That’s often the first question I hear when I talk about the money-free society.

We will then have completely different ideas about life. No one will anonymously rent a shop in a block of flats and open a branch to sell bread. The baker then belongs organically to the residential area because he supplies the people there with bread. If the baker refuses to get up at four, people will think about how to keep the bread supply going. We can assume that we will then only work two to three days, so we will have plenty of time to take care of community affairs. 

Today, monotonous and heavy work is done by people who do it for little money. If the money no longer serves as a decision criterion, then robots are used. Nowadays, robots can be used for almost all human activities. New and exciting challenges will come our way and we will be proud if we have helped to solve them.

If the financial and advertising industries are no longer needed, nothing will change in the branches of industry that are responsible for supplying the population. Agriculture, textile companies, food companies continue to work as usual. And just as the bank employees previously got what they need , after the money has disappeared they would be supplied with what they need. Money disappearing does not mean that there are more people who need the goods. There will be just as many goods as there were before, and just as many people.

The big difference is that there is no longer any difference between “paid” and “unpaid” work. You can look for any activity that you enjoy. When global companies fall apart, many employees are required.

If we only consume what makes us really happy and no longer what the economy dictates today in order to be able to continue growing, we will probably only have to work two or three days a week. We can look for jobs we never thought of because there wasn’t enough money for it.

Maybe people who are no longer needed in advertising or finance will go into the food industry and help out there. Or in the social or educational system. Why not? Or they set up residential communities for older people. Starting something new doesn’t cost anything. And so it goes on and on, towards a more humane direction.

The worldwide introduction of a basic income would be so complicated that it is unrealistic to think about it. Even if a basic income were introduced worldwide, people would still be homeless if they had to spend their support on other important things. The basic income would not change anything in the capitalist market economy, which is geared towards perpetual growth. It’s much easier to get rid of money altogether.

Some people I tell about this idea say, how are you going to make everyone drink champagne?

Doesn’t this desire come from the fact that champagne is really expensive? When the prices disappear from the shelves, only true gourmets will appreciate it.

If we stop being bombarded by ads and discount offers, we will find ourselves again and feel what is really good for us. And I promise you, that’s a lot less than we think today, because today’s economy is constantly inventing new needs to generate growth.

We won’t be worse off. But the goods can finally be distributed fairly. If there’s a famine somewhere, you don’t have to wait for money first, you can simply take what’s too much elsewhere to go there.

This will make things better for the people who are in need today. With this new economic order it will be possible to eliminate all misery in the world, since the focus is no longer on profit but on solidarity.

The people who live in prosperity today will have true freedom. Because they are no longer manipulated by money. You will buy the vegetables from the organic farmer and not the cheap vegetables from far away. You won’t have to commute far to earn a little more. And they never have to fill out tax returns again.

The main feature of capitalism is that people have handed over the decision of growth to institutions. Institutions have no human sensibilities. They don’t care about the state of the earth and justice among the people and naturally they cannot understand protests.

These institutions are called AG, GmbH, Limited. They are the institutions of the global economy. They decide with the help of mathematics and not with common sense. People only have an employment contract with these institutions.

The CEO or the board of directors of the company also has an employment contract with this institution. Since they have a duty of loyalty to their employer, they cannot do anything about the decision of this “calculating machine”. They certainly wouldn’t risk his top salary either.

Example: A pharmaceutical company: They say that pharmaceutical companies don’t produce for countries that don’t have money. This decision is made automatically by the company’s balance sheet by calculating the numbers and simply comparing them. Actually, the company is a calculating machine. The CEO may even be a philanthropist, like many of the super-rich who give big bucks to charity. But he can’t do anything against the decision of this calculating machine, because he has an employment contract with this company, this legal institution. He is committed to loyalty to this institution and does not want to lose his well-paid job. The company is an institution that has no soul. The company and the institution don’t care about the people in the poor country. This process is called “The invisible hand of the market”. Humans can’t do anything about it and the worst thing is that there’s nothing human about the corporations, these institutions.

Example: Tendering a service: If a car manufacturer needs parts that he doesn’t want to produce himself, he looks for a supplier. This is done through calls for tender. Each prospect offers a price and the cheapest one is accepted. So each tries to be cheaper than the other, at the expense of environmental standards or workers’ wages. The tender is also an impersonal instrument used by the client. It doesn’t decide like a human, but like a calculating machine.And that’s exactly why growth will go on and on until one day it collapses.

To put it very simply, there are two economic cycles: a small and necessary cycle that ensures that people are supplied with everyday goods and a large, speculative cycle in which the increase in money plays the main role.
The small cycle is stable and it serves to provide all people with the goods and services they need. It also provides all tax officials, stock brokers, insurance agents and lawyers who lose their jobs when the money’s gone. They were also adequately cared for beforehand.

The most important thing about the disappearance of money is that nothing has to or should change during the transition. On the day the money disappears, everyone has to do exactly what they did the day before. Getting up early, going to work or school, and doing the usual errands after work. Since you usually get your salary or wages at the end of the month, you first notice something when the checkouts in the supermarket are not manned.

It is therefore important that nothing changes so that the existing supply chains are not disrupted in the daily supply. The supply chain from raw material supplier to factory, from factory to wholesale and from wholesale to retail, to put it very trivially. And this chain will continue to function even without money, because every employee in this chain does his job. Just like the employees of the electric power plant, water works, sewage works, drivers of trains, buses, taxis and trucks, medical staff, police officers, teachers, postal workers, etc. Road works are going on, new machines are installed, research on new developments is continued. And each of the billions of employees goes to the shops in the evening and takes what they need to live on. Or the new television, the purchase of which had been planned for a long time.

This cycle has proven its stability during the pandemic.

When the money’s gone, the great cycle will slowly unravel, since there is no longer any possibility or need to increase the money. The freed workers support the small cycle or become active in the developing civil society. Due to the large number of potential workers and the reduced consumption, the weekly working time will probably be limited to two to three days. Most people will be willing to do this voluntarily. Heavy, dangerous, and monotonous work now done by cheap labor will be done by robots.

We have to completely switch our thinking about economics. Is our current way of thinking about the economy really correct?
We think the economy is there for us. But aren’t WE slaves of the economy today? We consume so that the economy grows. We don’t buy what we really need to be happy, we buy what the economy dictates to us with advertising, discount offers, newly created and non-natural needs and artificially shortening the shelf life of the products.

Since our real internal needs are much smaller than those artificially created by the economy, natural resources will also be exploited much less if this obligation to buy is removed. 

What will happen with the economy after the abolition of the money?

Large and global companies will break down again into smaller manageable companies. The trend towards labor saving will be reversed and there will be job opportunities for many people.

Small and medium-sized companies are increasingly being run like real family businesses. The ownership structure is clear and simple and since there is no competitive pressure, the company management will be able to take better care of a good working atmosphere. Your reward is thanks and appreciation from the employees and that is the best reward one could ask for.

It will be similar in agriculture. Since there is no competitive pressure here either and there is no incentive for management to get rich with money, the fields and stables will become smaller again. Over time, people’s mobility will decrease as there will no longer be a need to commute. You no longer have to travel far to earn a little more. This frees up large areas of agricultural land, now needed for biofuel production, for food production.

In today’s countries of origin of cheap agricultural products, regional agriculture, which has disappeared due to mass production, will return. The natural balance and biodiversity that competition has destroyed will gradually be restored.

Civil society, made up of commons, will proliferate as there is no longer a distinction between paid and unpaid work. Everyone will find a job there according to their skills and inclinations. The strong civil society will probably also devote itself to major tasks, the realization of which is unthinkable today because the money is lacking. Areas of the earth that have become deserts due to human activities could be made arable again. This is much easier than the realization of existing plans to colonize the moon or Mars.

A very common question is what happens to the unpleasant activities. We are now able to make most unpleasant activities more pleasant, or have them performed by robots. But in our society, you can always find people who will do these nasty jobs cheaper than using robots. If there is no more money, then a free decision about it is possible.

If the garbage disposal is not left to the cheapest provider, the residential areas think about how to achieve that as little garbage as possible is produced and recyclable materials are separated and transported as well and without problems as possible. 

Sharing and togetherness also makes unpleasant things more pleasant. In many districts, the fortnightly cleaning of the streets and front doors is celebrated almost like a residential area festival, at which neighborly relationships are also cultivated.

In the current economic system, investments are paid from the surpluses of growth.

When the money is gone, the products are available for free. This is because the employees work for no money and all the raw materials and energy are supplied free of charge by nature. So when a company needs a new machine, it orders it from the supplier just like before. When it’s ready, it’s delivered and installed. Simply that way. And so it continues throughout the economy. Growth is no longer needed because investments are free.

Today we stand in front of the champagne shelf full of admiration and desire because the bottles are so expensive that we cannot afford them. And we think if only we had that much money! There are people who only buy champagne because it is so expensive.

When the price tags run out, we’ll ignore that shelf and move straight to the semi-dry varieties, because they taste much better. The few champagne bottles then remain for the real gourmets.

First of all, we have to ask why there are luxury goods at all. Humans don’t feel the natural need to drive around town in a 500hp SUV. SUVs were developed because there is a branch of science in today’s economy that deals with creating new needs. This is a typical process in the market economy to increase consumption. No one asked whether these vehicles are compatible with climate change and resource conservation, the only important thing was to create a new need to generate growth.

When there is no more money and therefore no growth, there are no longer any needs to be aroused. There will therefore be no more advertising, since it is no longer of any use to anyone. I think that after a period of transition nobody will have the need for scarce luxury goods anymore, also because the social hierarchy is disappearing. In a society in which siblings can develop freely, there is no need to distinguish oneself with externals. And this transition period will be so exciting and exciting that the transition problem with the luxury goods can certainly be neglected.

The way we spend our free time will change in two ways. Since the social ranking is disappearing because there is no “rich and poor” but solidarity with each other, we will also attach less importance to external appearances. Instead of going to the shopping center, we occupy ourselves with our hobbies. And no one will push us to make new purchases through advertising anymore.

Today we no longer need the market, it is an outdated relic from times when there was still need and want all over the world. Today we have the possibility of short distances. With the help of the Internet, we can connect the store shelf directly to the producer. This has nothing to do with planned economy, this is production in real time!

That would also save a lot of natural resources and a lot of energy, since everything that people need, but only just that, is produced immediately and delivered at short notice. 

We also no longer need the market because it is no longer necessary to create unnecessary needs because there must be no more growth. Today’s means of communication take over the regulation that is now carried out by the free market with all its disadvantages such as overproduction or the creation of artificial bottlenecks. Some economists say money is a means of market communication, a very outdated view. It’s kind of like writing letters in the age of email. Today there are much better means of communication. What is now being striven for with Industry 4.0, in order to make competing large companies more competitive, will then be used for general communication among each other and to ensure the prosperity of all people. You no longer have to look for the cheapest provider, but for the providers that consumers choose with their free decision.

We think we only work hard for money because we were raised that way. But what are we really like? Did we actually try harder at school when we were promised money? Aren’t we often much more committed to our hobbies than to our job? Wikipedia is a project run by volunteers. All civil society works like this. Sometimes the money even slows you down or hasn’t we already heard the sentence: “… I’m not getting paid for that!”. 

There are sociological studies on this that have shown that when you do something voluntarily, you put more effort into it than when you are badly paid for it. You’re even more creative than when you’re well paid. Doing something voluntarily is a bit like preparing a gift for someone. In such a situation, you automatically try harder. And we will then live in a gift economy.

The abolition of money does not affect private property. That’s why there won’t be any really disadvantaged people, nobody has to be afraid of it. There will be no expropriations like in socialism. Marxists say that a revolution must inevitably go hand in hand with expropriation. But when there is no more money, then there is no more profit. And since there is no profit to be made from property, property is not harmful because it cannot increase inequality. Weapons are only industrially produced because there is a lot of profit to be made from them.

The expropriations during the great revolutions of the 20th century were of no use at all, since they could easily be reversed. Since there was money even under socialism, greed still existed. When the money’s gone, people change. The greed disappears and that cannot be undone.

Owners of large areas of land or many rental properties remain owners of these properties. But since they are no longer valuable, since there is no income to be gained from them, they become worthless and only cost effort. Owners will only keep as much land or living space as they need for their own use. Ownership also obliges us to handle it with care.

However, leases must be continued to protect tenants. But the owner no longer has any reason whatsoever to terminate leases in order to get more money from the next tenant.

The paradigm shift changes the relationship to property on both sides. Tenants or users regard the use as a gift and will participate in the maintenance.

Since we give each other presents in this form of society, we will also treat property differently and no longer exclude it from general use.

The financially better off and also the banks have invested their money in companies and real estate. Since there are no expropriations, this property is not touched. So nobody would really be disadvantaged, but has the freedom to decide about it.

Technical progress happened in the market economy, but it is mainly due to our knowledge and to our innate creativity and drive. Today, competition is often counterproductive because cheap production is prevented by patents. In addition, you often have to pay much more attention to marketing than to real innovation.

The development of the Covid-19 vaccine in particular showed how harmful competition is. Development would have been much faster and much more could have been produced if the competing companies had worked together. But intellectual property rights had to be protected because investors could lose money.

Our motivation and curiosity will not disappear just because there is no money. We will continue to have ideas and it will be much easier to find like-minded people to implement the idea. It is likely that far fewer ideas will disappear in drawers because there are no financial possibilities for their realization today. Young people with good ideas can set up innovative companies because they no longer have to worry about financing. Everyone works together on problems, there is no longer any competition.

Maybe the speed of development for new products will slow down a bit when there is no more competition. But the ever faster development in recent years has also led to the fact that the lifespan of the products is artificially shortened. It’s called planned obsolescence. The result is that more and more waste is created and natural resources are depleted. Who doesn’t mourn the good old washing machine that was no worse than the newest but lasted for 20 years. We wouldn’t mind if we used our cell phone for maybe three years and didn’t throw it away every year because a new one was advertised.

Unfortunately Today, prosperity is understood primarily as consumption. And the economy suggests that the consumption of the Global North should also be extended to the Global South. This promises economic growth. We in the Global North are now consuming three times what we consumed fifty years ago, but we haven’t gotten significantly happier.

Is our current way of thinking about the economy and prosperity really correct?
We think the economy is there for us. But aren’t WE slaves of the economy today? We consume so that the economy grows. We don’t buy what we really need to be happy, we buy what the economy dictates to us with advertising, discount offers, newly created and non-natural needs and artificially shortening the shelf life of the products.

When the money is gone, we will get much better prosperity. We will gradually find our own self again. 

We will keep what we have today. Great cell phones, escalators in department stores, fresh bread rolls on Sundays. But we will evolve towards a prosperity that is true to our nature and not dictated by the economy to generate growth. Prosperity will be later, to rest on Sunday, much less rush and traffic, closer to the natural environment, much more time for our hobbies, which no longer cost anything and much more time for our family..

The new prosperity will surely make us happier.

A currency like our money is actually only needed if there are not enough goods. If there is enough of everything, you can just take what you want. For 50 years mankind has been producing more than it can consume. The problem is that the surpluses are not distributed well. This would only work if you could give away surplus. So if there was no money.

You need a voucher like money if there is not enough beer at a party. But at our world party there is enough. That’s why we no longer need a voucher.

Imagine you go to our world party and everyone brings something. Are you taking your salad to swap for the tiramisu? No. Everyone prepares something delicious without intending to trade it for something else. So there is no exchange, but give and take.

When there is enough and you can just have what you need, there will be no more greed. 

Some who wonder about this new society also call it the gift economy. We get the raw materials and the energy from the earth and the sun as a gift and then give them to others. In the gift economy, people give each other gifts. That’s why you don’t need a substitute currency.

Most people don’t save money for their own sake but to provide for the future. In a voluntary society, one does not have to provide for the future, since one is naturally provided for until the end of one’s life. Similar to the social network in the solidarity community. You don’t have to pay 100,000 euros for an operation because everyone contributes. In the gift economy, however, this affects all areas of life. So it doesn’t matter if the savings are gone, simply because you don’t need it anymore. How many times have people lost their savings without even having any benefit. As a result of currency crises caused by the market or by war.

An unbelievable amount of money is being printed around the world at the moment in order to stimulate economic growth again. In such situations, however, there is always a risk of currency devaluation. Inflation is always associated with chaos. We must not wait for something like this to happen, but we can anticipate it with a targeted devaluation of the currency.

Currency devaluations have happened more than once in history. Most recently in Germany after the Second World War and when the money from the GDR disappeared. So this is nothing new. What is new is that there is no replacement currency. Then the money is really gone.

Almost every country in the world is in debt. Of course, all citizens of these countries are also in debt, whether we want to admit it or not. Every German owes about 27,000 euros. That is as much as the average amount of the savings deposits of at least half of all Germans. This fact can probably be generalized for all industrialized nations. If the banks demand their money back, all citizens would have to pay. In the Global South, people’s financial conditions are likely to be even worse.

In the gift economy you no longer need any savings, because we care for each other in solidarity and as brothers and sisters.

Our great-grandchildren will laugh at our efforts to save money.

Try to imagine that everything is free. You could take whatever you want. First of all, you don’t really do it because there wouldn’t be enough space at home for all that stuff. And secondly, everything is still free in a week or a month. But you could theoretically take everything with you. Greed is wanting something you can’t have. That means the greed disappears. If advertising and cheap prices no longer encourage us to buy, after a short time we will only take what we really need to be happy. And that saves natural resources and energy.

Greed and envy are instilled in us. People aren’t naturally wired that way. Greed and envy are among the most negative traits of human beings. Greed is being able to buy as much as possible and envy is wanting what your neighbor has. These two qualities are the cornerstones of the market economy, which would not function without them. The system will therefore do everything it can to promote these two qualities. Greed and envy are the oil in the gears of the market.

We must not imagine the gift economy like the battle at the cold buffet or Black Friday, where you get something (almost) free for a limited time.

It’s more like a relaxed all-inclusive vacation. You know that tomorrow everything will be free.

Or we can imagine a happy party. That’s actually how our life should be. A party where everyone brings something and everyone can take from everything. One take a bit more and the other only from each a bite, no one is jealous.

With the abolition of money, we create the conditions for something to change. There are many concepts for this development, such as degrowth, post-growth, donut economics, commonism, commoning and others. This are ideas from people who worry about what scientists are telling us. Namely that there will be a collapse if we continue to do business as we have in the last 50 years.

But as long as there is money and the market economy as it is today, there must be growth, because growth is the law of the market economy.

About a quarter of our society would be willing to accept alternative ways of life. This is the percentage of those who would also vote for green parties. So if a quarter of society were to start living out concepts of degrowth and consume less, the remaining 75% would have to consume even more to generate the growth demanded by economists. This does not change the economy.

But if we abolish money, a situation would be reached in which every person can freely decide whether or not to continue consuming.

But it is not easy to imagine a world without money. We think that’s not possible because we are so greedy. But we have to assume that we will change quickly and then think and behave differently. It is also clear that we are afraid of such a situation. Today we live safely in cages. The amount of money we have is the bars. We try or we are forced to spend our money to the limit. It’s like an animal that wants to go outside and can’t. We stick our arms through the bars as far as we can by taking out loans.

Most of the cages are small, but there are also large cages of rich people. But even the richest people’s cages are not infinitely large, since they cannot freely dispose of all the money because it is mostly invested in the economy. There are studies that say that anything over 70,000 euro’s a year does not make you happier.

When the money’s gone, those bars go away and suddenly we’re free. We don’t know today how we will behave then. Even if we were to do an experiment with a limited group of people living in a community where there is no money, we are not truly free. These people know that they are surrounded by cages and that the time of this freedom is limited.

We can only try to imagine how animals behave that are suddenly given their freedom. If we are not completely starved, and we are not at the moment, we will certainly not pounce on the first victim but we will first carefully explore what freedom is.

After just a few days we will change our behavior when we realize that everything is being given to us. Much earlier than the realization that we don’t earn anything because the salary or wages are usually not expected until the end of the month anyway.

It will start with not looking at the prices. We’ll take the locally grown organic fruit and veg that we’ve left out because it was too expensive. And maybe we think about the fact that there is just as much labor in it as in cheaply produced vegetables.

And greed will disappear from our lives because we can just take what we need to live.

A revolution has taken place in the last 10,000 years. That’s only about five-thousandths of human history. We are on a higher level now, science and technology brought us here. We must complete this revolution now if we do not want to destroy our livelihoods.

The abolition of money is a great adventure of all mankind. A departure into a new dimension of society, comparable to a Mars mission. Or a mission to repel a large meteorite that flies towards the earth. As such a meteorite one could also imagine the danger of a collapse that we are heading towards if we do not stop the growth.

Most people I tell about getting rid of money say, “For God’s sake! Mankind is far from ready!”

I then ask, what are we not ready for?

The most important thing about the disappearance of money is that nothing has to or should change during the transition. On the day the money disappears, everyone has to do exactly what they did the day before. Getting up early, going to work or school, and doing the usual errands after work. Since you usually get your salary or wages at the end of the month, you first notice something when the checkouts in the supermarket are not manned.

It is therefore important that nothing changes so that the existing supply chains are not disrupted in the daily supply. The supply chain from raw material supplier to factory, from factory to wholesale and from wholesale to retail, to put it very trivially. And this chain will continue to function even without money, because every employee in this chain does his job. Just like the employees of the electric power plant, water works, sewage works, drivers of trains, buses, taxis and trucks, medical staff, police officers, teachers, postal workers, etc. Road works are going on, new machines are installed, research on new developments is continued. And each of the billions of employees goes to the shops in the evening and takes what they need to live on. Or the new television, the purchase of which had been planned for a long time.

Nothing changes, only that no money flows back.

Why can we be sure that, with a few exceptions, everyone will participate? Very easily. Everyone knows what depends on it. Everyone knows that if this transition doesn’t happen, society will collapse. Just as we make small things that make our families work, we will also make sure that the supply of society is not jeopardized. As disciplined as we have been protecting ourselves and others by wearing the face mask for two years, we will protect ourselves and others from the collapse of society. Just as we are reminded every 3 minutes on public transport to cover our faces, in shops we are advised to stop taking ourselves with us as usual.

This is a major shared task for our political landscape. In order for it to work, all people must be motivated to continue doing everything as before. This is important to ensure supply flows are not disrupted and contracts are honored. To do this, all politicians must pull together and it makes absolutely no difference whether one has right-wing, left-wing, green, conservative, liberal or socialist views. And the politicians must also encourage us to dare to take this step towards freedom.

Democracy is the feeling of freedom, freedom from money is real freedom.

Actually, we don’t leave the house every morning just because we’re driven by the thought of earning money. We leave the house because we are used to it. That there is money for it is rather normal, without thinking about it all the time. Contact with our colleagues is part of our social environment.

Man is guided by habits. We will continue to go about our daily duties as a matter of course to feed and provide for ourselves and others. This is innate self-protection. Every person knows that the system collapses if he does not fulfill his daily duties. It’s the same in the family.

You can also look at it in a more philosophical way. The ability to work is what distinguishes us from animals. The desire to create something is in us. Regardless of whether we get paid for it or not.

Several thousand years ago, some people began to appropriate land. They let other people work on this soil and remunerated this work first in kind and later in money. Over time, the idea that you have to work to get money grew. But that idea is just as wrong as simply grabbing land that belonged to everyone.

With the abolition of money, the natural state is simply restored. Not like in the original community, but at a new level of quality, based on our current state of science and technology.

Example: A family has an income of 4000 euros.By the end of the month everything has been spent on groceries, clothes, transport, rent and dining out. What would happen if they got all these things for free, but there was no income for them? Wouldn’t that be the same?

Now someone asks how you can get everything for free? Let’s take transportation. Imagine that the mother in this family works as a bus driver and the father works in a petroleum company that produces diesel. We said that there is no income for everyone, so the bus ride doesn’t cost anything because mineral oil is a gift from the earth.

Now it’s like trying to figure out an arithmetic problem when you think about what happens with the groceries, the clothes and the restaurant visits. Basically it’s the same everywhere.

But how about the rent? If the family doesn’t have to pay anything for anything, then of course the landlord doesn’t have to pay anything for anything either. And that creates a very special situation. Imagine the landlord has 100 apartments. Does he have to collect rent if he gets everything he needs for free? Would he make an effort to get a few more apartments or to push through a rent increase?

Just as the landlord would not make an effort, neither would the car manufacturers make an effort to sell more cars. And just as little would the clothing manufacturers make an effort to sell more and more clothes.

No one has to work hard to sell more and more because they don’t get anything from it. His life is secured because everything is free.

Today we consume because the economy demands it from us in order to be able to grow. All of that is gone and next year CO2 emissions will therefore be reduced for the first time. Why only dream about it?

For fifty years, experts from various disciplines at the Club of Rome have warned that the earth is threatened if the economy continues to grow. There have been almost 30 UN climate conferences since 1995. However, growth has not slowed down as a result, but has even increased threefold since then. And with growth, of course, the consumption of natural resources and the production of greenhouse gases have continued to increase. The diagram of the Federal Environment Agency shows that politics has no influence on this.

In the meantime, the forests are burning, the poles and glaciers are melting, the seas are polluted with plastic and biodiversity is shrinking dramatically. But politicians shout the “alarm” when growth slows. The “invisible hand of the market” always finds a way to further increase growth. Cosmetic changes in today’s social and economic system will not change that. The market always finds a gap until the last fish and the last tree are sold.

We have to take the tool from the invisible hand, and that is money.

The countries of the global south are often heavily indebted. This contributes to poverty and inequality in these countries. Global over-indebtedness reached an unprecedented high in 2021. That is why these countries are forced to have their natural wealth plundered.

The abolition of money leads to the repayment of debts and relieves these countries of their burden.

You can make a lot of money manufacturing and trading weapons. War is the best way to be able to produce new weapons. Many influential people earn money from it and are therefore not interested in wars stopping. Only when money is abolished one can no longer make a profit from weapons production.

The time you spend with your children or look after your relatives is worthless today. But when you sit at the computer, you make a lot of money. Isn’t it much more important to take care of your family instead of getting paid? Only when money is abolished will care work be equivalent to today’s paid work.

Because you have to pay for shelter, health care and food, money represents a barrier that is insurmountable for people who have no income. 

Even if there was a global basic income, there would still be homeless people if they had to spend their financial support on other important things.

When there is no more money, everyone has access to everything they need to live.

Economists are gamblers. They even openly admit that if they try to manipulate the market they don’t know what is going to happen.

Their stakes are now in the trillions. It is unimaginably large, the magnitude of entire national economies. Their stakes are not theirs, they gamble with the money we all lose.

The better or worse of billions of people depends on this game of chance. That will only stop when there is no more money.

The global economy needs growth. Growth comes through consumption and so that we consume more and more, the economy is busy constantly awakening new needs. Unrestrained consumption determines people’s leisure time in the global north. This leads to the fact that we know each other less and less and we know what is really important to us. For example the earth to which we belong, with its biodiversity. Scientists say that in the last 50 years more than 70% of all plant and animal species have irretrievably disappeared from our planet.

When we get rid of the money, we will focus again on what is really important.

It would be natural for us to support regional companies. But we mainly buy products that come from far away because their production was cheap there due to market competition. We don’t buy vegetables from organic farmers in the area, but from places where labor is cheaper. Clothing comes from Asia, where people are exploited. In the countries of the global south, established agricultural structures are being destroyed and the creation of monocultures which reduces the diversity of species, just so that the countries of the global north can be supplied with cheap products. The reason for this is mostly national debt. We know this is not right, but as long as money drives our habits, that won’t change.

Today’s philosophers and thinkers see the dawn of a new age, that of the planetary age. For the first time, humanity is able to free itself from gravity, to view our planet from the outside and to sense its fragility. In addition, thanks to technical and scientific progress, we would be able to enable everyone on earth to live a life without need. There has not been something like that before. Humanity is on the threshold of the 3rd millennium and we are ready for a big step towards a new quality of coexistence.

Insoluble contradictions: Competition is based on inequality. That is why inequality is growing in capitalism.
Law of Infinite Growth.

Insoluble contradictions: The existence of public property can only be maintained through the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Organized irresponsibility.

Realizable in the short term through global currency devaluation.

The main advantages are: investments are free,
therefore the economy no longer needs growth that exploits the earth and changes the climate.
No more competition. Everyone tries to reach the goal at the same time and inequality in the world will go away.

The most important human rights are fully guaranteed:
– Right to adequate food
– Right to shelter
– Right to medical care

All debts are disappearing worldwide without any disadvantage. Because you don’t need any more money.

Many system critics say that there should be no property. We have to realize that the abolition of property is totally unrealistic because it would require violence. When there is no more money and no profit can be made from property, property will gradually lose its meaning.

We will only notice the abolition of money because all goods are free. Otherwise we won’t miss anything. The economic impact will be smaller than the first lockdown. Our standard of living remains, only we are no longer asked to consume.

The simultaneous global devaluation of money would not trigger any reaction from the market. The market is simply shut down.

About 50 years ago we reached a level at which more was being produced than was consumed. If everything would be distributed fairly, then all people would be adequately supplied with means of need. At that time, the Club of Rome’s “Limits for Growth” appeared and the first scientists worried about whether the market economy could continue like this.

The basic law of the market economy is called growth. Growth requires more and more consumption and more consumption leads to depletion of the earth’s supplies, more waste and CO2. This waste of resources is bringing us closer and closer to collapse. The growth in the global north is disproportionately high whilst the global south is increasingly disadvantaged as a result. The growth must therefore be stopped as soon as possible.

Because this law has worked so well for the past 250 years, nobody wants to do anything against it. Politicians and governments firmly believe in it as a law of nature and worship it like a god. Demands to politicians and governments will therefore not change today’s society.

One possibility of change would be a revolution according to Karl Marx. Karl Marx wanted to abolish the oppression of the working population and, by nationalizing capital, prevent the creation of profit that the capitalist appropriates and accumulates. But that’s not as easy today as it was 100 years ago.

At Marx there were still people who represented the economy. The October Revolution in Russia was successful because there were capitalists who could be expropriated. Today we have a global economy that is extraordinarily diverse. The global economy consists of billions of jobbers who do everything to keep their jobs, millions of start-ups who do everything to repay their loans and of millions of companies who do everything to ensure a minimum growth, because otherwise they are to be swallowed by the giants.

This global economy cannot be expropriated. There is also nobody who would do that, because many people are not doing bad enough for that. Today we need a different plan than a revolution.

We give these things an artificial value, buy them and so they belong to us and we do what we want with them. This in turn gives us the right to bottle the water and sell it at high prices. And when we get tired of things, we just throw them away. Disposal is regulated by law.

It is nonsensical to rate things with work, it’s like trying to rate an apple by loudness. 

Because things have value, politics influence us to consume far too many of these things just to keep the gross national product growing. This consumption ultimately leads to the melting of the polar ice caps, pollution of the oceans with microplastics and a cruel decrease in biodiversity.

But actually it contradicts all natural laws. The iron from which the sheet metal of the car is made is a gift from the earth. The grain that has grown in the field is harvested, ground and baked into bread. According to the law of the conservation of mass, it did not multiply. The same amount of electrical energy that our coffee machine consumes has also come from the earth free of charge with natural gas or taken from the wind or sunlight for free. The material or the energy have not increased in “quantity”, that is not possible at all. The amount of everything has stayed the same, it has only been changed by human labour.

The treasures of the earth are free, so they cannot be bought and therefore they do not belong to us. They are part of the natural cycle. We can take what we need to live, but no more.

We could easily restore a reasonable world order by separating work from things, and then all things are free again.

If things don’t cost anything, then of course the work can’t cost anything either. So let’s get rid of the money.

The work will then just be done. This also eliminates the paradox that the work that is done inside your own apartment or garden is free and the work outside must be paid for. Or the paradox that the work you spend on caring for relatives or raising children is worthless in contrast to the working hours you spend at your desk.

Just as we keep our apartment clean today, take away the rubbish and take care of food and clothing for our relatives, we later ensure that the city is clean and that the production of goods and daily supplies are assured. We do this because we feel responsible for it and not because we are paid for one and not for the other.

What are the advantages of the new social order? 

Since we are no longer encouraged to consume through advertising, much less is consumed. This conserves our natural resources and generates less CO2. If we are given everything for free, we perceive it as a gift from nature and we will want to protect nature much better. 

Care work is the same as previously paid work. This will finally eliminate injustice between the genders. We can now voluntarily do anything we dreamed of. Starting with the support of our relatives and the care of our children, artistic activities, even up to large projects like the reforestation of the rainforests, as we do not have to pay attention to the financial aspects. 

The health care and retirement provision of all people on earth is assured and since we do not have to work for recreational consumption as we do today, the work is probably done three days a week. With secure old-age provision, the world population will shrink significantly within one or two generations.

So nothing stands in the way of a new social order without money.