Fellow citizens of the world, as the fruit of our knowledge continues to bend the branches of nature in overbearing and dangerous ways, the tree of life is responding in ways that threaten the very existence of our modern civilization. Overpopulation, climate change, resource depletion, air & water pollution, soil degradation & desertification, are just a few of the extinction level threats that humanity must overcome if we are to survive as a species. Any one of these threats would be difficult enough to deal with on its own, but together they become almost unsolvable.
Any sane and logical society when facing such a serious scenario would bond together to cooperate and coordinate a unified response to the crisis. Every tool at their disposal, and every available man, woman and child, would be enlisted to engage in the solution. Unfortunately, this is not how the world economy is currently set up. Competition between countries, corporations, social classes and individuals block cooperation and unity. Rivalry and dissension lead to conflict and war, wasting even more time and precious remaining resources. To make matters worse, only certain powerful groups and individuals are authorized to suggest solutions. The only solutions given serious consideration must not stray beyond the current economic rules and international standards. Private ownership, intellectual property rights, debt-financing and profit must all be respected, even in emergencies.
Imagine that all of the tools, technologies and resources that humans have acquired throughout the ages are stored in a huge warehouse which occupies several square miles of real estate. Having debated among themselves, our government and corporate leaders authorize a few acceptable approaches to fight the global emergencies that do not disturb the important principles which support their wealth and power. Instead of calling upon the entire population to use all of the resources in the warehouse, they provide small toolboxes which contain only selected profit-driven tools to those who are authorized to help. All of the other knowledge, tools and resources in the warehouse remain unused. Sadly, this is a pretty accurate analogy of how global capitalism works. Despite having almost unlimited tools and knowledge in the warehouse and an almost unlimited amount of under-utilized human labour in society, we cling to a conventional profit-driven, debt-based monetary economic model that restricts the all-hands-on-deck response that is necessary to save humanity.
To understand what we must do differently we must first understand what we are really doing now. In our current economy, the demand for money is always greater than the supply. If all sellers are trying to take in more money FROM the marketplace than they pay out in expenses TO the marketplace, then there can never be enough money in the marketplace to buy all of the products and services that are offered for sale. Profit creates a gap between the amount of money paid out to the marketplace in expenses and the amount of money demanded back from the marketplace in prices.
Debt provides an easy answer to this imbalance. If collectively people are willing and able to borrow enough additional money to match the profit added to prices, then consumer demand can match producer supply and the economy will continue to function normally. Debt, however, re-creates the problem all over again. The amount of money that lenders pay out to the borrower is always less than the amount of money the borrower must pay back. Interest widens the gap that profit creates and transfers wealth from borrowers to lenders.
The shortage of money in the marketplace is not an accident or an occasional and temporary imbalance. It is a design feature of capitalism that functions to transfer wealth to those who have already obtained significant amounts of capital. Profit and debt are opposite sides of the same coin. You can’t eliminate one without eliminating the other at the same time. The growing amount of total debt in the economy corresponds to the growing amount of total profit extracted from the economy, almost exactly.
Both profit and debt exploit the productivity of those who have little or no capital themselves and who struggle daily just to make ends meet. Without assets you can’t access credit to play the game. You must rent your life out to those who can profit from your productivity. The company that you work for profits from your labour, your landlord uses your rent to pay off the mortgage on his property, and the banks and corporations use the interest that you pay them to build global empires.
This is the true story of how our economy works. It explains why the rich keep getting richer, even during recessions and depressions. It explains why the richest 1% now own over half of the world’s assets. With money and wealth comes the power to influence and control almost every important institution and asset in the world. The billionaires of the globe have the combined money and power to control governments, public education, university and research institutions, professional associations and regulating bodies, all of the mainstream and social media companies, telecommunication & information satellites, agricultural and resource companies, and biological and digital technologies. In short, our debt-based, profit-driven economy has created the extreme wealth of the billionaires who shutter the warehouse and prevent the world from responding appropriately to the extinction level threats that we now face.
The solution to the problem is really pretty simple, change the global monetary system. The debt-based system that we use today is about to collapse anyway. It is impossible to pay even just the interest amounts on the colossal amount of total outstanding debt in the world, let alone to try to pay down the principal. The only way that governments have been able to keep the financial house of cards from crumbling is by printing more debt-based money. An implosion the likes of which we have never witnessed before is long overdue. So let’s eliminate profit and debt and implement a new, stable, debt-free global monetary system now before another financial crisis occurs.
All things created by humans consist of only 2 primary ingredients, human and natural resources. Human resources include knowledge, skill, and mental and physical labour. Natural resources include air, water and all of the raw materials, minerals and living organisms that creation has provided. Originally, humans used their skill and labour to make simple tools like spears, clubs and knives using stone, wood and vines that nature provided. These tools were really just unique combinations of human and natural resources that were stored together in the form of objects. These tools were then used to combine additional human and natural resources in order to make more complex tools and objects. Each progression employed previously stored forms of human and natural resources to create new combinations of human and natural resources. Simple tools plus additional human and natural resources made complex tools. Complex tools plus additional human and natural resources made simple machines. Simple machines led to complex machines and so on, through the industrial revolution and the computer revolution to the technologies of the present day. In every step, stored human and natural resources in the form of tools were combined with additional human and natural resources to create new forms of stored human and natural resources. Nothing else was added. There was nothing else in existence to add. Every tool or machine invented consisted only of those two primary resources.
All of the Earth’s natural resources were provided by creation absolutely free-of-charge. We don’t dump buckets full of money into the sea when we catch fish to pay creation for our catch, nor do we leave money in the forest when we remove the trees that nature creates. So if natural resources are free and human resources are the only other component of everything that humans create, then the only real cost of everything made is the human resource component.
Society currently uses hours to measure and record human output. Different hourly pay rates are used to reward workers and set the value of the work performed. Hours are a universal constant. Everywhere across the globe there are only 24 hours in a day and 365 days in a year. The number of hours in a day cannot be inflated. It is only logical then to use hours as the common universal standard upon which to base all money. Using hours as the global unit of exchange would establish a secure, stable, non-inflationary unit of value that is tied directly to something tangible, natural and understandable to all. Even more importantly, time is something that is equally available to all people.
The value and final selling price of every good or service produced would be determined by adding up the human resource inputs along every step of a production chain. Just like in the previous example involving tools and machines, all production inputs like raw materials & supplies, components & assemblies, energy, transportation, etc. would be treated as different forms and combinations of human and natural resources. Since natural resources themselves are free, only the human resource cost of extracting and processing them would be added into prices along the chain of production. The final price of all goods and services would be exactly equal to the total human resource hours expended to produce them. There would never be a shortage of money in the marketplace again.
Without profit, arbitrary and imaginary value would disappear. All goods and services would simply be worth the time it took to produce them. All businesses would open an interest-free Transfer Credit account at a bank of their choice. The value of all business-to-business transfers of goods and services would be tracked by the banks. No money would be necessary for business-to-business transactions. Instead, the sellers credit account would be reduced by the selling price and the buyers credit account would be increased by the same amount. Consumer purchases of goods and services would also lower the credit balance of the supplier. If the credit balance of a business exceeded their annual sales volumes, the bank would likely call the business in for a review of their business plan.
Without profit and debt, it would be impossible for corporations to accumulate the vast amounts of wealth and capital necessary to control governments, public institutions, professional associations and regulating bodies, the mainstream and social media, or capture critical strategic resources and technologies. Without profit and debt the ridiculous income gap between the haves and the have-nots would disappear. Everyone who works for an hour would earn an hour plus a 20% minimum rest premium to cover sick time, stat holidays, vacations, etc. Occupations that are deemed to be critical to society but are dangerous, or highly-skilled, or extremely difficult or unpleasant would be rewarded with higher rest premiums based on a sliding scale to be determined democratically.
At some point in their life, most people begin to really appreciate that their time on this Earth is extremely limited and running out fast. From that moment on, discussing the value of a person's time becomes meaningless to them, for they realize that their time on Earth is actually priceless. Once you realize the true value of your own life is infinite, then a genuine respect for others implies that the same must be true for everyone else on the planet... other people's lives must also be of infinite valuable to them. And if the value of an individual's life is infinite, the value of each week or day or hour of that life is also infinite, and thus, the relative value of each and every individual's time can be nothing other than equal. We may all have different talents and abilities, and some may have been blessed with greater gifts than others, but if we are all honestly trying to develop and contribute our very best to society, then don't we all deserve to enjoy the beauty of life and the bounty of the Earth equally?
Some will argue no, that a person who devotes many years of his life to education and becomes more productive by increasing his skill and knowledge deserves a higher reward for his time. But if you are paid to be educated, and the knowledge that you receive ultimately belongs to the society that teaches you, are the superior natural gifts that you have been blessed with not enough of a reward in themselves to satisfy you? Must you take away someone else's right to live as happily as you? No one is given a choice before their birth of selecting their abilities or attributes. We all have to make the best out of what we are given. How is it reasonable then to devalue the worth of another human being on the basis of something that was beyond their control? Our time on Earth is all that we have to give. What more can a person possibly offer to society than their full-time labour? All full-time workers should have the highest standard of living there is. We all need love and respect. We all have families that we care about. Who honestly has the right, or wisdom, to judge another person's worth?
No handful of wealthy technocrats should ever have the power to own the earth's resources and dictate how they will be used. No cabal of unelected, hubristic billionaires should be allowed to control the way the rest of humanity lives, or to decide the fate of our planet. We need to change the underlying monetary and economic machinery of society so that such inequalities of income, wealth and power are permanently impossible.
I hope this brief introduction to the possibilities for a citizen led reformation of society has lit a fire of hope and enthusiasm in your heart and spirit. I invite you to keep reading here to learn much more about a humble, sensible and equitable way to co-exist cooperatively.
