A short summary of the Resource Based Economy proposal.

This concept explores what life might be like if we no longer used money, currency or any forms of trade or barter in the future. 

We are proposing that everything be free, and all work entirely voluntary. Certainly thus far it appears that by adopting this system we may still have time to arrest civilised humanity’s impending collapse.

Some goods and services may be restricted depending upon our society’s willingness and capacity to produce them voluntarily, and acknowledging the earth’s finite nature.

By making every action voluntary, society will automatically align itself with the above real-world limitations. There will simply be no motivation, nor indeed mechanism, to cause significant harm. Anti-social or environmentally harmful actions will be both pointless and unsupported as there will be no reason, after money to do them.

The existing structures, systems and administrations can remain in place. We do not require any new systems, technologies, regulations, administrations or communities. We simply remove the monetary element from all of our transactions and leave intrinsic human nature to do the rest.

This concept does require the assumption that human nature is benign to be true. There are some who do not believe that this is the case. We do not accept that.

A common misconception about the transition to an RBE is the assumption of loss. There is a general expectation that post-money we will all be worse off. This is hugely incorrect and couldn’t be further from the truth. We will be infinitesimally better off after money. Not just humans, but in fact all creatures, nature, basically everything, will be better off. 

Having removed the primary driver of harm and anti-social and anti-environmental activity these abhorrences will cease, almost immediately. Quite simply because there will no longer be any purpose in continuing them. To further add to the motivation for doing this, not only will all these vast improvements come about very rapidly, they will also occur automatically, once the money is out of the way. By the sheer accumulated force of combined human nature, and, while we’re at it, nature itself, as we get back into synergistic alignment. Every human transaction, currently distorted by the presence and primacy of monetary considerations, will become subject to the precisely opposite forces. Thus every time a human being makes a move, it will have a tendency to improve the lot of all. We can expand upon this, but I hope that’s not necessary. In short, there’ll just be no point in, and indeed no support for, doing anything detrimental.

Every day the news is full of stories of failure and accelerating dysfunction. The reporters, journalists, presenters, politicians and experts wring their hands and declare that more must be done, invariably at greater financial cost. And yet the decline continues. We have not seen any significant change to this trend since the 1970s. A sense of hopelessness and acquiescence to the ‘inevitable’ prevails.

We do have an alternative option today. Sadly, not one mainstream actor is talking about this.

Taking a pessimistic view of our current dire situation, we can predict that it will continue to accelerate and further embed, as the potential agents of change become ever more blinded and entrenched. A common response to fear.

More positively, it is possible as the multiple crises accumulate and deepen that thought leaders will look beyond the conventional boundaries for more extreme alternatives.

At the New Zealand Institute of Resource Based Economics we are researching, investigating, sharing and promulgating such ideas in preparation.