New Names, Old Games

Talking about and thinking about narratives isn’t just important today. It’s essential if you are to arm yourself with the truth and ultimately stand any chance of not being driven completely mad.

Unfortunately, the reasons that make critical thinking necessary, as we absorb and digest any of the information that constantly flows towards us, usually through the digital devices that we carry, are not just as simple as working out the credibility of sources, identifying the truth, or filtering out the rampant levels of views and opinion which have regrettably become the bigger part of the content of all news.

It is increasingly necessary to identify where names and the nomenclature or branding of ideas, approaches, systems and even recognisable activities have been deliberately changed with the intention to confuse. Usually to create the misleading idea, in our minds, that somebody is doing something or selling something to us that is completely new or specialised beyond our comprehension. Just so that they can gain advantage over us until such time as we have worked it all out.

Regrettably, the establishment – that’s government, the public sector and all the big businesses and money organisations that are actually running things – has reached the point where they change the names of everything, either to make more money or benefit themselves, or increasingly to give the impression they have stopped or moved away from doing anything that has been publicly outed as being wrong. But for whatever reason that’s important to them, they intend to keep on doing it anyway and believe they need to nothing more to cover it up than change the name.

The more things change, the more they stay the same

Whilst it would be foolish not to acknowledge the power for good that some forms of digital technology and artificial intelligence have – in the right hands and when being used for the right reasons, the way that so many of us have taken the coming technical or AI revolution as read, and seem to have just accepted that many will no longer have jobs as a result, does illustrate the danger that we have become to both ourselves and to our own future. All because we don’t ask questions and simply accept whatever we are being told to believe – usually because it’s come from the voice of someone remote who we don’t even know!

The rather inconvenient truth that all those creating new terminology for whatever they control, are trying to control or attempting to regain control of; is that there isn’t much going on that’s genuinely new, as we consider life in the aspect of 360 degrees around us.

It is just made to look and feel that way.

Indeed, most of us would quickly grasp this, if we were to refuse to just accept the sales pitch and ask what they are selling us, what it will do and how it works.

This approach is applicable to method as well as to machine.

We would all be wise to take time to consider everything that touches our lives in some way, in terms of the pathways that bring it to us, how it works, who benefits and why those interests have brought them to us as and when they have.

Some would say ‘Oh it’s obvious!’

But is it really? And has it ever been?

Magic only works on us, when we don’t understand whatever is happening

Sadly, many of us are all too happy to accept the premise that what we don’t know can’t hurt us.

We accept that names, memes, keywords, industry terms and abbreviations mean that whoever is using them knows things that we do not. Usually making those people more knowledgeable and therefore powerful than we are, with a somewhat strange accompanying surrender to the misplaced idea that we should simply shut up.

Exploding the very dangerous myth about people who are considered to be experts and specialists, often in ways that are taken to mean they have universal understanding of everything, when they most often have been doing just one job; have studied more about the subject than us, and have been given a qualification by someone else who is actually just like them, is now becoming essential.

Not just to stop ourselves from being played like complete fools. But because the idiocy and self-aggrandisement that blankets so many of the people in positions of power, influence, control and that we therefore revere, are hiding behind the façade of terms we don’t understand, just to benefit themselves whilst all the time creating a very unhappy and unhealthy world that for us, that is never really going to work in our favour for as long as people like this have influence and control.

Dishonesty is regrettably rampant throughout everything that the establishment now does. Not necessarily because everyone within the establishment is dishonest. But because the way that normal people like you and I are being exploited, manipulated and used, so that those doing these things can benefit in some way, is simply now accepted as being the ‘normal’ way things work and therefore as being the done thing, for everyone.

Using and abusing others at any level is not ok. And as we find ourselves transiting a tumultuous period of inevitable change, one of the things that we should all be striving for to experience in whatever new world awaits us on the other side, is that lying, manipulation and the abuse of any person for any reason by another, just so that the abuser can become advantaged in some way, should be outlawed and treated as the horrible crime that it really is.

People need jobs more than AI and the Tech Revolution

Everyone’s ability to work and be financially secure is vital to humanity, whereas accepting an unnecessary AI and Tech-Takeover that nobody genuinely needs will ultimately only benefit the few

The narrative now dictating to us that the Tech and AI Takeover is inevitable is tiring. Not least of all, because the whole idea that progress can and will only go one way is a myth.

Indeed, the myth that the AI and Tech Takeover is now inevitable serves only those who stand to benefit from everything being pushed this one, very specific and wholly unnecessary way.

Granted, many of us do feel that once technology has arrived and it is in our lives, there is no choice but to accept whatever the implications and outcomes of its arrival might be. Even when for increasing numbers of us it is beginning to become frighteningly clear that we and everything that we know may be about to be affected in some disastrous, life-changing way.

However, you may want to ask yourself, ‘Is this tech takeover, and what is going to change a voluntary choice that I am making?’

Did you consciously agree with the direction everything that touches your life digitally is now going?

Did you agree to changes that may quickly lead to you or people you know having no work or hope of ever getting another job?

Did you knowingly allow the parallel, digital universe and the role of arbitrary judgements about you and everything you are, do or can be, to walk in and begin the process of taking over each and every part of your life through the clever use of man-made codes which have been called algorithms?

So many of us fall into the trap of going along with the idea that jobs we know of today will no longer be required or even exist within perhaps just a matter of months because we are told that it represents progress and that the changes that the introduction of new AI-based technologies across life will be better for us all.

But when the narratives and words of politicians, tech gurus and influencers say all or everyone, just exactly who are they really referring to?

Are you going to benefit and in what way?

Are those benefits real, or are they just distractions that appear to make the very small and seemingly meaningless things that we do every day much easier?

Are those benefits really meaningful and long-lasting, or do they cover up how the small wins everything outside of us tells us we need actually covering up the real, long-term losses in our lives that unless we quickly wake up, we will never be able to replace?

Regrettably, few of us are even thinking about the impact and consequences of the changes that we have accepted for the simple reason that everything we have seen and experienced so far, whether it’s the way we shop, are able to access so much through apps or online, or are able to access whatever we believe we want in mere moments online, leaves us with the idea that AI and anything related to digital tech can and will only ever be good for us.

But what was wrong with the way things were two years ago; five years ago, or ten years ago, where the tech that we had in our lives or that we had access to was concerned?

Didn’t life work just as well, and perhaps in some ways that may seem unrelated even better then?

Have computers, smartphones and digital tech really benefitted our lives in the ways that we are led to believe? Or have they actually disadvantaged us and changed our lives in ways that make us very unhappy and create what for some are unmentionable problems, in so many other ways?

Technology and technological improvement or progress is a phenomenon that we must begin looking at in relation to ourselves, the people we care about and those who we have real face to face contact with, regularly within our communities; You know – people living in the real world that is OFFLINE!

Do we actually need a world where we and those people around us do not have jobs and cannot work, because a machine or different software systems can now do all the things that every person does at work, or once did?

Do those people who don’t have jobs really benefit from no longer having work?

Is the best use of AI and new technology to replace us? Or the best use of AI and new technology to assist us?

Surely there can be no doubt that the world around us would be a much better place to live and experience if everyone who can work, does work; and that in return for doing a full weeks work, they in turn receive enough money or remuneration of whatever kind to ensure that they can cover the cost or be able to secure all the basic essentials that give them independence, rather than a situation now evolving where the masses look like they are soon to be left behind.

Where is the drive really coming from for jobs to be lost and make it all seem necessary?

Who benefits from it appearing to be a foregone conclusion that ending jobs and mass redundancy is not a choice that is any of ours to decide?

What we can be sure of is it will not ultimately be people like you and me.

Technology and the advancement of technology and AI is like everything right across life that is being driven by the quest for greater and continuing profits, and the wealth, control, power and influence that quickly follows behind.

We don’t see it because we aren’t supposed to and that’s why what’s really changing underneath what we can see is actually leaving us, our communities and our humanity behind.

The choices being made about the way that new technology is being rolled out and used are not being made in the best interests of the masses. Because if they were, they would not be threatening to take away jobs and resulting in outcomes like the destruction of communities and to lives that it will bring.

If the purposes driving AI and new Tech were genuinely about improving life for all, the changes underway would not be beginning to impact us all negatively, just so that business owners, tech owners and those that benefit can elevate themselves in every way, whilst their actions and choices begin to leave everyday normal people like you and I behind.

Yes, the idea that all jobs, tasks and requirements could be met by machines, software and automation will sound appealing if it means that everyone can do and have whatever they might want without ever having to do a day’s work or lift a finger in effort, ever again.

But just how real do you or anyone that you know believe that idea to be?

Do you really think that the tech companies and those who control AI and digital technology are working day and night at an incredible pace to create a utopia where we all do nothing, pay for nothing, are given everything for free and have whatever we want in our lives without paying for it or working for it?

Wouldn’t we be seeing and experiencing signs of this great giveaway already, if they really were on the altruistic pathway to greatest giveaway to everyone else ever known?

The answer is that whoever and whatever is controlling all of this only has the benefits to themselves in mind. Or they would be happy for AI, for tech and the advancements that are available to be used only to improve life and working conditions for everyone, rather than them being imposed at the head of a revolution, deliberately hidden in plain sight, that is apparently set to leave the majority of the people across the world behind.

The narrative about the role of AI is a myth and the creation of a prophecy that can and will only become true, because we believe the narratives and respond to them as if they were already true. Not Because they are actually real and the AI takeover is as complex or on its imminent way to sentience or being genuinely all-knowing in any way.

The irony is that if we continue to believe the hype; continue to be fooled into thinking AI can and will do all we are being told it will, simply because we have been blindsided by the speed that it works and what we have seen it do so far, we will walk into an elephant trap where the masses will have made themselves irrelevant and we will soon be of no use to those who are controlling all of this and believe it is their right to exploit everything and the lives of all others, if it will help them to achieve whatever they want to do.

The advances in digital technology and Artificial Intelligence are just another step in a long-term process of centralisation and power transfer by design, where the power and Personal Sovereignty that all human beings should have the right to enjoy, has slowly but surely been stolen, but with our manufactured consent.

Our independence and personal power have been progressively eroded and transferred to organisations and people who have no idea who we are, what we do and know nothing about the communities and places where we live.

Yet they now find themselves on the cusp of being able to control every part of our lives and existence through the removal of our independence, making life dependent upon them and their system, which can and will only be able to exist because we have failed to question and reject the idea that this all represents progress for humanity.

Without change, the creation of a mass sub-class of people who can do nothing more than exist – if it is indeed possible for them to continue to do so – is now inevitable and the only way our subservience to this system and what it is dictating can take us.

To be clear, the AI Takeover and technology revolution that we are being conditioned to expect is not necessary. It is not legitimate at any level or in any way.

Technology and innovation should always be used to benefit the whole of mankind. Not just those who create it, own it, regulate it or pay for it, with money they would never have even had, if they had not first corrupted and manipulated the monetary and economic systems of the world so that it would appear to have legitimately gifted them everything that they now have.

Life and what it should offer every person was never meant to be this way.

Power over us all was never meant to be concentrated within the hands of just a few.

Centralisation, remoteness and the dehumanisation of every process and function that maintains and provides for life was never meant to be funnelled into the hands of others. People who will soon have the ability to choose whether other people live or die, based on using the digital chains that our own eagerness to have more of everything has unwittingly enabled them to wrap around a lot more than just our wrists.

Walking away from a system that puts money and the technology that enables it first, as the absolute priority before the masses of people is key to creating a different future. A good future for all, where everyone once again has the opportunity to be free, to be independent and to enjoy fulfilling the functions necessary to create and maintain a genuinely good life. All the time working together and collaborating only with those strictly necessary within our communities to provide everything that is essential for life in a real, localised world where everyone and everything can be trusted, because it can always be seen.

Simplicity of life; simplicity of governance; simplicity of business models and structures; simplicity of money and the systems that only administer it are key to improving every part of life and creating the equitable experiences and opportunities that only real justice, fairness and balance in everything can provide.

Yes, the technology we have certainly has its place.

But the place of tech is to help humanity; not replace it.

People need jobs more than anyone needs a Tech Takeover. Because we all need to function in the world; to contribute to it and to what we all need from each other collectively in some way, and then in return receive whatever we need that will at the very least meet all of our essential and basic needs, so that we can function and support those we care about without ever having to seek or become reliant upon help.

We must reject the use of AI, Tech and the takeover of real life by the digital universe.

We need to get back to basics with the prioritisation of businesses and business structures that are essential to life being sustainable and maintained locally.

Businesses that employ people need to be sized in such ways that mean everyone in every community has work to do and a contribution to make within a system where everyone who can work does work and receives everything they need to be functionally independent and therefore able to meet all their own needs.

Imagine the 21st century equivalent of the village green, where every essential and basic need for members of the community is met by small businesses dedicated to meeting just the needs of the people that everyone knows and meets face to face, pretty much each and every day.

Businesses that are and only ever will be big enough to provide services and goods to the people they serve as specialists in whatever it is that they do. So that customers always have the best experience possible for them to have, and the business itself prioritises just those needs and pays all of the staff and its working shareholders fairly and justly, ensuring that retail prices will never exceed an affordable relationship with what everything genuinely costs.

This scenario is not only possible. It has now become necessary, if we want to enjoy lives that are built around values and care for everyone, for our communities and the environment that supports us. Rather than pursuing a desperate path to make life and everything we ever do about whatever material wealth, possessions and power that we have.

Money, profit and everything that prompts and promotes the greed that underpins it are the real reasons for centralisation and the transfer of control.

There is no humane reason for any person to become impoverished by the implementation of any form of technology that isn’t being used purely for the benefit of humanity or the public good.

Future Economics must be tied only to people, their contribution, what is important to sustain good, fair and balanced lives, and legal currency must never again be open to speculation and manipulation

You don’t need to be a trained economist to know that the model of economics the world uses and the way economics is revered like work of the gods today is wrong.

In fact, it is probably better if you aren’t, and that you aren’t involved in economics, banking or corporate wealth creation either. As you are much more likely to be objective and untainted by ‘being in the tent’ in some way.

The misplaced ingenuity of the economic system and how it works has made it as complex as it is mind boggling. But that doesn’t give any surety or guarantee that how it works and what it achieves is in any way good.

For those actually thinking about why money is the common factor in everything across the world that is now going wrong, the complexity of the economic system is being exposed to light as the smokescreen that it is giving the hallucination of credibility to all the darkness and malevolence that has been so cleverly hidden within.

How can something so clever and complex not be real, is a question that many would employ as a riposte to counter the suggestion that there is absolutely no legitimacy to the FIAT monetary system, MMT, Free Markets, Globalisation and Neoliberal Orthodoxy that we have been subjected to for 5 decades or more.

But isn’t it the case that any good game that feels good to play is only good for those playing, because of the complexities and therefore levels for ‘the players’ that are involved?

How many carrots does it cost to buy a wheel?

To really understand why the world now has got the relationship with money so wrong – even though it was deliberately made this way by corrupt interests who have changed the laws so that their crimes have been legitimised and wiped clean – we really do need to stop for a moment, count to ten and think about what money is, or rather was really intended for.

In so far as the accepted narrative of human history goes, the whole pathway of our development has been progress that moved towards today in a linear fashion, stepping off from very primitive times when man couldn’t even speak, let alone farm for food.

The point here is not to argue whether or not any accepted version of the evolution of man is true. But to set the first picture back at a point when everything was considerably more simple. Long before more and more of those complex ideas or complexities became involved in how people trade.

Then, as now; different people did different things and produced different foods, goods and services to others as the direct result of whatever it was that they did.

For the purposes of this explanation, let’s assume that there are already fishers, farmers, growers, millers, bakers, saddlers, farriers, blacksmiths, cheese and butter makers, butchers, water carriers and pretty much someone or some small business providing all the different forms of foods, goods and services that we need to provide for life, from around a village green.

Some days a baker doesn’t want fish and a fisher certainly doesn’t want a saddle or leather goods daily. Even though they probably need something made to protect them against the elements from time to time.

However, everyone needs something regularly. Whether it’s for their own consumption, or it’s there to help them complete and provide output or goods from their own work.

Bartering and exchange, or swapping goods or even hours of work are of course a very straightforward and sensible way for two parties to make a transaction when one has something available that the other needs.

But the real benefit of bartering and exchange comes from being localised. And its weakness soon showed when the transactions were required to take place over distance, or for items – like that saddle or something equally special – which in day-to-day terms, are rather obscure.

Money, or coins of some kind used at first, created a transactional value, or to be more accurate, a medium of exchange.

The creation of a medium of exchange meant that one person’s goods or efforts could be exchanged for coins that could then be exchanged for whatever that person wanted themselves. All without there being any excessive delays or the need for a very complex or convoluted chain of different transactions to be involved.

The beauty of the system, at that point, was that the money in use could only relate to the agreed value of the transaction.

It would have been good for everyone, once the related practicalities involved were ironed out, if that system had continued without further ‘progress’. The relationship we all have with money could then have remained the same in relative terms – as that unit of exchange and nothing more.

Unfortunately for mankind, progress very quickly created wealth disparity or what we call wealth inequality today.

This imbalance was itself made progressively worse by the inter-generational transfer of property and wealth (and the power it buys) which has snowballed over time. Quite literally meaning that people can be advantaged or disadvantaged by birth, even before any one of the many other factors that skew life opportunities can come into view.

One of the most unfortunate elements of the human condition is the innate desire to always possess and accumulate more. For no better reason than the basic fear we all have of experiencing lack. With the rather perverse dimension that those who have more guard it more jealously than others, probably because they believe they have much more to lose.

The power and influence that money has given people who really weren’t fit to have the responsibility they had over the lives of others, has only got worse over time.

As industry and technology has improved and made it easier and easier to avoid genuine consideration for the consequences of their actions upon others, the human cost has become increasingly irrelevant, whenever the opportunity to make more profit was involved.

When promissory notes or what we know as cash came into being, a giant leap forward was taken towards the system that we have now, where the accepted wisdom is that the value of the money – or what we are agreeing to exchange as being representative of money – is being exchanged under a mutual understanding of trust, that is shared across society, and not just between the people where the specific transactions are involved.

Trust is of course belief. And as those with power and influence at the centre of the banking system realised that having currencies pinned or anchored to anything meant that they could only ever use or suggest they were able to use the money or sensible multiples of the money that they knew they either held, were owed or could earn within a certain time frame, they knew that they would have to create a new system that would release these chains. So that in terms of the money that they could create and use in the future, the only restraints would be dictated by them.

We should be under no illusion that this process of creating an economic system that could lead to limitless wealth and the control of everything for those who controlled it, wasn’t a plan that developed overnight.

The economic system that we have today was created and implemented over decades and carefully constructed so that it would make life much easier for the interests and in particular the politicians who needed to be bought. So that the useful idiots who gained power under the illusion of democracy would obligingly pave the way with system changes that have legitimised this otherwise criminal system at every step of the way therein.

When everything is about money, the answers to every question can only be found in monetary terms.

The money we have today and the way that it comes to and is taken from us – the economy – is the direct result and design of this massive, corrupt and inhuman game that the worlds wealthy, powerful and influential – the elites, decided to play.

The money we have in our pockets, bank accounts and have the ability to earn changes value quickly at the will or as a result of the actions of others.

Meanwhile, the direction of travel for the general population has always been that we are and always would become increasingly poor, as the value of the money which is typically what the poorest in society have only been able to hold, decreases faster than the rate at which our skills and experience develop or there is any chance to earn more so that we can keep up with or counteract the fall.

It was always intended to be this way. As those with wealth always knew that the real wealth was the control of assets and anything and everything that could then rented out to everyone. All as the world became increasingly poorer and their ability to grow control and rent out everything the money they created had bought them gave them even more.

It is ironic that billionaires now have so many zeros on their balance sheets. As everyone who has been a victim of what is probably mankind’s greatest con is now beginning to realise that they have been left with zero. Or if they are lucky, a diminishing amount of liquid capital that isn’t worth a lot more.

I would like to add at this stage that this essay is not an attack on any individual for whatever it is that they may believe they possess, control or have influence over today. Many of those with excessive wealth, power and influence today have just played along with the rules of a very clever game. One that has removed the balance, Justice and morality from every part of life and has done it so successfully that the poison it has replaced values with is embedded across cultures and normal life to the point that even the academics and leaders in finance and economics believe in the legitimacy and correctness of an entire system which is bewilderingly anti-human at its very core.

In simple terms

The simplicity of the mechanics of an economic system and more specifically a monetary system that revolves around private banks creating money from nothing – a process which is carefully hidden from view – so that government always looks like it is borrowing  or rather selling bonds to private interests to finance everything, whilst those banks also lend money that doesn’t exist to us through loans, finance, credit cards and even pay day loans, really do make it horrendously difficult to accept that this is one massive confidence scam. Especially as everything is hidden in plain sight by little more than the disinterest that we typically have in anything that goes beyond having our perceived needs met.

However, let’s think about it as if we were reading a story about two friends at the start of their working lives; one with the motivation to work hard and deliver through their own industry, whilst the other has had life easy and just wants to find another easy way to get more, and we can then perhaps see how this gargantuan scam rolls out when exposed to light.

The diligent and easy living friends talk one day, looking at property that they would both like to own.

The diligent friend commits to working hard and earning the money to buy what they would like to own and leaves, promising to catch up when this outcome has been achieved.

Meanwhile, the easy living friend knows that he has the contacts and ideas necessary to go away and print enough of the money he needs to buy that same property today. And that he can do this from nothing, which will work out well for him but not his friend, so long as he doesn’t speak openly about what he’s doing. Uses his contacts to change a few rules so that what he’s doing is legal. And he doesn’t keep printing more money to buy everything else so that it becomes obvious what he’s been doing all along. Afterall, nobody will know if he uses the money he then earns from renting out that property to pay all that money back…

The money that the easy living friend has created, has just increased the amount of money that exists.

This means that because there isn’t actually any more property, production or anything else with ‘real’ value that corresponds to the increasing  pool of money, all of the money that’s available is now worth much less than it was.

The real world impact of this fantasy being made reality is that the diligent friend will have to worker harder, longer or both, to pay for the property that the easy living friend has just taken without effort.

What is more, the easy living friend is now offering to rent the property he’s bought to the diligent friend who now realises that he may never be able to afford to buy it.

If you can see and understand the basic mechanics of how this situation works, you only need scale up the same principles to understand how the massive, growing amount of money – and the ridiculous inflation and the growing cost of living problem we are all facing, has been created and is now growing at a ridiculous rate.

It is an unavoidable, inescapable fact that if one person or set of people are able to buy real, tangible things that have value to us – whatever those things might be – with money that doesn’t actually exist, they can take lawful possession of those things and do with them whatever they so choose – as any legitimate owner would be able to do so.

However, the illegitimate creation of the money and the legitimised theft of assets, businesses, infrastructure and everything else imaginable that it has financed means what they have been doing is just one part of a multifaceted crime against everyone else.

The crimes that follow the created money pathways include the impoverishment of the masses.

Yet they become even worse when we consider that public services and infrastructure such as utility companies have been bought up with fake money.

Entire business sectors like the pub trade and small, local shops have also all become unviable because fake money has financed industry expansion of big retail and all their centralised supply chains, that would not otherwise have been possible.

To cap that all off, markets and the practices of big business and finance have been deregulated through the drive for ‘Free Markets’. So that those making money can make more and more, because the rules that once protected us all and small independent businesses have been removed, whilst regulations that cost us, exclude us and disqualify us from our own independence and from taking part have instead been imposed under the pretence that they help and protect us.

The whole pathway of illegitimate money creation using the FIAT system leads or rather has led to the doorstep of nothing less than worldwide system control.

The only thing that now gives us the opportunity to save ourselves from a very challenging fate is the reality that those with their hands in the till have already broken too many of the rules of their own game.

The whole system is starting to collapse before the great reset or imposition of the next new world order has conclusively been imposed.

The Future of Money

I could stop there. But in lifting the stone or exposing what lies beneath it to light I am certainly not alone.

Before continuing further, I would encourage anyone who has read this far to do their own research and use as many different sources and mediums as they can to uncover and draw their own conclusions about all of this and what is really going on.

My real interest and passion is what happens next for us and for our future. Once we have got through this horrid time and whatever turbulence and challenges that we now face, once we have got to the other side and left them all behind.

Whilst I have written extensively about what a good working model for our future society would look like in Our Local Future, I have also spent time sharing thoughts and ideas about the way money and commerce would work, in books from Levelling Level, to An Economy for the Common Good and The Basic Living Standard too.

What we should perhaps all be able to conclude – once we have dealt with our own addictions and attachment to the way that endless money supposedly works for us all now – is that money should never hold its own value. Should never be speculated upon, and the power of its creation and policing should never be under private control.

What is more, the value of legal currency should never be pinned to anything that can itself vary in value, especially when whatever that currency is pinned to is in short supply or can be controlled manipulatively or otherwise at will.

People are the only legitimate economic constant

If everyone did what they do, only took what they need and were happy to share or exchange what they didn’t with whoever needed it in return for something they did in return, there would never be need of money of any kind, ever again.

Whilst I can see that to many the idea that everyone just does what they do today for nothing and that in return, they get just enough of what they need of everything else in return might seem fanciful, this suggestion does nonetheless make a very important point about everyone only taking or expecting to have access to what they actually need.

Need is NOT the same thing as want.

Too much want is what has led to a situation where there are people right across the world today who don’t have access just to the things that they need.

An economy – a legitimate economy – will function only to provide for the needs of people within it.

There isn’t an argument that can counter this legitimately. Any argument made against this, no matter how compelling or well elucidated, is inevitably built upon one person being able to obtain or accumulate more things than others. Because the alternative system favours their interests more.

These are the fundamental basics of greed.

Locality based economies and economics

Everyone who can, should play their part or contribute to the function of a legitimate economy, in whatever role they are able. So that everyone who is active, then comes together to become the sum of all the parts – with the sum of those parts being the community, which because of what members can do together collaboratively, will be greater than what everyone would be able to do by working alone.

The value of a legitimate economy should therefore be based upon the number of people who are active within it and include what they input or contribute to that economy individually and therefore collectively.

If every member of the community does what they should be doing, and the needs of everyone being met are always prioritised and planned for or budgeted for as they should be, the whole system will move closely towards self-containment, with the amount of money in circulation always being closely related to the number of heads within the population.

A localised and online local market exchange system that focuses on bartering and exchange for foods, goods, services and work being made universally available alongside cash and digitally transferable money, should also exist so that everything works in a circular fashion and everyone’s particular needs are always met in ways that favour everyone.

The needs for public service, infrastructure, community activities and everything beyond should be met by everyone who is able to work volunteering the equivalent of 1/10 of their working week and their skills or experience to the community. Thereby meeting whatever needs and community income generation requirement there may then be.

Excess goods produced, surplus service capacity and over production which is specialist to the community would also be traded with other communities and traded where any additional requirements beyond the scope of community production exist.

The blight of greed-driven thinking

The only reason that an economic system that will work like this, which promotes freedom and financial independence of the masses, would not work, is because those who would no longer be able to define themselves as being different to others through the accumulation of additional and unnecessary wealth will argue that it isn’t practical and cannot work.

Even within a genuinely egalitarian approach to economics based along these lines, it is a fact that some could always do better, because they choose to do so through their own industry. Whilst many others – and the majority at that, would be happy to just make the contribution that was absolutely necessary, knowing that they would be happy, healthy, safe and secure because all of their basic and essential needs were being met.

It is part of the capitalist myth that entrepreneurialism and creativity in commerce cannot exist when the ability to earn or rather profit is capped.

The real truth of the matter is that everyone will be productive and make a valuable contribution when anything that goes beyond what it takes to look after themselves and those who depend on them is a choice and the ability to just live a normal life without dependency on anything beyond themselves hasn’t been denied by the actions of others.

Nobody has the right to take or have more than they need and certainly not when it can only come to them through the exploitation and infliction of pain and suffering of any kind upon others.

Further Reading (Updated 14/1/26):

1. Breaking the Money Myth: Rethinking Value, Exchange and Equality

https://adamtugwell.blog/2025/11/12/breaking-the-money-myth-rethinking-value-exchange-and-equality/
Summary:
Challenges conventional beliefs about money, exploring how value and exchange have been distorted by modern economic systems. This article lays the groundwork for understanding why current monetary practices are problematic and why rethinking these fundamentals is essential for a fairer society.

2. The Basic Living Standard Explained

https://adamtugwell.blog/2025/10/24/the-basic-living-standard-explained/
Summary:
Explains the concept of a “basic living standard” – the minimum requirements for a dignified life. It discusses how economies should prioritise meeting everyone’s essential needs, and why this principle is central to building a legitimate, people-focused economy.

3. An Economy for the Common Good (Full Text)

https://adamtugwell.blog/2025/02/24/an-economy-for-the-common-good-full-text/
Summary:
Presents a comprehensive vision for an economy designed to serve the common good, rather than private interests. It explores practical models and policies that could shift economic priorities toward collective wellbeing and sustainability.

4. The Role of Barter and Exchange in the Local Economy Governance System

https://adamtugwell.blog/2025/12/03/the-role-of-barter-and-exchange-in-the-local-economy-governance-system/
Summary:
Delves into how barter and local exchange systems can strengthen community resilience and independence. Offers practical insights into alternative economic mechanisms that bypass traditional currency, supporting the idea of locality-based economies.

5. The Local Economy Governance System (Online Text)

https://adamtugwell.blog/2025/11/21/the-local-economy-governance-system-online-text/
Summary:
Provides a detailed framework for governing local economies, emphasizing community participation, transparency, and sustainability. Ties together previous concepts, showing how they can be implemented at the local level for maximum impact.

The greatest benefit of AI today will be a new dark age of stupidity and ignorance that our surrender to it will bring

There’s something very wrong with the AI story that we are all being sold:

Nobody seems to have noticed that the script of man’s pathway to the pinnacle of human intelligence is about to come to its end, by handing our ability to think, over to machines.

As I write, I’m wondering if the name ‘Artificial Intelligence’ was a deliberate way to hide the truth in plain sight, all along.

Not because the technological breakthroughs that are coming at us thick and fast aren’t very clever.

But because just like the surrender of our value set to an artificial, valueless and damaging world dominated by money that manipulates everything about the way we think, we are about to give away our ability to even do that, to systems and technologies that cannot genuinely benefit any human being – other than those who own and run them.

In my eBook Actions Speak Louder than Digital Words, I talked about AI only having the ability to look back at history and the past. Even where back meant what had been published or ‘sensed’ by the Internet up to the very moment when the system was responding to a specific command.

This overlooked or deliberately whitewashed flaw of AI echoes one of the greater faults in the Human experience, where we inherently look backwards to our past experiences to provide guidance for the future.

This should be troubling enough.

But what wasn’t apparent even when I published that book in June 2023, was that as AI began filling everything across the web and digital sphere with its own responses, muses and anything else we can give AI-derived content as a name, it would then begin leveraging just as much and increasingly more of its own diluted content as a source, which is almost certain to increase as human input or creativity dries up.

And the contribution of human creativity and intelligence to the smorgasbord board of information and data that the AI engines feast on is most certainly drying up, as more and more of us surrender to the narrative we have been fed that tells us AI is now the only way, and jobs are threatened by the accompanying suggestion that AI can do things that we can never do!

Dictating our future by using the past as our point of reference certainly holds us back and creates all sorts of difficulties at all levels of life that we didn’t ever need to have.

However, the one thing that makes that experience manageable and, in some ways, arguably beneficial too, is that our human creativity and ability to look at every new situation and make sense of it and its context in ways that allow us to build bridges into the future, means that we are making progress all the time. Even if that progress is slower, whereas a machine that is limited only to reading what has already happened simply cannot.

People – and many of them too – genuinely accept the stories and myths that we have and are now being sold.

They believe and, in many cases, have become fearful that AI can already or very soon will take over every function that humans currently carry out within any business or organisation. Despite the reality that anyone using their common sense or daring to listen to their inner voice will recognise a very big question, ‘Where in this future does that leave any need for me?’

AI is very fast at what it does and is able to look at potentially all the information that is available to us in digital form at the very moment in time that a question is asked or an instruction is given.

That – and only that – is the real magic of AI.

It is the reason that we are all just accepting the idea that AI is already infinitely cleverer than Humans could ever be. Just as those who benefit from us believing this to be true intend us to believe.

However, our acceptance that we no longer need to be creative or think for ourselves, means that we will not only increasingly become dependent upon a pool of ‘knowledge’ outside of ourselves – albeit a very large one of everything that has been recorded, spoken, considered and then committed to the internet and digital platforms up to some point in history before. But this pool of knowledge that we will use for everything will become increasingly diluted by the growing amount of poor and corrupt information, data and ‘understanding’ that our already burgeoning use of AI with everything is now spaffing out into the digital ether.

As you read, Humanity is literally giving up the ability to think and create for itself, to a machine-driven world that is incapable of doing any more.

What is more, Humanity is surrendering these cornerstone abilities for survival voluntarily. Because someone who benefits from us believing we are inadequate without technology has told us this, when a change of the kind that overreliance on AI could be about to usher in would have needed something akin to an extinction-level event to take place at any time in world history before.

This uncomfortable truth will not stop those who stand to benefit from the AI takeover from pushing and promoting this path. They will continue peddling the myths that the AI takeover will be in our best interests and will be inevitable all the same. When it is nothing of the sort.

The Technology we have available to us today will not live up to its greatest potential. Because the greatest potential any technology that man invents will have, is to help improve the lives and experiences of all men, rather than to replace any one of them.

We know this to be true, as this has regrettably been the way that technological advancements have always impacted Humanity since the ending of the Agricultural Age.

Technology has always been employed to make money for those who own and control it since then.

The rise of new technology has always been at the cost of all others at some level. No matter who they are or what their connections might be.

The reality we face is that it may already be too late to save the world we recognise from a fate that we have all unwittingly chosen. Rather than there being any kind of event or catastrophe at the heart of future change that no one person could have been responsible for.

However, if we are to address the slide towards universal ignorance, with the accompanying potential to take us back into the dark ages once more, we must reassess, reimagine and regulate the uses of every kind of technology. So that technology’s master can only be the public good. Rather than profit and the disaster that is following hard in its footsteps right now.

If we value the Human experience and wish to improve it, it is time to learn, share and then live the truth that there is no need for any technology to replace jobs, other than so just a few can increase their profits and control.

The best way for everyone and everything to live well, is without the complications and diversions that misappropriated technology imposes upon us, and the technology we do embrace should always be used for the greater good and for the benefit of everyone involved.