Category: Blog

Since I’ve start promoting sharing more vigorously as the path to a money-free world, quite a few people have asked me this question, so thought I’d create a post about it.

Why is sharing the path to a money-free world?

Well, for lots of reasons, but first…

There are more than a few people today who believe that the world would be a better place without money and, well, capitalism altogether. I am one of those people.

And, just to nip any false impressions in the bud, ‘non-capitalism’ doesn’t automatically equate to communism. In fact, given current technical capability, it means a much freer, fairer and more sustainable world where everyone can enjoy their lives to their full potential without the traditional constraints of ‘earning’ a living. That’s the theory anyway.

Well of course I don’t ‘love’ tax, but even I must concede it is a necessary (and imperfect) evil in a money world.

Many of you will be familiar with the ‘taxation is theft’ memes that have been doing the rounds for the last few years. The suggestion that the system is unfair is perfectly fine with me, but I find this particular approach quite misleading and unhelpful to change movements as a whole.

Delighted to announce that I will be taking these ideas to the stage at TEDx Galway in Ireland on February the 7th. My talk will be a general…

Ladies and gentlemen, we are locked in an insane cycle of solving problems through economic growth.

Take poverty for example: where it exists, we just think it means we don’t have enough growth in that area, or on that country as a whole. While fiscal growth does combat poverty to a degree, it invariably has other costs such as environmental degradation through resource extraction, and still has a long, long way to go to redress the chronic geopolitical and social inequality that epitomises our human culture.

What would you do if money were no object? A familiar question I’m sure. Often we fantasise about the choices we’d make if we had enough money to act without fear. But there is another interpretation of this familiar idiomatic question that is much less considered.

What if money literally were no object? ie. what if it didn’t exist at all? What if we never traded? What if we never got paid, and everything was free? Sounds crazy, right? Well it’s not so crazy as you might think, and, chances are, you’re already engaging in this kind of behaviour.

[Originally submitted to the Global Challenges Foundation A New Shape Prize 2017]

It has always been my belief that to solve anything, you must go to the source of the problem. Anything less is just easing symptoms. Sometimes easing symptoms can buy you time to focus on the actual solution, but in practice this rarely happens, and the false sense of security it gives usually means we end up living from one round of symptom-easing to the next.

Among the weird and wonderful money-free activist community, there are many doomsday sayers seemingly enthralled with the prospect of the imminent collapse of the financial system and capitalism. While I confess a part of me would certainly relish that spectacle, my overwhelming rationale draws me back.