By almost every measure humankind is much better off than 100 years ago.
However we have created a society driven by fear of scarcity. We have created a society in which an individual who runs out of money does not partake of the abundance available.
We are educated that we are individual, that we are in a competition for survival. We are educated to sell our time so as to make money, or if we have money to make it earn money for us. So we become wage slaves, we sell our time to make money; or we become rentiers buying property or shares or intellectual property to make money. Let us educate ourselves to the experience that we are an integral part of nature, that we are amazing collaborators, that by collaboration we unleash superabundance.
This education will enable the greatest transformation of all. Changing the hearts of people, one person at a time. Changing our hearts from the experience of being isolated individuals to the experience of being an integral part of one magnificent whole.
Governments are driven by the desire to be frugal, they are promoting austerity. This needs to change so as to be driven by a desire to ensure prosperity for all.
This can be done because we now have a coincidence of four clean new technologies:
Labour
Energy
Food
Technology
We can now invest in replacing the dirty technologies that we are now using with the cleaner sustainable technologies that are now available to us.
Replace wage slaves with robots
Replace oil with sustainable energy
Replace meat and the plough with healthy working with nature.
Replace dirty technologies with clean ones
People will occupy themselves with caring for themselves, others, and the planet.
We also need to prepare for the enormous disruptions that these transitions will create.
By these investments we will create prosperity for all. This in turn will create the wherewithal to tackle the challenges of cleaning up our planet, restoring it, and turning it into the Garden of Eden that it can be. In order to energise and mobilise almost everyone we must enable a more equitable society.
This can be done primarily by redefining the rights and obligations of ownership of property, and by modifying our money systems so that money has a negative interest and thus decays and thus is used as a currency.
Property consists of land, shares, money, and intelectual. The current value of intellectual property has been increased a hundred or a thousand fold in the last few decades. Wealth has changed the laws in thousands of ways to benefit the wealthy. Our democracy is being corrupted into a moneyocracy. Lobbyists earn thousands of times what they earned a few decades ago.
The central banks will print the money that is needed for government to build this prosperity. Money will then naturally decay in value, it will have a negative interest or a demurrage charge. This decaying money will not be hoarded to enslave others and make money. It will be circulated to carry nutrients from one part of the human body to another. It will be like the healthy bloodstream of Corpus Humanitatis.
Taxes will be simple and easily collected. Most taxes such as personal and corporate taxes will disappear. However consumption or value added tax (VAT) will rise to more than 50 percent of what the consumer pays. Where property is scarce municipalities will levy significant taxes for properties more than 30-50 square meters per person. Inheritance and gift taxes will change so as to encourage more wealth distribution.
The idea of private property will be evolved by gradually modifying the laws that define the rights and obligations of ownership. We are able to become land stewards, rather than owners. Land governance laws will encourage practices which promote water retention and increase organic content.
I invite you to participate in envisioning how we can create an Equitable and Prosperous World and live in partnership with the web of life.
Bela Hatvany
