any idea, but an idea that makes sense to people. An idea that offers a genuinely desirable alternative to something they previously considered impossible.

    At first, a world without money, trading, and ownership probably seem absurd.

    People might laugh at the suggestion.

    They might say that human nature makes it impossible. That people are too selfish. That nobody would contribute without financial incentives. That civilization would collapse without prices, wages, profits, and ownership.

    But then perhaps they read a story that makes them reconsider.

    Perhaps they begin to see how such a civilization might function.

    And suddenly, the impossible becomes a question.

    Could this actually work?

    That question is enormously important.

    Because once people begin asking whether something is possible, they can start exploring how to make it possible.

    And when enough people begin to believe that a different civilization is not only possible but desirable, something extraordinary can happen.

    The idea Takes root

    After all, new ideas often seem to pass through three stages, as described in a famous saying commonly attributed to the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer:

    1. First, they are ridiculed as absurd or impossible.
    2. Then, as they gain traction and begin challenging established beliefs, they face fierce opposition from those defending the status quo.
    3. Finally, they become accepted as self-evident, as though everyone had known the truth all along. The attribution to Schopenhauer is disputed, but the observation is compelling. And perhaps the idea of a world without money, trading, and ownership is following a similar path.

    It spreads from person to person. From conversations between friends to discussions in families, schools, universities, workplaces, and communities.

    Scientists begin considering the technological possibilities. Engineers begin exploring practical solutions.

    Economists question old assumptions. Communities experiment with new forms of cooperation. Artificial intelligence helps people develop and evaluate ideas that might previously have been beyond their reach.

    And eventually, the conversation changes.

    Instead of asking why a different world cannot work, people begin asking:

    How can we get from here to there?

    That is when real change begins.

    Revolution by Force

    There is, however, something absolutely fundamental about how this transformation must happen.

    It cannot be imposed from above.

    Humanity has already experienced revolutions in which one ruling elite was overthrown, only to be replaced by another.

    Consider the Russian Revolution more than a hundred years ago.

    It emerged from profound dissatisfaction with inequality, exploitation, and the concentration of power. Many of those who supported it genuinely believed they were helping create a fairer society.

    But the Soviet system that followed eventually developed its own powerful ruling elite, with enormous authority concentrated in the hands of relatively few people.

    Whatever the original intentions, the promised liberation did not unfold as many had hoped.

    I don’t want humanity to repeat that mistake.

    I don’t want a new revolutionary leadership taking power and deciding how everyone else should live.

    I don’t want another ideology imposed through coercion, fear, or violence.

    And I certainly don’t want a new elite claiming ownership of a world that is supposed to be based on sharing and stewardship.

    That would defeat the entire purpose.

    We cannot force humanity into a better world. We must inspire humanity to want to create one together.

    And that is precisely why the idea must spread as far and wide as possible.

    It must take deep roots in the minds and hearts of humanity, not merely among a handful of intellectuals, politicians, or visionaries.

    It must become something people understand, believe in, and genuinely want.

    Not because somebody has told them what to think, but because they have considered the possibilities for themselves.

    Only then can a transformation of this magnitude become something fundamentally different from the revolutions of the past.

    Not a struggle for control of a new system.

    But a collective decision to create something better.

    A Transformation of Human Understanding

    Ultimately, what I envision is not merely an economic transformation.

    It is a transformation of human understanding itself.

    For thousands of years, humanity has organized much of its civilization around competition for resources, territorial control, ownership, trading, and the accumulation of wealth.

    These arrangements have become so deeply embedded in our thinking that many people regard them as natural and unavoidable.

    But they are not laws of nature.

    They are human arrangements based on ideas.

    Unfortunately these ideas has led to a lot of suffering.

    But human arrangements can change based on new ideas.

    What if people began to understand that the purpose of civilization is not to generate profits, accumulate wealth, or maintain economic growth for its own sake?

    What if the purpose of civilization were simply to make life as good as possible for everyone, while caring for the planet that makes life possible?

    That would change the questions humanity asks.

    Instead of asking whether there is enough money to feed everyone, we would ask whether there is enough food, land, water, technology, and productive capacity.

    Instead of asking whether healthcare is profitable, we would ask how to make the best possible healthcare available to everyone.

    Instead of asking how many jobs automation might eliminate, we would ask how much unnecessary labor it could relieve humanity of.

    Instead of asking who can afford a home, we would ask how to provide good homes for everyone who needs one.

    And instead of asking how to compete more effectively against other nations, we could begin asking how to cooperate more effectively across the entire planet.

    The possibilities are enormous.

    But to recognize them, we first have to change how we think.

    The Intelligence Within 

    I don’t claim to have all the answers.

    Far from it.

    I believe the answers are already embedded in humanity itself.

    In billions of minds. In our accumulated knowledge, our scientific discoveries, our creativity, our compassion, our curiosity, and our extraordinary ability to solve problems together.

    No single person could possibly design an entirely new civilization.

    Nor should anyone attempt to dictate one.

    What I envision would have to emerge through collaboration, communication, experimentation, and the collective intelligence of humanity.

    And I believe this requires something more than the short-sighted intelligence of the ego.

    The ego tends to ask: What’s in it for me? How can I win? How can I gain more power, wealth, or control?

    That way of thinking has influenced human civilization for a very long time.

    Another Kind of Intelligence

    But there is another kind of intelligence available to us.

    An intelligence rooted in love, understanding, empathy, curiosity, and the recognition that the well-being of others matters just as much as our own.

    An intelligence that asks:

    What can we create together?

    How can we make life better for everyone?

    How can we care for this extraordinary planet and all the beings living upon it?

    I believe this deeper intelligence exists within every human being.

    And perhaps the greatest challenge facing humanity is not developing more powerful technology, but learning to use our intelligence and technology together, guided by wisdom rather than fear, competition, and the desire for control.

    That is how I envision real and lasting change.

    Not through domination.

    Not through violence.

    But through love, understanding, curiosity, and cooperation.

    All the Answers

    I Don’t Have All the Answers. Humanity Does.

    This is also why I don’t consider Waking Up a finished proposal for how civilization should function.

    It’s a starting point. An inspiration. 

    A glimpse of a possible future

    I have spent many years thinking about these ideas, and I have tried to imagine what that civilization based on sharing, stewardship, and intelligent resource management might look like.

    But I am only one person.

    There are countless questions I haven’t answered. Countless challenges I haven’t considered. Countless solutions that other people might discover.

    And that’s exactly the point.

    The purpose of the book is not to provide every answer.

    It is to inspire people to start asking different questions.

    Because once enough people genuinely want to create a world that works for everyone, humanity can begin directing its collective intelligence toward that goal.

    Not following one person’s blueprint.

    Not obeying a new political elite.

    But collaborating to discover the best ways forward.

    Different communities might experiment with different approaches. Some ideas would work. Others would fail and need to be reconsidered. New technologies would open new possibilities. New insights would emerge.

    And gradually, through learning and cooperation, something extraordinary might take shape.

    What humanity needs is an idea powerful enough to inspire people to start finding those answers together.

    Why I’m Asking You to Share This

    So now, perhaps you understand why I want my book to reach as many people as possible.

    Why I hope it will attract the attention of mainstream media.

    Why I would love to see it become a major motion picture, reaching audiences around the world.

    And why I keep asking people to share my articles and recommend Waking Up to their friends.

    Yes, I want to sell books.

    Of course I do.

    But if selling books were my primary motivation, I should probably have written something entirely different.

    I wrote Waking Up because I genuinely believe humanity can create a much better world than the one we have today.

    A world without poverty, without economic exploitation, without the constant struggle for money, and without the enormous waste of human potential and resources that our current arrangements produce.

    A world where people are free to live meaningful lives, contribute according to their interests and abilities, and enjoy the extraordinary possibilities that science, technology, and human cooperation can offer.

    Our Shared Home

    A world where humanity finally begins treating planet Earth as a shared home rather than a collection of territories and resources to be owned, exploited, and fought over.

    And I believe the first step toward such a world is for enough people to begin imagining it.

    To genuinely want it.

    To believe that it might be possible.

    Because when an idea takes root deeply enough in humanity, it can become much more powerful than any individual who first expressed it.

    Think of ideas like democracy, the abolition of slavery, women’s rights, and universal human rights. All challenged deeply rooted beliefs about how society should function. They spread, inspired people, and gradually transformed the world. What once seemed impossible eventually became something billions of people considered self-evident.

    It can become a shared vision.

    And a shared vision will inspire collective action.

    That is why I am asking you to help spread the word.

    Not because I want everyone to agree with me.

    Not because I want people to follow me.

    But because I want the idea to grow beyond me, beyond my book, and beyond anything I could possibly accomplish on my own.

    I want people to question it, challenge it, improve it, and make it their own.

    I want it to take root so deeply and spread so widely that no individual, organization, government, or elite can ever claim ownership of it.

    Because the future of humanity should belong to humanity.

    Do You Really Want to See Change?

    If so, imagine a fundamental transformation of civilization itself.

    Imagine humanity finally realizing that it doesn’t have to continue organizing life around competition, trading, ownership, and  money for survival.

    Imagine billions of people beginning to ask how to create a world that truly works for everyone.

    And imagine what might happen when they start collaborating to make it real.

    I don’t know exactly how that future will unfold.

    Nobody does.

    But I believe it can begin with something remarkably simple.

    An idea.

    An idea that inspires people.

    An idea that people believe in.

    An idea that takes root.

    An idea who’s time has come.

    Benjamin Michaels wakes up to a new world. I want humanity to wake up to the possibility of creating one.

    That is why I wrote Waking Up.

    And that is why, if you’ve read the book and enjoyed it, I hope you’ll recommend it to others. And if this article resonates with you, I hope you will share it too.

    I thank you from the depth of my heart.

    Not merely to help me sell more books.

    But to help an idea take root in the world.

    Discover the story

  • Universal High Income – And Why It Will Not Work

    Universal High Income – And Why It Will Not Work

    You cannot create abundance by creating and distributing  more money. You can only create abundance by producing more of what people actually need. And distribute that.

    Elon Musk has repeatedly predicted a future in which artificial intelligence, robotics, and automation will make human labor largely unnecessary. He has even suggested that money itself may eventually become irrelevant.

    At the same time, he has introduced the idea of Universal High Income (UHI), which is a high basic income where everyone receives enough money to enjoy a high standard of living, regardless of whether they work on not.

    It sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?

    Machines do all the work, everyone receives a generous income, and humanity is finally liberated from the necessity of working for a living.

    But there is a fundamental problem with this vision.

    Universal High Income attempts to create universal abundance through a monetary system that cannot guarantee it.

    And the reasons are surprisingly simple.

    1. Resources – Money Does Not Create Resources

    Imagine that tomorrow morning, everyone on Earth wakes up to discover that one million euros has been deposited into their bank account.

    Wonderful! Everyone is suddenly a millionaire!

    But what has actually changed?

    Has a single additional house been built? Has one extra tomato been grown? Has another hospital opened? Has more electricity been generated? Are there suddenly more resources available to humanity?

    No.

    The world contains exactly the same physical resources and productive capacity as it did yesterday.

    The only difference is that everyone now has much more money with which to compete for those resources.

    Money is not food. Money is not housing. Money is not energy. Money is simply a means of gaining access to these things within the monetary system.

    Of course, additional purchasing power can stimulate production where unused capacity exists. But production still requires actual resources, energy, infrastructure, and technology.

    And if those resources are already being used to their limits, distributing more money will not magically create more of them.

    You cannot print abundance. You have to produce it.

    This is the first and most fundamental problem with Universal High Income.

    2. Prices – Supply and Demand Will Absorb the Money

    The second problem is built into the monetary system itself.

    Supply and demand.

    When more people have more money to spend, demand increases. And when demand increases faster than supply, prices tend to rise.

    Imagine a city with 10,000 available apartments and 100,000 people who would like to live in them.

    Now imagine everyone suddenly receives €10,000 per month through Universal High Income.

    Does that create another 90,000 apartments?

    Of course not.

    Instead, many more people can now afford to compete for the same limited number of apartments.

    Landlords and property owners discover that tenants can pay considerably more. Rents rise. Property prices rise.

    An apartment that previously rented for €1,000 per month might eventually cost €5,000 or more.

    And suddenly, that wonderful €10,000 monthly income doesn’t seem quite so wonderful anymore. Because prices have not only gone up on rent, but everything. When everyone suddenly have more money prices will automatically go up. That’s how our monetary system works. 

    The same principle applies to food, energy, water, land, and other necessities whenever supply cannot keep up with demand.

    Even if automation makes televisions, computers, clothing, and countless manufactured products cheaper, it does not automatically make desirable land, housing, or every essential resource equally abundant.

    And what happens when governments increase UHI to compensate for rising prices?

    More purchasing power enters the market, potentially driving prices even higher.

    Higher incomes. Higher demand. Higher prices. Another increase in income.

    Standard of Living

    The cycle can continue without necessarily improving people’s actual standard of living.

    And there is another important consideration. What constitutes a high standard of living is highly subjective.

    Some people may feel they need a luxurious mansion, several expensive cars, and countless possessions to be satisfied with their lives, while others may be perfectly happy living in a modest three-bedroom apartment with everything they need.

    There is no universal definition of how much is enough.

    And perhaps this points to something even more fundamental. Maybe humanity needs to reconsider not only its economic system, but also what it values, what it considers prosperity, and what actually makes people happy.

    Because creating a world of abundance should not mean encouraging everyone to consume as much as possible. It should mean creating a world where everyone has the opportunity to live a fulfilling life according to their own needs, interests, and preferences, while respecting the needs of others and the limits of our planet.

    Of course, prices will not rise equally everywhere. Where production can expand rapidly enough, additional supply can satisfy increased demand without major price increases.

    But this only reinforces the central point.

    It is the availability of actual goods and resources, not the amount of money people receive, that ultimately determines their material standard of living.

    Universal High Income does not guarantee universal high purchasing power.

    And a world full of millionaires is not necessarily a world full of abundance.

    3. Eroded taxes – Who Will Pay for the Universal High Income?

    There is another problem that becomes particularly interesting when considering the future Musk describes.

    Where will the money come from?

    Today, governments collect taxes from employment income, business profits, consumption, property, and other economic activities.

    But what happens when AI and robotics replace an enormous proportion of human employment?

    If millions or billions of people no longer receive wages, governments will lose a substantial part of their traditional income-tax and payroll-tax revenues.

    At the very moment when they would need enormous amounts of money to finance Universal High Income, one of their major sources of revenue could be disappearing.

    Of course, governments could tax the corporations that own the robots and automated factories instead.

    But consider what that means.

    The corporations produce the goods and services. People receive money from the government to purchase those same goods and services. The corporations receive that money, and the government then taxes the corporations to finance the next round of payments.

    Money circulates from governments to consumers, from consumers to corporations, and from corporations back to governments.

    Such a system is not mathematically impossible. Governments already redistribute money through taxation and public spending.

    But why preserve this elaborate financial arrangement if the machines are already capable of producing what everyone needs?

    Why not concentrate on making the actual goods and services available instead?

    And there is another important question.

    Who owns those machines?

    4. The Owners Will Still Own Everything

    Universal High Income does not fundamentally change the ownership structure of the monetary system.

    Far from it. If anything, it reenforces it.

    Land still belongs to landowners. Factories still belong to corporations. Automated production systems still belong to whoever owns them.

    And everyone else still needs money to access what those owners control.

    As long as there are still owners there will be rich and poor.

    Imagine a future in which millions of humanoid robots produce food, construct buildings, manufacture products, and provide services.

    Human labor has become largely unnecessary.

    But if the robots, factories, land, and resources remain concentrated in relatively few hands, everyone else remains dependent on purchasing access to their output.

    Universal High Income could then become a mechanism for distributing purchasing power to the population while preserving the existing concentration of productive ownership.

    The owners receive money from consumers, while consumers depend on governments to provide that money.

    Even if everyone receives a generous income, the underlying relationship remains.

    Some own the productive resources. Others pay to access them.

    The technology has changed, but the economic structure has not.

    Why would we want such a world?

    Where a tiny elite owns most everything while the rest are dependent on government payouts?

    And this brings us to an interesting contradiction in Musk’s vision.

    5. Elon Musk’s Contradiction

    Elon Musk is working tirelessly to develop technologies that could eventually eliminate the necessity for much of human labor.

    Through artificial intelligence, robotics, and automation, he is helping create the technological foundation for a world in which machines could perform an extraordinary proportion of the tasks necessary to sustain human civilization.

    He has also suggested that money may eventually become irrelevant.

    Yet he continues to describe the future in terms of Universal High Income.

    But why?

    If AI and robotics can produce practically everything humanity needs, why should everyone need a high income to purchase those things?

    If money is becoming irrelevant, why introduce another mechanism that makes everyone dependent on receiving it?

    Why keep money at all??

    And perhaps most importantly, why is the discussion so focused on how much money people might receive rather than who will own and control the automated production systems?

    As long as there are owners of the world’s resources and productive systems there will always be an imbalance in our world. An imbalance that historically has led to countless conflicts and wars.

    Sensational Predictions

    I sometimes wonder whether all these sensational predictions about Universal High Income, the end of work, and the disappearance of money are mostly meant to distract from the much more fundamental questions:

    Who will own the robots and factories? Who will control the resources? Who will decide what gets produced? And who will benefit from the extraordinary abundance these technologies could make possible?

    I cannot know Musk’s true intentions. But I would certainly like to hear him address these questions more directly.

    Because the future of humanity is not fundamentally about how much money everyone will receive.

    It is about what humanity can produce sustainably, how those resources are managed, and whether everyone can benefit.

    6. The Real Opportunity of AI and Robotics

    Here is where the discussion becomes truly exciting.

    For most of human history, producing the necessities of life has required enormous amounts of human labor.

    People had to cultivate fields, build houses, manufacture products, transport goods, and perform countless other tasks.

    The monetary system developed around this world of human labor, exchange, ownership, and scarcity.

    But what happens when technology changes the fundamental conditions?

    What happens when automated systems can grow food, construct buildings, manufacture goods, transport resources, maintain infrastructure, and perform most of the work necessary to sustain civilization?

    For the first time in history, humanity may be approaching the technological capacity to provide an abundant standard of living for everyone without requiring everyone to work for it.

    That is an extraordinary opportunity.

    But instead of asking how to distribute enough money for everyone to purchase this abundance, shouldn’t the question be how to organize the production and distribution of the abundance itself?

    We have established that more money does not lead to more resources.

    The Real Questions

    These are the real questions we must ask:

    What resources are available?

    How can we optimize them?

    What does everyone need?

    How much can be produced sustainably?

    How can technology coordinate production and distribution so that everyone’s needs can be met while preserving the planet’s ecosystems?

    These are questions AI could help humanity answer.

    And they lead directly toward a resource-based economy.

    7. From Universal High Income to Universal High Living Standards

    Imagine a world where housing, food, energy, transportation, healthcare, education, and communication are available to everyone without monetary transactions.

    Not because everything is infinitely abundant, but because humanity has organized its resources and productive capacity around meeting people’s needs rather than generating financial returns.

    In such a world, AI and robotics would continuously monitor available resources, production capacity, environmental conditions, and actual demand.

    Production could be adjusted according to what people need and what the planet can sustainably provide.

    Resources that remain scarce would still require responsible allocation. Technology cannot create unlimited land, water, or raw materials. But it can help optimize and maximize what we have.

    But scarcity would no longer automatically mean that those with the most money receive the most.

    Instead of ownership, humanity could develop a system of stewardship, where the Earth’s resources are managed for the benefit of everyone. 

    We would be stewards of Earth instead of owners.

    And instead of measuring prosperity through income, it could be measured through actual living standards, access to necessities, personal freedom, health, well-being, and environmental sustainability.

    Nobody would need to become a millionaire to live an abundant life.

    Nobody would need to receive Universal High Income to access the products of automated production.

    The objective would no longer be universal financial wealth.

    It would be universal real wealth.

    8. Why Preserve the Bottleneck?

    Money is an intermediary bottleneck between human needs and the resources required to satisfy them.

    Today, someone can be hungry while food is available, homeless while houses stand empty, or unable to obtain medical treatment even though the necessary technology and expertise exist.

    Not necessarily because the resources are unavailable, but because access to them depends on money.

    Universal High Income attempts to address this problem by giving everyone more money.

    But it leaves the bottleneck in place.

    It leaves prices in place.

    It leaves competition for purchasing power in place.

    And it leaves the concentration of ownership completely untouched.

    If AI and robotics eventually provide humanity with the productive capacity to satisfy everyone’s needs, why should access to that production continue to depend on a financial mechanism?

    Why should people need money to obtain what society is technologically capable of providing?

    The question is no longer simply how to make everyone rich.

    It is how to create a world in which everyone can live richly, regardless of money.

    Conclusion: 

    Abundance Is Not a Number in a Bank Account

    Universal High Income is an understandable response to a future in which AI and robotics may eliminate enormous amounts of human employment.

    And as a transitional measure, income guarantees could help protect people from poverty and economic disruption in the transition to a world of real wealth.

    You cannot print money and think it is abundance.

    You have to produce it. And once you can produce it for everyone, why should anyone need money to access it?

    This is the future I explore in the novel Waking Up: A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity, where a the bewildered billionaire Benjamin Michaels  awakens a century from now to discover that humanity has moved beyond money, trade, and ownership toward a cooperative, resource-based civilization.

    Discover the story

  • We Have Finally Agreed

    We Have Finally Agreed

    For thousands of years, humanity fought over the planet we inhabit.

    Kings, emperors, dictators, despots and governments tried to conquer as much territory as possible. Nations formed alliances, broke alliances, invaded their neighbors, defended their borders, and sacrificed millions of lives in the pursuit of power, territory, resources, and security.

    And what did we achieve?

    War after war after war. Death after death. Destruction after destruction.

    We built civilizations, destroyed them, and built them again. We conquered territories, lost them, and fought to regain them. We drew borders across the planet, moved them through violence, and defended them with ever more sophisticated weapons.

    And for a very long time, we believed this was simply the way the world had to be.

    Until, at long last, we agreed.

    Enough was enough.

    The Fatigue of War

    Looking back at the early twenty-first century, the pattern was painfully familiar.

    Russia and Ukraine. Israel and Palestine. And countless other conflicts, large and small, across the planet.

    People killing people. Homes destroyed. Families torn apart. Children growing up without parents. Parents burying their children. Millions displaced, injured, traumatized, or permanently disabled.

    And for what?

    Territory? Resources? Political power? National pride? Security?

    War had become so familiar that many people regarded it as an inevitable part of human civilization.

    Every generation inherited the fears, resentments, territorial claims, and unfinished conflicts of previous generations.

    When one war ended, another seemed to begin. Sometimes the same conflict erupted again decades later, with new weapons, new leaders, and new generations of young people sent to fight.

    And when the fighting stopped, we rebuilt what we had destroyed.

    We buried our dead, cared for the wounded, negotiated new agreements, and prepared ourselves for the possibility of doing it all again.

    What an astonishing waste of human life, intelligence, energy, and resources.

    But perhaps the greatest tragedy was that we rarely questioned the foundation upon which this endless cycle rested.

    We argued about who was right and who was wrong, who had the legitimate claim, who had attacked first, and who had the right to defend themselves.

    And while these questions certainly mattered to those involved, they seldom brought us any closer to eliminating the underlying problem.

    The Illusion of Security

    For millennia, humanity pursued security through control.

    A ruler conquered territory to secure resources for his people. A nation expanded its borders to protect itself from potential enemies. Governments built armies, fortifications, and increasingly powerful weapons to defend what they considered theirs.

    But there was a fundamental contradiction in this approach.

    Whatever we conquered, we had to defend. And whatever we defended, someone else might eventually try to conquer.

    The more territory and resources we controlled, the more we had to protect.

    And when our neighbors saw us strengthening our defenses, they often perceived us as a threat. So they strengthened theirs.

    We responded by strengthening ours even further.

    And the cycle continued.

    This was known as the security dilemma.

    One nation’s attempt to increase its security could make another nation feel less secure, creating an escalating cycle of fear, competition, and military preparation.

    The tragedy was that both sides could genuinely believe they were acting defensively.

    Yet their combined actions made everyone less secure.

    We had mistaken control for security.

    And for thousands of years, we tried to solve the insecurity created by this arrangement through even greater control.

    We invented increasingly sophisticated weapons, established military alliances, built enormous defense industries, and devoted extraordinary amounts of human ingenuity to preparing for conflicts we hoped would never happen.

    But the underlying problem remained.

    We had divided the planet into possessions, and every possession represented something that might be taken away.

    Who Owned the Earth?

    There was a question we should have asked ourselves much earlier.

    Who actually owned the Earth?

    Who created the continents, the oceans, the mountains, the forests, the rivers, and the fertile soil?

    Certainly not the kings, emperors, governments, corporations, or individuals who claimed ownership of them throughout history.

    The Earth had existed for billions of years before humanity appeared.

    Yet we divided it into territories and declared that this piece belonged to one nation, that piece belonged to another, and countless smaller pieces belonged to individuals, corporations, and institutions.

    We turned the surface of our common home into a gigantic collection of possessions.

    And then we spent thousands of years fighting over those possessions.

    We even developed elaborate legal systems to determine who owned which pieces of land, who could extract which resources, and who had the right to exclude everyone else.

    A person could be born on Earth and still have no right to occupy a tiny piece of it without paying someone else.

    An entire nation could lack access to resources that existed abundantly elsewhere on the same planet.

    And people could become extraordinarily wealthy simply by controlling access to things that nature had provided.

    All because we had accepted the idea that the Earth could be owned.

    But was that ever anything more than a human agreement?

    And if we had agreed to divide the planet into possessions, couldn’t we simply agree to stop?

    We Finally Grew Up

    So, this was how we lived for millennia.

    We conquered, defended, competed, accumulated, threatened, negotiated, and fought.

    We called it civilization.

    We called it national security.

    We called it the natural order of things.

    But eventually, something changed.

    We began to recognize that our extraordinary technological development had not been accompanied by an equally extraordinary development in how we organized our lives together.

    We could explore other planets, manipulate matter at microscopic scales, develop artificial intelligence, and automate increasingly complex tasks.

    Yet we continued fighting over ownership of the planet on which we were born.

    And finally, humanity had enough.

    We grew up.

    Not because everyone suddenly became wise as God, infinitely generous, or free from disagreement.

    But because we finally recognized that we could not continue trying to solve the same fundamental problem with the same fundamental thinking.

    We needed to change the foundation itself.

    And so we did.

    We drew a line through history.

    Not to erase what had happened, or forget those who had suffered, but to declare that the old claims of ownership would no longer determine humanity’s future.

    We nullified the ancient assumption that land and natural resources could belong exclusively to nations, corporations, or individuals.

    We started again.

    As adults.

    We finally agreed.

    The Declaration of Earth

    The declaration was remarkably simple.

    Planet Earth, including all its land, waters, atmosphere, and natural resources, was declared unowned and recognized as the common heritage of all humanity.

    No nation could claim exclusive ownership of a territory.

    No corporation could claim ownership of the planet’s natural resources.

    No individual could claim a piece of Earth as private property to be sold  and traded. Instead, we agreed on becoming stewards of Earth, caring for the land we live on.

    We had already established a similar principle for the Moon decades earlier, when humanity agreed that no nation could appropriate it through claims of sovereignty.

    Now we extended that principle to our own planet.

    Earth was not something to be possessed owned.

    It was our common home.

    And with that declaration came a new responsibility.

    We were no longer competing owners of separate pieces of a planet.

    We became its collective stewards.

    Of course, the declaration did not instantly transform every aspect of civilization. There were enormous practical questions to resolve, existing systems to reorganize, and centuries of habits and assumptions to overcome.

    But the fundamental decision had been made.

    We were no longer working toward a world in which everyone could never own enough.

    We were creating a world in which nobody needed to own anything in order to live well.

    And that changed everything.

    From Ownership to Stewardship

    One of the first things we changed was our relationship with the natural world.

    Forests were no longer regarded as somebody’s property from which financial profit could be extracted. They were recognized as living ecosystems providing countless benefits to the planet.

    Agricultural land was cultivated to provide nutritious food while maintaining the health of the soil.

    Homes were provided for people to live in, rather than treated as financial assets to be accumulated.

    Minerals, energy, water, and other resources were managed intelligently, sustainably, and cooperatively.

    We no longer asked how much money could be made from a particular resource. Money ceased to exist.

    We asked what it could contribute to the well-being of life on Earth.

    And because ownership had been replaced by stewardship, the responsibility for managing resources was based on knowledge, competence, ecological understanding, and the needs of the communities they served.

    We developed cooperative councils at different levels, from local communities to global coordination, helping ensure that decisions reflected both local circumstances and the needs of the planet as a whole.

    No single person, government, corporation, or artificial intelligence was granted ownership or absolute authority over Earth’s resources.

    We had learned enough from our history to understand the dangers of concentrating power.

    The End of the Monetary System

    Once we had abandoned ownership, another ancient institution lost its purpose.

    Money.

    For thousands of years, money had been the principal mechanism through which we distributed access to resources.

    Those with the greatest purchasing power could obtain the most, while those with little or no money often struggled to acquire even the necessities of life.

    This had produced a civilization in which enormous quantities of useful resources remained inaccessible to people who needed them, simply because they could not afford to pay.

    But now we had changed the underlying principle.

    Resources were no longer commodities to be owned and traded.

    They were part of our common inheritance, managed for the benefit of everyone.

    So we reorganized production and distribution around actual needs, available resources, ecological limits, and human preferences.

    Advanced artificial intelligence helped us understand resource availability, forecast demand, coordinate production, and minimize waste.

    Robotics and automation took over much of the repetitive, dangerous, and physically demanding work that humans had previously performed.

    And instead of competing to sell more and more products, we cooperated to produce what people actually needed and wanted, as sustainably and efficiently as possible.

    We no longer had to ask whether providing something was financially profitable.

    We asked whether it was useful, desirable, and physically possible.

    And as our productive capabilities expanded, we were able to provide increasingly abundant access to housing, nutritious food, clean water, energy, healthcare, education, transportation, communication, and countless other goods and services.

    Money and trading gradually became obsolete.

    Not because we had outlawed generosity or exchange between people, but because we had developed a far more direct way of sharing the abundance of our planet.

    What Happened to Security?

    Perhaps the most extraordinary transformation was in our understanding of security.

    Remember the security dilemma?

    For thousands of years, nations had tried to protect themselves by accumulating military power and controlling territory.

    But now the foundation of that dilemma had changed.

    Why would one community invade another to secure resources when those resources were already part of a globally coordinated system serving everyone?

    Why fight to control fertile land when food production was optimized and organized cooperatively?

    Why conquer territory when everyone had access to housing, healthcare, education, energy, and the necessities of life, regardless of where they were born?

    Human Disagreements

    The old incentives for territorial conquest had largely disappeared.

    Of course, human disagreements did not vanish.

    We still had different opinions, personalities, desires, traditions, and ways of life.

    And we still needed ways to resolve conflicts, protect people from harm, and address destructive behavior.

    But we no longer organized entire societies around the expectation that other societies might try to seize their possessions.

    The enormous military establishments of the past gave way to cooperative systems of protection, emergency response, disaster prevention, and peaceful conflict resolution.

    The human ingenuity once devoted to developing increasingly destructive weapons was redirected toward preserving and improving life.

    And we discovered something remarkable.

    Security no longer depended on how much of the Earth we could control. It depended on how well we could care for one another.

    Instead of securing the Earth against one another, we secured the Earth for one another.

    What Did We Achieve?

    Peace.

    Not the fragile peace that had once depended on military deterrence, political alliances, and the constant threat of retaliation or invasion.

    But a far more durable peace built upon shared access, cooperation, and the removal of many of the incentives that had driven humanity into conflict.

    Global Prosperity

    Not the prosperity of a wealthy minority surrounded by people struggling to survive, but a civilization in which everyone could benefit from global resources, humanity’s collective knowledge, technology, and productive capacity.

    Freedom

    Not merely the freedom to compete for money and possessions, but the freedom to live without the constant fear of poverty, unemployment, homelessness, or financial ruin.

    And perhaps most importantly, we gained something that had been extraordinarily difficult to achieve in the old world.

    A Common Purpose

    Instead of competing to maximize the wealth and power of separate nations, corporations, and individuals, we worked together to improve the conditions for life on Earth.

    We restored damaged ecosystems, regenerated forests, cleaned polluted rivers and oceans, and developed more sustainable ways of producing everything we needed.

    We designed cities around the well-being of their inhabitants rather than the profitability of real estate.

    We created communities where people could contribute according to their abilities, interests, and passions, without having to sell their labor merely to survive.

    And we began to measure our progress not by financial growth, but by the actual quality of life we were creating.

    How healthy were our ecosystems?

    How well were people living?

    How much freedom did they have to pursue their interests?

    How effectively were we using our resources?

    How much suffering could we prevent?

    How much beauty, knowledge, creativity, and joy could we bring into the world?

    These became the questions that guided our civilization.

    And the answers continued to improve.

    Welcome to the New World

    Looking back now, it seems almost incredible that it took humanity so long to arrive at such a simple realization.

    We did not need to own the Earth in order to enjoy everything it had to offer.

    We did not need to compete for its resources when we could cooperate in managing them.

    And we did not need to fight over the planet when we could share it.

    We had spent thousands of years trying to conquer the world.

    But our greatest achievement came when we finally stopped trying.

    We did not unite Earth under a single ruler or empire.

    We simply recognized that it was our common home, and that everyone deserved to benefit from it.

    It took us a few thousand years to grow up. 

    But we finally did.

    Our New Friend

    And now, we have a rather unusual new friend among us.

    Mr. Benjamin Michaels.

    Our bewildered billionaire, who recently woke up after spending a hundred years in cryonic preservation!

    As you can imagine, it has been quite a shock for him.

    In his former world, ownership was everything. The more you owned, the more powerful and secure you were considered to be.

    Benjamin was very good at that game. In fact, he was one of the richest people on the planet.

    And now?

    Well, now he has awakened in a world where nobody owns anything!

    No money. No buying or selling. No financial empires to build or protect.

    Everything is shared, and everyone has access to what they need.

    You can probably imagine his confusion.

    For him, it is almost as though the entire world has gone mad.

    For us, of course, it is simply normal life.

    But we understand him.

    After all, he spent his entire previous life learning how to succeed in a system that no longer exists.

    It takes time to adjust to something like that.

    Fortunately, he has me.

    Aweena.

    His personal guide, showing him all the ins and outs of this new world.

    And believe me, there is quite a lot to show him!

    He has been here for a while now, and I think he is finally beginning to adjust.

    We are all cheering for him, doing whatever we can to help.

    After all, imagine falling asleep as a billionaire and waking up in a world where nobody owns anything!

    Welcome to the New World, Benjamin!

    Oh, and one more thing.

    If you like, I can give you a guided tour as well.

    Just read Waking Up: A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity, a book written about our world a hundred years ago.

    You can find it HERE.

    I’ll be waiting for you!

    — Aweena, 2115

  • The Master of Disguise

    The Master of Disguise

    Politics here. Climate change there. Poverty, inequality, corruption, unemployment, immigration, taxation, and war. Everywhere we look, people are arguing about the problems of our world. And almost everywhere, money is involved.

    Money here. Money there. Taxes. Not enough money. Too much money. Money in the wrong hands. Money that must be raised, borrowed, invested, redistributed, or saved.

    For thousands of years, humanity has become so accustomed to money that we barely notice its presence anymore.

    But what if we have been looking at our problems from the wrong perspective all along?

    What if the greatest problem is something so familiar that we have become almost incapable of recognizing it?

    The Surface

    Every day, millions of people discuss the problems of our civilization. On television, in newspapers, on social media, and around dinner tables, we argue about what is wrong with the world and who is responsible.

    And there is certainly no shortage of people to blame.

    Politicians. Billionaires. Corporations. Governments. Immigrants. Environmentalists. Capitalists. Socialists. The rich. The poor.

    Everyone seems to have an explanation, and many explanations are remarkably simple.

    The politicians are corrupt. The billionaires are greedy. Climate change is a hoax designed to collect more taxes. Immigrants are taking our jobs. The poor are lazy. The rich are exploiting everyone else.

    Simple explanations for enormously complicated problems.

    And people love them.

    Why? Because they are easy to understand. They require very little investigation, and they often confirm something we already believe.

    We read a headline, recognize something that fits our worldview, and conclude that we have understood the issue.

    Why bother digging any deeper?

    The Simplification

    Recently, I came across a discussion on social media about climate change. The original newspaper article was considerably more nuanced than the dramatic headline being shared.

    THE CLIMATE FIGHT IS DEAD

    But the headline was enough.

    People immediately began arguing about taxation, political agendas, and whether climate change was even real.

    The complexity of the original article had largely disappeared. What remained was a collection of simplified arguments, many of which seemed to have little to do with the actual condition of our planet.

    And this is hardly unique to climate change.

    We see it everywhere.

    Complicated economic and social problems are reduced to slogans, accusations, and convenient explanations. The easier an argument is to understand, the easier it becomes to repeat.

    And repetition can make an argument feel true, even when the evidence is weak.

    This doesn’t necessarily mean people are unintelligent. Sometimes they simply don’t want to spend the time and effort required to investigate something more deeply.

    After all, if an explanation already seems convincing, why question it?

    But perhaps we should.

    Digging Deeper

    Fortunately, some people do investigate.

    Journalists, researchers, whistleblowers, and ordinary citizens sometimes refuse to accept the explanations presented to them.

    They dig.

    And occasionally, they uncover something spectacular.

    Corruption. Fraud. Bribery. Embezzlement. Tax evasion. Secret financial arrangements. Politicians accepting money in exchange for favors. Corporations deliberately deceiving the public to protect their profits.

    And people love these revelations!

    Another scandal! Another corrupt politician exposed! Another billionaire caught cheating! Another corporation forced to pay an enormous fine!

    The newspapers have a field day. Social media explodes with outrage. People demand justice.

    And sometimes justice is served.

    The guilty are punished, new regulations are introduced, and everyone congratulates themselves on having uncovered yet another rotten part of society.

    But have we really reached the bottom?

    Or have we merely discovered another layer?

    The Wrongdoing

    Notice something interesting about most financial scandals.

    The outrage is generally directed at people who have used money in the wrong way.

    They have broken the rules of the monetary system.

    They have stolen money, hidden money, manipulated money, or used money to gain influence they were not supposed to have.

    And naturally, we want them stopped and punished.

    But what happens next?

    We introduce new laws, stricter regulations, greater transparency, and stronger enforcement.

    In other words, we try to prevent people from misusing money so that the monetary system can continue functioning as intended.

    We investigate the people who break the rules of the system, but rarely question the system itself.

    And even when nobody breaks the law, the system can still reward activities that damage the environment, encourage  overconsumption, or place financial interests ahead of human needs.

    Perfectly Legal

    An activity can be perfectly legal, highly profitable, and socially and environmentally destructive at the same time.

    This is where the investigation becomes particularly interesting.

    Because perhaps the greatest problem isn’t how certain people misuse money.

    Perhaps it is what money makes us do even when we use it exactly as intended.

    The Political Circus

    And then, of course, we have the politicians.

    The stars of the greatest show on Earth.

    Every day, they provide us with something new to discuss. Another outrageous statement. Another political scandal. Another broken promise. Another election. Another politician who supposedly knows how to fix everything.

    And the audience is captivated.

    We cheer for our favorites, ridicule their opponents, argue with friends and strangers, and convince ourselves that everything will be better once the right people are in charge.

    But in charge of what, exactly?

    The monetary system.

    Regardless of which political party wins an election, the fundamental structure generally remains the same. Governments must balance budgets, stimulate economic growth, attract investments, create jobs, collect taxes, and manage public debt.

    Some politicians want higher taxes. Others want lower taxes. Some want more government spending. Others want less. Some want to redistribute wealth, while others want to encourage its accumulation.

    And these differences can have very real consequences for people’s lives.

    But notice what they have in common.

    They are all arguing about how to operate the same underlying system.

    Almost nobody is questioning whether we need that system in the first place. And whether it is actually serving humanity and Earth towards the best possible civilization we can have.

    And this is where the political circus becomes such a convenient distraction.

    While millions of people argue about the performers on the stage, the machinery behind the stage continues operating.

    The audience becomes so preoccupied with deciding which politician is the hero and which is the villain that it rarely questions the theater itself.

    And perhaps that is the greatest irony of modern politics.

    We believe we are deciding the future of civilization by choosing who should manage the monetary system, while the possibility of replacing that system remains almost entirely outside the discussion.

    The politicians don’t even need to be consciously distracting us.

    The spectacle does that perfectly well on its own.

    The Demon

    And somewhere beneath the stage, our little demon is smiling.

    “Wonderful! Keep watching the clowns. Don’t look behind the curtain.”

    The Invisible Master

    Imagine a master of disguise who has been living among us for thousands of years.

    He has become so familiar that nobody suspects him anymore.

    He is everywhere.

    In our homes, our workplaces, our minds, our governments, our schools, our hospitals, and our relationships.

    He influences what we produce, what we consume, where we live, what we do for a living, and what opportunities we have.

    He determines which projects are considered viable and which are abandoned.

    He can make destroying a forest seem perfectly sane in the light of profit while protecting it is considered too expensive.

    He can make food inaccessible to hungry people, even when an abundance of food exists.

    He can leave houses empty while people sleep on the streets.

    And he can make technological advancements that should liberate humanity appear threatening because they might eliminate people’s jobs and incomes.

    Yet almost nobody recognizes him as the underlying problem.

    Because he has disguised himself as something indispensable.

    Something natural.

    Something civilization supposedly cannot function without.

    His name?

    The Monetary System.

    The Perfect Disguise

    The monetary system has accomplished something extraordinary.

    It has convinced us that we need money to solve problems that was created by money in the first place.

    We need money to fight poverty.

    We need money to protect the environment.

    We need money to feed the hungry.

    We need money to provide housing.

    We need money to develop technology that could make all these things easier.

    And when there isn’t enough money, we conclude that these things simply cannot be done.

    But consider what this actually means.

    We live on a planet with an abundance of physical resources, knowledge, technology, and billions of capable human beings.

    The planet doesn’t demand payment for any of its resources. Nature doesn’t issue invoices.

    We have created the prices, the financial obligations, the ownership structures, and the rules governing access.

    And then we have become so accustomed to those arrangements that we confuse them with reality itself.

    A shortage of money is not necessarily a shortage of resources.

    A lack of profitability is not necessarily a lack of usefulness.

    And something that cannot be afforded is not necessarily something that cannot be accomplished.

    These are fundamentally different things.

    Yet we routinely treat them as though they were the same.

    That is the disguise.

    The Smiling Demon

    Now imagine our master of disguise as a little demon sitting far beneath the surface of civilization.

    Above him, humanity is arguing furiously.

    Politicians are blaming other politicians. Billionaires are blaming governments. Governments are blaming economic circumstances. Citizens are blaming corporations. Corporations are blaming regulations.

    Investigators are digging everywhere, exposing corruption and wrongdoing.

    And every time someone uncovers another scandal, the demon smiles.

    “Excellent! They’ve found another villain.”

    The public becomes outraged. The guilty are condemned. New laws are passed.

    And the demon smiles again.

    “Wonderful! They’re fixing my rules.”

    Then everyone returns to arguing about taxes, budgets, prices, profits, and economic growth.

    And the demon laughs.

    “They’ll never think to question me.”

    Of course, there is no actual demon.

    The monetary system has no consciousness, no evil intentions, and no secret plan.

    It is a human invention.

    And that is precisely what makes the disguise so remarkable.

    We have created a system that now appears to govern its creators.

    The Real Question

    What would happen if we continued digging?

    Not merely into the corruption, the greed, the inequality, or the environmental destruction, but into the economic structure that influences so much of human behavior?

    What if we stopped asking only how money should be distributed and started asking why we need money to distribute resources at all?

    What if we stopped asking how to create enough jobs and started asking how technology could free us from the necessity of working for survival?

    What if we stopped asking how to make environmental protection profitable and started organizing production and consumption according to ecological reality?

    What if we stopped treating the Earth as property to be bought and sold, and started treating it as a shared home to be cared for?

    These questions lead somewhere very different from the usual political arguments.

    They lead toward a resource-based civilization organized around collaboration, sharing, and stewardship rather than money, trading, and ownership.

    A civilization in which access to goods and services is based on needs and available resources rather than purchasing power.

    A civilization in which artificial intelligence and automation help humanity manage resources intelligently, reduce waste, and provide a high standard of living for everyone.

    Not a world without challenges, disagreements, or difficult decisions.

    But a world in which we no longer have to make everything financially profitable before we consider it worth doing.

    The Unmasking

    For thousands of years, humanity has lived with monetary systems in one form or another.

    We have changed currencies, governments, laws, institutions, and economic policies.

    We have overthrown rulers, fought revolutions, exposed corruption, and demanded fairer distributions of wealth.

    Yet the fundamental assumption has largely survived.

    That money is necessary.

    That trading is necessary.

    That ownership of the Earth’s resources is necessary.

    But what if these are not eternal truths?

    What if they are merely conventions that humanity has become accustomed to?

    And what if our rapidly advancing technology is finally making it possible to organize civilization in an entirely different way?

    Perhaps the master of disguise is not quite as invisible as he once was.

    Perhaps some people have begun to recognize him.

    Perhaps they have started asking questions that go deeper than the familiar arguments about who should have more money, who should pay more taxes, and who should control the economy.

    And perhaps, for the first time in human history, we are approaching a point where we have the technological capacity to seriously consider leaving the monetary system behind.

    Deeply Embedded

    The greatest disguise is not one that makes something disappear.

    It is one that makes something so familiar that nobody thinks to question its existence.

    Money has become so deeply embedded in our understanding of civilization that we struggle to imagine civilization without it.

    We see the corruption. We see the inequality. We see the environmental destruction. We see the poverty, the competition, and the conflicts.

    And we keep trying to solve these problems within the very structure that helps perpetuate them.

    But perhaps the time has come to look beneath the surface.

    To question not merely the people who operate the system, but the system itself.

    Because the monetary system is not a law of nature.

    We invented it.

    And we can choose to replace it.

    The master of disguise has been hiding in plain sight all along.

    But a disguise only works as long as nobody recognizes it.

    ⸻

    What might happen when humanity finally begins to see beyond money?

    The novel, Waking Up: A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity, explores precisely that possibility through the story of Benjamin Michaels, a bewildered billionaire who awakens after a hundred years to discover a civilization that has abandoned money, trading, and ownership in favor of collaboration, sharing, and stewardship.

    Discover the story

  • The Starting Point

    The Starting Point

    What is the price of a sunrise?

    With the rapid development of AI, robotics and automation, we may be approaching a transition to a moneyless, resource-based world much faster than we think. 

    That makes it increasingly important to understand how we would relate to value without money and prices. Because if we are to embrace such a future, we must first question some of the assumptions we have grown up with.

    So.

    How do we teach children the real value of things without money?

    An old friend asked me this recently.

    He is genuinely interested in the kind of moneyless, resource-based world I describe in Waking Up, but this question bothered him.

    Without money, how will children understand what things are really worth?

    It sounds like an obvious problem.

    Until we go back to the starting point.

    Before Price

    Long before there were humans, there was Earth.

    There were forests, rivers, oceans, fertile soil, minerals, animals, plants, sunlight and rain.

    Were they valuable?

    Of course.

    But none of them had a price.

    There was no price attached to a river. No monetary value printed on an apple. No deed declaring who owned a mountain. No border drawn across the landscape. No currency with which one animal could purchase access to water from another.

    The world had value before it had prices.

    Value Precedes Price

    Then humans arrived.

    Over thousands of years, we developed increasingly sophisticated systems of territory, ownership, trade, accounting and money. We measured the land, divided it into pieces, established ownership claims and eventually attached monetary values to almost everything that could be bought and sold.

    And because every one of us is now born into that world, it feels like the natural starting point.

    But it isn’t.

    It is the starting point we inherited.

    The Child

    Now consider another starting point.

    A child is born.

    What does that child know about money?

    Nothing.

    What does it know about price?

    Nothing.

    What does it know about ownership, wages, markets, profit, debt or trade?

    Nothing.

    And yet almost immediately the child experiences value.

    The child becomes hungry.

    Mother’s milk has value.

    The child becomes cold.

    Warmth has value.

    The child becomes frightened.

    The embrace of a parent has value.

    Attention has value. Sleep has value. Safety has value.

    Later, play has value. Friendship has value. Exploration has value. Particular foods have value. Particular people have value.

    None of this has to be measured.

    The child experiences it.

    Perhaps this is what value fundamentally is at the human level:

    appreciation.

    The Kitten

    We can see something similar throughout nature.

    A kitten doesn’t know the price of its mother’s milk.

    It doesn’t need to.

    It becomes hungry, suckles, and its hunger is satisfied.

    Later its mother may take it into the world where it gradually learns how to hunt, where to find safety, what represents danger and what satisfies its needs.

    A mouse has value to the cat.

    Water has value.

    Shelter has value.

    The mother’s presence has value.

    But the cat doesn’t need to decide that one mouse is worth ten dollars while a rat is worth twenty.

    Its world contains value without monetary valuation. Just like with a human child.

    Humans have an extraordinary capacity that the cat does not possess to anything like the same degree. We can abstract, count, categorize and measure the world around us.

    That ability is enormously useful.

    But somewhere along the way, measurement became intertwined with ownership, exchange and money.

    We began confusing the measurement with the value itself.

    Appreciation

    Imagine that you love strawberries but haven’t tasted one for six months.

    Someone offers you one.

    You smell it. You bite into it. It is perfectly ripe and tastes absolutely wonderful.

    You appreciate that strawberry enormously.

    How much?

    Five euros?

    Fifty?

    Five hundred?

    The question quickly becomes absurd.

    The strawberry might have a market price, but the price cannot measure your appreciation of eating it. Value is not price.

    And if somebody gave you the strawberry for free, its price to you was zero.

    Was its value therefore zero?

    Obviously not.

    Now imagine that you are completely stuffed after a huge meal and someone offers you another strawberry.

    You might not want it at all.

    Same strawberry.

    Same market price.

    Completely different value to you.

    Or imagine that strawberries and pears are both freely available.

    You love strawberries and hate pears.

    Both have a price of zero.

    Are they therefore equally valuable to you?

    Of course not.

    You walk past the pears and take the strawberries.

    Value is still there.

    No price is required.

    Our appreciation depends upon our needs, preferences, circumstances and experiences. It cannot be adequately expressed by attaching a monetary number to the object.

    The Rag Doll

    Perhaps children demonstrate this better than anyone.

    Imagine a child has an old rag doll.

    It is faded and worn. One eye is missing. It has been repaired several times. Nobody would pay much for it. If anything.

    But the child has slept with that doll every night for five years.

    It has been there when the child was frightened. It came along on holidays. It has a name. Memories are attached to it.

    To the market, the doll may be almost worthless.

    To the child, it may be irreplaceable. If lost it may be a crisis for the child.

    Then an adult says:

    “Why are you so upset? It’s only a cheap old doll. We’ll buy you a new one.”

    Only a Cheap Toy

    Think about what we have just done.

    We have taken the child’s immense experienced appreciation and placed our monetary measurement above it.

    The new doll might cost €20.

    The old one might be worth €1 on a market.

    But which one has greater value to the child?

    The child already knows.

    We are the ones confusing the issue. Not the child. 

    Learning Price

    Children don’t have to be taught value.

    They have to be taught price.

    And why do we teach them price?

    Because we have created a monetary society in which they need to understand it.

    They have to learn that €100 provides more purchasing power than €10. They have to learn that their parents cannot necessarily afford something. Eventually they have to understand wages, bills, rent, bank accounts, debt and all the other rules required to function within the system they were born into.

    Price is therefore useful information inside a monetary system.

    But that doesn’t make price the same thing as value.

    When we tell a child:

    “Be careful with that. It was expensive.”

    we are teaching something subtly different from:

    “Be careful with that. Appreciate it and take care of it.”

    And when we say:

    “It’s only a cheap toy.”

    we may be teaching something worse:

    that low price means low value.

    But the child with the rag doll knows that isn’t true.

    Real Value

    Many of the greatest values in a child’s life are already priceless.

    The attention of a parent.

    Friendship.

    Feeling safe.

    Being loved.

    Playing.

    Learning.

    Belonging.

    Nature.

    A favorite toy.

    A bedtime story.

    We don’t need to tell a child the monetary price of a parent’s attention for the child to appreciate it.

    There isn’t one.

    We even say that we pay attention, but no money changes hands.

    The experience itself has value.

    So perhaps the question is not:

    “How will we teach children value without money?”

    Perhaps it is:

    Why did we begin teaching children that price tells them value?

    Maybe we should rather ask:

    Why did we invent money at all and then tell our children money is value?

    What We Measure

    A resource-based economy would not mean that humanity suddenly stopped measuring things.

    Quite the opposite.

    We would still use calculation in kind.

    We would measure how much water we have.

    How much grain.

    How much electricity.

    How many homes.

    How much steel.

    How many strawberries.

    We could measure soil health, ecological regeneration, production capacity, consumption and demand with extraordinary precision.

    Suppose we have 100 strawberries and 100 people would like strawberries.

    That is useful information.

    There is temporary scarcity, and we may have to share them fairly.

    But why must we conclude that scarcity means the strawberries now have to cost €10 each?

    We don’t need a price to understand the physical situation.

    We need to know:

    How many strawberries do we have?

    How many people want them?

    Can we sustainably grow more?

    If demand is consistently greater than supply, we can increase production where resources and ecological conditions allow.

    If there is a temporary shortage, we can share what is available fairly.

    Scarcity requires intelligent allocation.

    It does not require a price.

    Shared Access

    This is where the starting point matters again.

    Today, the strawberry field probably belongs to somebody.

    The land belongs to somebody.

    The equipment belongs to somebody.

    The harvest belongs to somebody.

    Other people gain access through money.

    Now imagine starting somewhere else.

    Ownership has been transformed into stewardship.

    The resources of Earth are regarded as our common inheritance rather than enormous unequal pieces belonging exclusively to different individuals and institutions.

    We still measure everything necessary to manage those resources intelligently.

    But we begin with a different question.

    Not:

    Who owns the strawberries and what can they be sold for?

    But:

    How many strawberries do we have, how many do people want, and how can we sustainably provide enough?

    If there is abundance, take what you need and want.

    If there is scarcity, share fairly while addressing the physical reason for the shortage.

    The objective is not to produce the maximum possible amount of everything regardless of how much we destroy in the process.

    It is to produce enough to satisfy human needs and reasonable wants, maintain appropriate reserves, minimize waste and remain within ecological limits.

    Enough For All

    Imagine again those 100 strawberries and 100 people.

    If everyone wants one, everyone can have one.

    If twenty people don’t like strawberries, there may be more for those who do.

    If demand rises dramatically, the system detects it and, where sustainable, grows more. After all, we don’t absolutely need strawberries to survive. 

    We should be able to adapt and share what we have until more strawberries are ripe.

    Nobody gains a greater right to the strawberries merely because they have more money.

    Nobody owns the field and can withhold its harvest simply because it is their property.

    Everyone begins with an equal right of access, while actual distribution responds intelligently to need, preference and availability.

    That requires measurement.

    But it doesn’t require monetary valuation.

    Measure the resource, not the appreciation.

    We can measure that you ate 300 grams of strawberries.

    We cannot meaningfully measure how wonderful they tasted to you.

    We can measure how much food a child needs.

    We cannot put a price on the satisfaction of hunger.

    We can measure the materials in a rag doll.

    We cannot measure the child’s love for it.

    Two Worlds

    And so we arrive at two starting points.

    The first is the planet itself.

    Earth existed before ownership, money and prices.

    Its resources already had value because they supported life.

    Then humans created an abstract layer of ownership, trade and monetary valuation and eventually began treating that layer as though it were reality itself.

    The second starting point is every child.

    A child enters the world without understanding money or price.

    But the child already experiences value.

    Then we teach the child our abstract layer.

    And eventually the child may begin to see the world through the same monetary lens that we do.

    Starting Again

    What if we didn’t?

    What if we taught children appreciation instead of price?

    Where does your food come from?

    What did nature require to produce it?

    How much of it do we have?

    Does somebody else need some too?

    Can it be repaired rather than thrown away?

    Can somebody else use it when you no longer need it?

    What happens to the environment when we produce it?

    How can we care for it?

    These are lessons about value.

    A child doesn’t need to hear:

    “Don’t waste those strawberries. They were expensive.”

    The child can learn:

    “Don’t waste those strawberries. They required soil, water, sunlight, nutrients, pollination and care to grow. Other people would like some too. Take what you want, enjoy them, and don’t take more than you’ll use.”

    That is not a world without value.

    It may be a world with a much deeper understanding of it.

    The Starting Point

    My friend’s question was:

    How do we teach children the real value of things without money?

    Perhaps the answer is that we don’t need money to do it at all.

    Children experience value before they understand price.

    Human beings experienced value before we invented money.

    And we still do. There are many things we value because they are priceless. A sunrise. A sunset. The beauty of nature. The love of our children. 

    Life itself experienced value, in the form of needs, preferences and survival, long before humans existed.

    The world was valuable before we priced it.

    And a child knows that a beloved rag doll is valuable before an adult tells them it is cheap.

    Maybe we have had the question backwards.

    Perhaps our task is not to teach children value.

    Perhaps our task is to avoid teaching them not to confuse value with price.

    We still need measurement.

    We still need calculation.

    We still need to know what resources exist, where they are, how quickly they regenerate, how much people need and want, and how we can distribute them sustainably and fairly.

    But none of that requires us to put a monetary price on the experience of being alive.

    Value precedes price.

    It always did.

    And perhaps if we want to build a world based on stewardship, abundance, sharing and intelligent resource management, that is where we should start again.

    At the starting point. 

    A Unique Opportunity

    The bewildered billionaire Benjamin Michaels is given a unique opportunity to experience this value when he wakes up again after 100 years of cryonic sleep trying to escape his cancer in the novel 

    Waking Up: A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity, whichis a novel that explores a future in which trade and ownership have given way to stewardship, shared abundance and intelligent resource management. And where value is no longer quantified in the form of money. He hoped to wake up again to expand his empire, but instead he have to learn the real value of the world…

    Discover the story

  • The Constitutional Contradiction

    The Constitutional Contradiction

    The monetary system may be digging its own grave.

    Recently, Elon Musk responded to a post about wealth creation(eat the rich) with a simple warning:

    “The problem is that after they ‘eat the rich’, they will starve.”

    Someone responded by turning his argument around: the rich do not feed society. Workers do. If the rich vanished, work would continue. But without workers, what exactly would the rich have left to profit from?

    There is an extraordinary irony here.

    Elon Musk is building the technology that may actually make the workers vanish.

    Not the people themselves.

    But the need for their labor.

    The Workers

    For centuries, workers have been at the center of the monetary economy.

    They work.

    They receive wages.

    They spend those wages.

    Companies receive that money as revenue.

    Governments tax wages, employment and consumption and use that revenue to finance society.

    Then the cycle begins again.

    Workers are therefore not merely a cost to businesses. They are also the customers who buy what businesses produce and an important part of the tax base supporting governments.

    The OECD describes labor taxes—including income taxes, social-security contributions and payroll taxes—as a significant source of government revenue across its member countries. It also explicitly recognizes automation and AI as structural changes that may affect those tax bases. The system rewards efficiency. 

    Now introduce the robot.

    The Robot

    The robot doesn’t need a salary.

    It doesn’t pay personal income tax.

    It doesn’t need a pension.

    It doesn’t go shopping after work.

    It doesn’t take its family to a restaurant.

    It doesn’t buy a Tesla.

    Yet the company replacing the worker with that robot has a perfectly rational reason for doing so.

    The robot can potentially work longer, produce more, make fewer mistakes and become cheaper over time.

    From the perspective of an individual company, this can make perfect economic sense:

    Reduce labor. Reduce costs. Increase productivity. Increase profit.

    But what happens when everybody does it?

    Suddenly we encounter something much bigger than unemployment.

    We encounter a contradiction within the structure of the monetary system itself.

    The Contradiction

    The system itself rewards companies for eliminating human labor while simultaneously depending heavily on income generated through human labor to maintain purchasing power in order to keep the system running.

    That is the constitutional contradiction.

    Not constitutional in the political sense, but in the deeper meaning of the word: a contradiction in how the system itself is constituted.

    Every individual company has an incentive to be more efficient: to automate.

    But if automation eventually succeeds beyond our wildest dreams, who buys everything?

    The machines can produce a million cars.

    Wonderful.

    Who buys them?

    The machines can build houses.

    Fantastic.

    Who pays for them?

    The machines can grow food, manufacture clothes, transport products, construct infrastructure and provide services.

    Amazing.

    But robots don’t receive wages.

    And robots don’t go shopping.

    The Taxes

    Then there is another problem.

    Governments are deeply connected to the same employment structure.

    Workers pay income taxes and social-security contributions. Employers make employment-related contributions. Workers then spend their remaining income, generating VAT and other consumption taxes.

    Remove enough paid human labor and governments may have to rethink where a substantial part of their revenue comes from.

    Government Revenues

    This isn’t merely speculation about an obscure tax problem. The OECD has specifically warned that automation could affect government revenues if labor-tax bases erode, particularly because many countries rely heavily on taxes connected to labor.

    Of course governments can respond.

    Tax corporations more.

    Tax capital.

    Tax automated production.

    Create new forms of taxation.

    Redistribute the proceeds.

    Perhaps use some of that revenue to finance Universal Basic Income, which ironically is used to pay for products produced by the machines that made them unemployed in the first place.

    Or, as Elon Musk prefers to call his envisioned future, Universal High Income. Musk has repeatedly argued that AI and robotics could eventually create enormous abundance while making conventional work optional.

    But this raises another problem.

    If human employment keeps disappearing, governments lose much of the very tax revenues upon which redistribution currently depends. Taxes would increasingly have to be shifted toward the companies, capital and automated productive systems where the remaining monetary income accumulates.

    We would then be taxing the automated economy in order to give people money so that they could buy what the automated economy produced without them. Money itself becomes eroded and more and more pointless.

    At some point we might reasonably ask:

    Why are we keeping the money in the middle at all?

    The Grave

    This is what makes the present moment in human history so fascinating.

    The monetary system is not necessarily being destroyed by revolutionaries standing outside the gates.

    It may be undermining  its own foundation by following its internal logic:

    • Competition demands greater efficiency
    • Greater efficiency demands automation
    • Automation reduces the need for labor
    • Reduced labor can reduce wage income
    • Reduced wage income can reduce purchasing power

    And reduced employment can weaken traditional tax bases.

    The system is, in a sense, digging its own grave.

    Not because somebody planned it.

    Because everybody is doing exactly what the system tells them to do. 

    Increase efficiency.

    The Fear

    And yet, for many people, this doesn’t feel like liberation. 

    It feels terrifying.

    If AI and robots takes our jobs, we may lose our income, our security and the system we have depended upon all our lives. Money has become so deeply connected to our existence that imagining a world without it can feel like imagining a world without security itself.

    But does money actually secure our existence?

    Money doesn’t feed us. Food does. Money doesn’t shelter us. Homes do. Money doesn’t produce the things we need. Resources, knowledge, technology and human ingenuity do.

    Money is the system we currently use to gain access to them.

    Perhaps the fear is understandable precisely because we have confused the two for so long. Resources and money. They are not the same.

    And perhaps it is finally time to wean ourselves from that misconception.

    Liberation

    We’ve seen technological revolutions before.

    Again and again, machines have replaced human labor.

    And every time, we have celebrated increased productivity.

    We call machines labor-saving devices.

    But there has always been something strange about that expression.

    Whose labor did they save?

    If a machine eliminated your exhausting repetitive job but your survival depended upon the wage from that job, the machine didn’t necessarily make you feel liberated.

    You lost your income.

    You had to find another job.

    Technology liberated humanity from one form of work while the economic system continued requiring us to work with something else.

    Perhaps AI and robotics are finally bringing that contradiction to its conclusion.

    Perhaps the ultimate purpose of labor-saving technology is not simply to save labor.

    Perhaps it is to save all humans from compulsory labor.

    True Freedom

    Imagine that machines really can do most of the work we don’t want to do.

    They grow the food.

    Build the houses.

    Manufacture the products.

    Maintain infrastructure.

    Transport resources.

    Recycle materials.

    AI helps coordinate production and distribution according to real human needs and real available resources.

    What exactly have we lost?

    Jobs?

    Or have we gained something extraordinary?

    Freedom.

    Not the freedom to choose which employer we sell our time to.

    Not the freedom to compete for enough money to survive.

    Not the freedom to spend our lives earning access to the products our machines can already produce.

    Something much more fundamental.

    The freedom to live.

    The freedom to create.

    The freedom to learn.

    The freedom to care for others.

    The freedom to explore.

    The freedom to contribute because we want to contribute.

    The freedom to ask, perhaps for the first time:

    What would I actually like to do with my life?

    The Choice

    And that brings us back to Elon Musk.

    He warns that if we “eat the rich,” we may eventually starve.

    But perhaps that is asking the wrong question.

    What happens when nobody needs to eat anybody?

    What happens when machines can produce enough food for everyone?

    When robots can build enough homes?

    When automated systems can manufacture what we need?

    When AI can help us manage resources intelligently?

    What happens when human labor is no longer the foundation upon which material abundance depends?

    Humanity hasn’t suddenly become poor.

    Quite the opposite.

    We may have become richer than at any point in history.

    Yet if access to that abundance still depends upon obtaining money through work that society no longer needs us to perform, we will have created one of the strangest situations imaginable.

    We will have developed the technology to liberate humanity while maintaining an economic structure that prevents us from experiencing the liberation.

    Maybe AI and robotics aren’t merely threatening the monetary system.

    Maybe they are revealing that we are beginning to outgrow it.

    Earth Constitution

    But technology will not make the final decision for us.

    However far AI and robotics advance, humanity will still have to decide what kind of civilization we want to create with them.

    Perhaps nations could eventually come together and create a new Constitution of Earth, based upon global cooperation, stewardship of our common resources and freedom from economic coercion.

    Not freedom to consume infinitely. We still live on a finite planet.

    Not freedom to do anything regardless of its consequences for others.

    But freedom from having to sell our labor simply to earn the right to live.

    A world in which technology finally fulfills its greatest promise: not merely producing more for us, but setting us free.

    Waking Up

    How exactly do we get from here to there?

    I don’t pretend to have a blueprint.

    Waking Up: A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity is not a manifesto detailing every step of the transition or every mechanism of a future civilization.

    It is something much simpler.

    A glimpse of what might be possible.

    The story begins in 2015 with Benjamin Michaels, a billionaire facing terminal cancer. Desperate to escape death, he chooses cryonic preservation, hoping that future medicine will eventually cure him so he can wake up and continue expanding his empire.

    He gets his wish.

    Benjamin wakes up a century later.

    His cancer is cured.

    There is only one small problem.

    His empire no longer exists.

    Neither does his money.

    Neither does anyone else’s.

    The concepts upon which his entire life was built—money, trade and ownership—have disappeared.

    Benjamin expected to wake up in the future and reclaim his wealth.

    Instead, he wakes up in a civilization where wealth itself has been redefined.

    Not a Blueprint

    People no longer spend their lives earning the right to live. Technology handles much of the work once performed out of necessity. Resources are shared and managed intelligently. People are free to create, explore, learn, contribute and simply live.

    Benjamin has awakened in the world this article has been imagining.

    Not a perfect world.

    Not a blueprint.

    Not a prediction.

    A possibility.

    And perhaps that is where every transformation begins.

    Before we can create a different world, we first have to be able to imagine one.

    Discover the story

  • The Real Purpose of AI

    The Real Purpose of AI

    We are racing to create an intelligence greater than our own.

    Companies are investing hundreds of billions. Nations are competing. Artificial intelligence is becoming more capable at extraordinary speed, and somewhere ahead lies the possibility of AGI — Artificial General Intelligence — and perhaps eventually something even more capable than that.

    There is enormous discussion about whether AI will be safe.

    There is enormous discussion about whether AI will take our jobs. It will.

    There is enormous discussion about who will develop the most powerful AI first.

    But there is a much simpler question that seems strangely absent.

    What is the real purpose of AI?

    The Race

    At the moment, there doesn’t seem to be one answer.

    Every company has its own purpose. Develop better products. Increase productivity. Reduce costs. Gain market share. Make money.

    Governments have other purposes. Increase national competitiveness. Improve administration. Strengthen national security.

    And inevitably, militaries are interested too.

    Meanwhile, humanity watches the race and wonders where it is taking us.

    Perhaps AI will cure diseases.

    Perhaps it will accelerate scientific discoveries.

    Perhaps it will solve problems we haven’t been able to solve ourselves.

    Perhaps it will replace enormous numbers of jobs.

    Perhaps it will create abundance beyond anything humanity has previously experienced.

    Perhaps it will become dangerous, break free and turn on us.

    Nobody really knows.

    And that is precisely the point.

    We are developing perhaps the most powerful technology humanity has ever created without first agreeing on what we ultimately want to accomplish with it.

    More and More

    The underlying purpose of automation has always seemed fairly obvious.

    Do more with less effort.

    The plough and bull replaced some human muscle. The tractor replaced much more. Industrial machinery transformed manufacturing. Computers automated calculations and administration. Robots entered factories.

    Each step allowed us to produce more, faster and with less human labor.

    AI continues that story, but with one enormous difference.

    We are no longer merely automating muscle.

    We are beginning to automate intelligence.

    Writing. Programming. Designing. Diagnosing. Planning. Researching. Organizing. Analyzing.

    And when artificial intelligence is combined with increasingly capable robotics, we could be approaching something humanity has never experienced before:

    an extreme abundance of labor.

    For almost all of human history, labor has been scarce.

    Now it may cease to be.

    Abundance

    Some technology leaders believe AI and robotics could eventually produce extraordinary material abundance.

    Perhaps they are right.

    But abundance alone doesn’t answer the important question.

    Who is the abundance for?

    If a company owns the AI, owns the robots, owns the factories and sells what those machines produce, we haven’t fundamentally changed the underlying system.

    We have simply created vastly more productive means within it.

    And that produces a peculiar contradiction.

    Suppose AI and robotics can produce more goods and services while requiring fewer human workers.

    That sounds like progress.

    But in our current monetary system, most people still need money to access those goods and services, and most people obtain that money through work.

    So the machines produce more.

    Humans need to work less.

    People lose jobs.

    People lose income.

    And suddenly they struggle to afford the extraordinary abundance the machines are producing. Unless the products cost less and less, which might be the result of this extreme productive abundance. But when the prices reach zero or close to zero, what is the point of money at all? And if money has no point, what about ownership and trading itself? To sell something requires that someone owns it first. Maybe it’s time we look closer on the whole ownership-trading-money paradigm…?

    Succeeding with AGI without addressing this question means we would have succeeded technologically while failing logically.

    Jobs

    This is why so much of the discussion about AI and employment sounds strangely confused.

    What are people going to do when AI takes their jobs?

    But perhaps we’re asking the question backwards.

    For thousands of years, we have invented machines precisely because we wanted to reduce human labor.

    Nobody invented the washing machine because washing clothes by hand was such a wonderful human experience that we wanted to preserve it.

    We automate work because automation can free human beings from having to do it.

    And now, having potentially created the ultimate automation technology, we are frightened that it might actually succeed.

    Why?

    Because we have connected two things that don’t necessarily have to remain connected:

    1. the production of what we need and 
    2. our right to access it.

    If you need a job to earn money, and you need money to live, then losing your job is terrifying.

    But that isn’t a problem created by abundance.

    It is a problem created by the system through which we distribute that abundance.

    The Question

    So perhaps the purpose of AI should not simply be:

    How can we produce more?

    How can we make companies more profitable?

    How can we increase sales?

    How can we make our nation more competitive?

    And certainly not:

    How can we build more powerful weapons?

    Perhaps we should ask something much bigger.

    How can this extraordinary intelligence help create the best possible life for humanity on the planet we share?

    That is a very different assignment.

    Imagine using AI to understand the Earth as one interconnected system.

    What resources do we have?

    What do people actually need and want?

    Where are the shortages?

    Where are the surpluses?

    What are we wasting?

    What can be reused?

    What can be recycled?

    How much food should we produce?

    Where should it go?

    How can housing, transportation, energy and infrastructure be provided using the least resources and causing the least ecological damage?

    Where are we exceeding planetary limits?

    How can we restore what we have damaged?

    Instead of asking AI to optimize sales, we could ask it to help us optimize life.

    Economy

    And perhaps something else happens here.

    We rediscover the true meaning of an old word.

    Economy.

    The word comes from the Greek oikonomia: the management of a household.

    That is a profoundly different idea from what we commonly mean today when we speak about “the economy.”

    Today we largely mean finance, markets, prices, employment, investment, debt, growth and monetary transactions.

    But none of those things are the household itself.

    The household is here.

    Earth.

    Its soil.

    Its oceans.

    Its forests.

    Its atmosphere.

    Its minerals.

    Its energy.

    Its ecosystems.

    And us.

    Economy=ecology.

    Perhaps AI could help us practice economy in its most fundamental sense for the first time on a planetary scale:

    the intelligent management of our shared home.

    Not to maximize financial return.

    Not to maximize consumption.

    But to meet human needs while maintaining the ecological foundations upon which every human life depends.

    Perhaps AI will not bring about the end of economy.

    Perhaps it will finally allow us to create one. A real one.

    Human purpose

    But then something fascinating happens.

    The question turns around.

    If AI can increasingly perform our labor, we don’t only have to ask:

    What is the purpose of AI?

    We suddenly have the freedom to ask:

    What is the purpose of humans?

    For centuries, much of human life has revolved around making ourselves useful to the monetary system.

    We educate ourselves so we can get jobs.

    We get jobs so we can earn money.

    We earn money so we can pay for somewhere to live, food to eat and everything else we need.

    “What do you do?” has become synonymous with:

    “What do you do for money?”

    But is that really the purpose of a human being?

    To spend decades toiling and working in order to obtain permission to live?

    Perhaps AI and robotics will finally allow us to separate work from purpose.

    That doesn’t mean humans stop doing things.

    Quite the opposite.

    We can create.

    Learn.

    Explore.

    Invent.

    Love.

    Raise children.

    Care for one another.

    Grow food.

    Make music.

    Dance.

    Play.

    Study the universe.

    Build communities.

    Restore forests.

    Explore and clean up oceans.

    Travel beyond Earth.

    And continue doing all kinds of work simply because we find that work meaningful.

    The difference is profound.

    We no longer have to justify our existence through our financial usefulness.

    Stewards

    Perhaps our role on Earth was never supposed to be that of workers serving a financial machine.

    Perhaps it is something much greater.

    Being stewards.

    We arrived on an extraordinary bountyful living planet that provides everything required for our existence.

    Air.

    Water.

    Food.

    Materials.

    Energy.

    Life itself.

    Perhaps our purpose is not to own as much of it as possible, extract as much value from it as possible and compete over the proceeds.

    Perhaps our purpose is to understand it, care for it and ensure that the extraordinary abundance it provides can sustain life far into the future. For generations to come.

    Artificial intelligence could help us do that.

    Not as our ruler or our master.

    But as perhaps the most extraordinary tool humanity has ever created.

    A tool capable of helping us understand enormously complex systems, coordinate resources, eliminate waste, automate unnecessary labor and manage our planetary household with an intelligence we have never possessed before.

    The Purpose

    We are understandably spending enormous effort asking how to make AI safe.

    We are asking what happens when AI takes our jobs.

    We are asking which company will win the race.

    We are asking which country will lead.

    But perhaps before racing much further, maybe we should have a much bigger conversation.

    Where are we racing to?

    We don’t have to know exactly what the future will look like.

    Nobody does.

    But we can decide what kind of future we would like to create.

    Perhaps the greatest question about artificial intelligence is not how intelligent it will become.

    It is what we will ask it to do.

    And perhaps the answer begins with another question entirely.

    If machines can eventually free us from spending our lives serving the system we created…

    what would we like to spend our lives serving instead?

    Perhaps the answer has been beneath our feet all along.

    Earth.

    Life.

    Each other.

    Imagine It

    What would such a world actually look like?

    A world where AI and automation no longer threaten our livelihoods, but liberate us from the need to work simply to survive. Where technology serves humanity, humanity becomes the steward of Earth, and abundance is shared rather than sold.

    That is the world explored in Waking Up: A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity.

    Because before we can create a different future, we first have to imagine one.

    Discover the story