Bad money
The concept of money was invented to make the exchange of true values easier through a standardised means. Money without any collatoral is therefor nothing, it is without value, useless and if used “bad money”.
When a business asks for a loan the bank asks for a business plan. One judges the feasibility of the plans of the organization, the values it already contains in productivity and proven creativity before even considering providing the money. But what business plan lies behind the world economy? There isn’t any. Our world economy is based in the enormous amount of money that is needed to sustain the economy itself. This means that money is pumped into a system that is inflating itself without any true values at all, no collatoral nor productivity or responsibility except greed. The money that is now freely printed and put into circulation is a mortgage on our future without a credible plan at all. We are keeping in place an unsustainable global economy, not only at the expense of humanity and our planet but also future generations.
This cannot be right and it isn’t. In my previous blog I mention the reigning definition of sustainable productivity. It says that we need to cover our needs without putting a burden on future generations. But that definition is wicketly smart. It refers to productivity, refering to the limited resources of Earth. It does not refer to the financial debts that we create and that use our children as a collator. In fact we are commiting a crime against humanity by using up resources that are theirs and not even ours. We are borrowing money from our children without even asking them for permission.
A recent presentation of 95 year old Fresco suggested to put all current politicians, bankers and industrial leaders in jale. He mentioned that history will prove the crime that is committed today. And he is right. Economic criminality against humanity is tolerated and enhanced by all that manage money placing the burden on the current and future generations. But are we willing to sacrifice our luxus now and work hard to reduce the debt that we have tolerated to grow for decades? Haven’t we all voted for maintenance of what we have knowing that our way of life is unsustainable and lived at the expense of poverty around the world as well as the stability of our future?
We are so used to bad money that we have forgotten ourselves what true values are. Good money is a means, not a goal. Good money is represented by a true value that has already been created. And true value is not a speculation on our future, it is a mentality of today. Good money is created through a positive interaction between humans, taking care of our children and our elderly, in perfect harmony with our surroundings. Good money is created by servant entrepreneurship that creates value in the shape of unprecedented innovations.
If we want to reach a situation of world peace and sustainable human progress we need to distinguish between bad and good money, eliminate bad money all together from our systems and organizations and protect ourselves against it. We could even agree on laws that define good and bad money punishing those who introduce and deal with bad money, eliminating their potential power positions in the process. Bad money should be illegal. When only good money circulates no crises will happen anymore and no one can be criticised or blamed. Good money has no power play such as bad money, it has levels of responsibility.
80% of all money in the world is estimated to bad money now and the percentage is growing since it is legal and keeping up world economies in a wrong way. We have a long way to go, or a lot of crises to endure before the transformation has been taken place and good money prevails. But it is up to us all to make it happen.
Alternative definition for Sustainable Progress
The current and most widely used definition for sustainable development dates from 1987 (Brundtland) and is totally useless for sustainable progress. It says:
“sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
This statement is not sustainable itself as it cannot pinpoint individual responsibility to anyone or current generations let alone future generations. Consider for instance what the definition of needs is of today? Needs of who? The material wealthy or the poor in Africa or Asia? Your needs? My needs? Do they refer to the needs of business or political economies, luxury or primary needs? Business needs maybe?
How about the needs of future generations? How would we know what these future generations will need? They might for all we know require massive amounts of oil for medical purposes, yet we burn it all up right now. How can we take responsibility for the abilities of future generations if they are not just dependent on our left overs but also on important other variables that have nothing to do with human behavior, s.a. climat changes for instance. Do we blame the human who killed the last Dodo because he was hungry? Or do we blame ourselves for not creating responsible alternatives for nutrician before the Dodos were made extinct in the first place. How many species have to perrish before we take responsibility for the current generation?
In fact, who would control what we use, how we use it and determine if it affects future generations at all? Is this control our individual responsibility? How can we measure this? Who is to blame if we judge incorrectly and who judges? And how can I worry about compromising future generations if we already compromise current generation around our globe? In fact, this most popular definition is a open letter that allows us and anyone to do what we please without taking any responsibility. As it stands it has been insignificant since the definition appeared and introduced a green washing wisdom in industrial and government policies around the world. It may have made us a little more aware but certainly not more sustainable in development or progress, on the contrary, and not at all responsible towards future generations as we wouldn’t know how. And really, who in command cares?
In my own foundation we work on the development of workable cooperative organizations around projects that address sustainable progress of humanity itself, segmented into key issues. Interestingly we could do absolutely nothing with the definition. We found it perfectly viable to introduce some basic environment awareness in capitalist industries but totally useless when projected onto the complexity of current humanity itself.
This motivated me to come up with one of my own, just like probably hundreds of other responsible people around me over the years. My definition for sustainable progress is:
“Sustainable progress is the development that continuously improves human health, vitality, safety and dynamic progression in optimal relationship with the constantly changing environment in which we live and act.”
I found that this definition places the responsibility with each and everyone of us, as individuals as well as business and public entities, in the here and now. It became the basis of the cooperative innovative business identities that are being developped by us around real issues that concern us today, s.a. energy, quality of life, education, smart mobility, air quality and polution, food, water, etc…
The definition helps us to define our visions away from material goals and determine specific higher purposes that matter and have a positive effect on our selves, our current generations and our environment. We feel it contributes to true sustainable progress in a measurable and accountable way with the satisfaction that whatever we do in this context it will always serve also generations to come.
The end of the humanoid factory
Recently I decided never to work anymore. Why? Work is antiquated! It stems from the times of industrialization. Work is a modern way of slavery. One submits one’s existance to the demands of some human organization that decides what you have to do. In industrial processes humans became robotized to particular functions in a chain of processes. As technology developed those humans were often indeed substituted by automated robots and processes that did not complain, group themselves in demanding associations or get sick.
Those who had work could exist, those who had no work would live in poverty. At one time people thought this was unfare, not because of nobility but because of the aggression of groups of poor people against the institutions. Solutions developed. People with work were asked to help fill a pot of money that would be divided among those who had no work allowing them to survive a little too and shut up meanwhile.
After a while the factories themselves were moved to places where there were less pots of money to be filled for other purposes than those in the industrial processes. The labor was hence cheaper there allowing the industries to compete better in a global world that was growing more and more complex.
After time the amount of reserves that had developed opened up the doors for the organization of new institutions, those that offer “services”. These services were primarily ment to serve the industrial processes. Education for instance needed to supply the factories with people who already had a level of knowledge that would save the owners time to insert the individual into the industrial processes. Health care was organized to assure that people were fit enough to keep performing and police was introduced to avoid aggression to affect the continuation of industries.
The entire world of services had been copied by the way the factories were organized. People went to work too in the services. They work from 9 to 5, in shifts, perform by the clock and regard the people and processes they serve as numbers that can be optimalized. The industry of services was working to allow industrialized work to continu, even though the industries were moved far away, even up to China and India now. Globalization started with the obligation to accept work in industrialized processes, robotizing the human beings into a humanoid species enslaved to a system. The services industry was introduced to repare and assure optimum availability of humanoids in the processes. In fact, over 300 years we created one big global humanoid factory.
That is why I decided never to work again. I do not want to be subordinated to these processes. I don’t want to be robotized. I want to decide for myself. In fact I want to be truly servant to me, my family and my surroundings and not limited to 9 to 5 in my drive for a signficant life. My life is lived 24/7/365, with purpose of my own, not someone else. I am not a robot, I am a human being.
Interestingly I am meeting more and more people who cut loose from modern slavery and unite to create a new human order away from the economy of money. They unite through the development of the economy of true human values. We introduce the ending of the humanoid factory.
Sustainocracy, the new democracy 