(Surprising how little has changed in the past century.)
Over the coming few years, humankind will keep growing more and more interconnected. Eventually, we will harness our planetary solidarity, rising against today’s global system of division and exploitation, disrupting the established economic system to enact a major redistribution of wealth and power.
Once this great social movement transpires, we’ll still need a way to buy and sell things. For an idea of what a more just economy may look like, there’s a few places we can look to.
Open Money
The open money project aims to “create the global infrastructure, tools, governance mechanisms and platforms that will give communities the capacity to create their own currencies with just a few clicks and thereby liberate their wealth potential.” It’s like an open-source platform for commerce, free from the tyranny of fluctuating global markets.
The Venus Project
The Venus Project is an organization that advocates improving society by moving towards a global sustainable social design that they call a “resource-based economy”. Such a system incorporates sustainable cities and values, energy efficiency, collective farms, natural resource management and advanced automation.
A resource based economy relies on the principle of ‘post scarcity’, meaning our technology has progressed to the point of readily meeting the basic needs of every human on earth – something which is fast becoming possible.
Bitcoin
Bitcoins are digital currency which runs on an open-source, peer-to-peer network, allowing users to exchange wealth without the need for a centralized payment processor. While these coins only exist in the virtual realm, they already hold real world value.
So what will we end up using? Maybe a combination of all three, or something entirely different. Who knows.
But one thing is reasonably certain – a world full of united and empowered individuals will never tolerate an economic system that caters solely to the fortunate few sitting atop.
