What does the future hold for capitalism?
Wasn’t it competition that Adam Smith wanted to bring about 250 years ago when he laid the foundations for capitalism?
Today, this competition is mainly quantitative. Economic growth is necessary to generate wages, social benefits and, of course, profits. After all, politicians have promised to secure our prosperity.
This economic growth has led to our planet’s carrying capacity being exceeded, as we produce twice what we really need to live in dignity.
This system of competition and the market has no regulatory mechanism that can curb growth.
Technological development has now overtaken the market. For several years now, global networking has made it possible for everyone to communicate their needs directly to producers, who deliver goods just in time.
This was not the case until a few years ago. Until then, it was necessary to take goods to the market, where they had to be purchased with wages. We no longer need this market today.
The potato campaign in January 2026 in Saxony shows that it can be done.
We have a perfectly functioning model: reproduction. There is no market within the provisioning of families. What is needed is made. With care for people and the earth.
No one would think of offering their family three meals a day to choose from, just so that more is eaten and thrown away. No one cleans the bathroom twice in a row. So we see that it works without the market.
The big question is: how do we get there before the earth is destroyed?
To do this, we would simply have to separate the now obsolete financial control instrument from the existing physical economy.
Let’s do it the same way as in families. The housewife or househusband does not write invoices to family members, nor do they do payroll accounting.
What would happen if we did the same in the economy? Worldwide, from one day to the next? Just like food in families, all products in the economy would then be free.
The vast majority of business relationships in the economy are tried and tested and stable; even without financial control, the economy would continue to function.
Gifts do not need to be advertised, and competition would focus on developing durable and recyclable products instead of overproduction. Every person would be provided for unconditionally.
We would hardly notice this transition to a post-growth society, because it does not require socialisation. Property would lose its exclusive function all by itself, because all ‘capitalists’ would also be automatically provided for and nothing could be bought with the income from capital and property. What remains is only responsibility.
The assumption of unlimited needs
A frequently raised objection to models of income-independent or free provision is that, with the elimination of prices and income, demand would grow immeasurably. This assumption is implicitly based on the idea of unlimited human needs and correspondingly unlimited consumption behaviour.
However, this idea is not empirically or theoretically tenable.
Need versus demand
Economic theory often fails to distinguish between use-oriented needs and demand (solvent demand). In capitalism, needs appear exclusively in the form of demand, i.e. as a variable mediated by income and prices.
Overproduction in capitalism is therefore not an expression of excessive demand on the part of users, but the result of a supply-driven mode of production. Production is not primarily aimed at meeting existing needs, but at realising exchange value and securing capital appreciation.
Supply-induced overproduction
Empirical evidence shows that the central mechanisms of today’s overproduction lie on the supply side. These include in particular:
- planned obsolescence, which artificially shortens the useful life of products,
- aggressive and psychologically optimised advertising, which creates new needs or reinforces existing ones,
- product differentiation without functional added value, which shortens sales cycles,
- institutionalised pressure for growth as a result of credit-based financing.
These mechanisms do not serve to satisfy needs, but rather to stabilise continuous sales markets.
Frugality as an empirical and anthropological constant
The assumption of unlimited needs also contradicts anthropological and sociological findings. In almost all societies, it can be seen that human needs are relatively stable beyond a certain material level. Studies on life satisfaction indicate that additional consumption above a basic level has only limited effects on well-being.
Frugality should not be understood as a moral category, but as a structural characteristic of human needs formation. People strive for security, social recognition, meaning and self-efficacy – not for unlimited material possessions.
Consumption behaviour under conditions of direct provision
Under conditions of direct provision independent of income, the incentive to compensate for status through consumption disappears, as income and possessions lose their social signalling function. At the same time, advertising and branding lose their economic function, as it is no longer necessary to secure sales.
Under such conditions, material needs would likely be based on real usage requirements: durable, repairable and high-quality goods would replace short-term replacement consumption.
Overproduction as a systemic phenomenon
Overproduction is therefore not an expression of human excess, but the result of a system that depends on continuous capital utilisation. In a system where production is directly linked to real demand rather than sales, the structural incentive for overproduction is eliminated.
The fear of uncontrolled growth in demand thus fails to recognise the fundamental difference between a value-based mode of production and a use-value-oriented supply.
Three core axioms of a post-accounting economy
AXIOM 1: The separability of the physical economy and financial representation
„The physical processes of production, logistics and consumption can be separated from their financial representation (accounting, prices, profit calculation). The physical economy is the basis, financial accounting is a control and distribution system built on top of it – not the economy itself.“
Implications:
- Factories can produce without invoices being issued.
- Trucks can deliver without payment being made.
- People can consume without buying.
- The real economy continues to function when financial abstraction is removed.
AXIOM 2: The elimination of the compulsion to sell through guaranteed basic provision
‘When the livelihoods of all people are secured through direct physical provision, the existential compulsion to sell goods or labour is eliminated. Competition becomes an option rather than a necessity.’
Implications:
- Companies no longer need to be profitable to survive.
- Workers do not have to work for wages in order to eat.
- Innovation serves not to maximise profit, but to solve problems.
- The “market” ceases to be a survival mechanism and becomes a coordination mechanism for quality and preferences.
AXIOM 3: Real-time coordination through sensor-based feedback
‘A globally networked system of sensors and demand signals can coordinate the allocation of resources and the control of production more efficiently than the delayed and distorted signal of prices.’
Implications:
- An empty shelf directly triggers re-production – not via the detour of sales forecasts.
- Global resource scarcity becomes immediately visible and can be democratically prioritised.
- Production is based on actual consumption, not projected sales.
- Information replaces negotiation as a coordination mechanism.
AXIOM 4: THE GENEROSITY BOOM
„The sudden liberation from payment constraints for basic goods triggers a collective psychological event that immediately shifts from fear of scarcity to relieved generosity. This system change generates its own social stability through spontaneous cooperation.“
Neuroeconomic basis:
- Security priming effect: When basic needs are guaranteed, cognitive resources are freed up – instead of being used for existential concerns, they become available for cooperation and creativity.
- Status anxiety relief: Constant social comparison (‘Can I afford what others have?’) is eliminated when basic needs are generally met.
- Reciprocity relaxation: The implicit logic of debt in every transaction (‘I give you this, you owe me that’) breaks down.
Empirical analogies:
- Disaster altruism: After acute hardship (earthquakes, floods, Covid-19) has been overcome, there is often a brief phase of extraordinary helpfulness.
- End-of-war euphoria: It is not victory, but the end of rationing that triggers the greatest joy.
- Experiments with unconditional provision: Every basic income experiment shows reduced anxiety, better mental health and increased social engagement.
Consequences for the system change:
The greatest fear – that people will fall into competitive selfishness when goods are ‘free’ – is proven wrong. The immediate removal of the payment threshold transforms scarcity thinking into abundance thinking, making cooperation the most rational option because it is the happiest.
The resulting imperative:
‘Turn off the financial control level to free the physical economy from its growth imperative and replace it with a transparent, real-time demand allocation system.’
THE CONCLUSION PARADOX
If the four axioms are true – and the empirical evidence suggests they are – then:
- Our current system is not only suboptimal, but actively destructive.
- The solution is not complex, but alarmingly simple: Separate the physical from the financial.
- The transition cannot be gradual, but must be a global switch.
- The longer we wait, the more painful the necessary transition will be.
The axioms are not utopian. They are a description of the real possibilities that our current economic logic systematically obscures.
Anticipated objections and rebuttals
Objection 1: ‘Without financial incentives, no one will work.’
Rebuttal: Unpaid care work (approx. 30-50% of GDP) proves the opposite. People work for meaning, recognition, community and self-fulfilment. The ‘helper’s high’ (neurochemical reward for cooperative behaviour) becomes the main driver.
Objection 2: ‘That’s a centralised planned economy.’
Rebuttal: It’s the opposite. Prices are a centralised information system (everyone reacts to the same price). Our system is decentralised and polycentric – everyone responds to direct signals from their local network, which are visible in a global dashboard.
Objection 3: ‘Who decides what is produced?’
Rebuttal: This is decided through transparent demand aggregation and democratic prioritisation, not through the secret calculations of marketing departments and shareholders. The question ‘What will be produced?’ becomes a democratic question, not a secret profit calculation.
The transformation
The global simultaneous separation of accounting from the physical economy could take place in two directions.
From below: All employees could forego their wages or salaries from a specific day. This would eliminate costs in the economy, making accounting superfluous.
The simultaneous changeover is necessary so that labour costs are eliminated throughout the entire production chain, starting with raw materials and including all auxiliary materials, leaving only the free material.
From above: All economic institutions simultaneously shut down their accounting systems worldwide, so that no more invoicing and payroll accounting takes place.
This requires sufficient communication. To this end, it is necessary to spread this idea in the media.
The general functionality is explained here in a dialogue between Helena and Maya
A short explanatory video (5 minutes)
Berlin, 04 February 2026 Eberhard Licht