The Basic Living Standard: Freedom to Think, Freedom to Do, Freedom to Be with Personal Sovereignty that Brings Peace to All

The Illusion of Freedom

One of the biggest misunderstandings of the time and culture we live in is the way we understand, respond to, and relate to what freedom really is.

Many of us believe that we are free: that we can do what we want, think what we want, say what we want, and be what we want.

Yet we all live under rules that must be followed – rules which few would deny are becoming more intrusive, more prescriptive, and increasingly powerful in the consequences they impose if we fail to use our “freedom” in the way someone else has dictated it must be perceived and lived.

The Everyday Policing of Speech

Some reading this may respond with something like “Tell me something I don’t know.” And that would be fair enough, given the growing body of anecdotal evidence confirming that freedom of speech is not what it seems.

Almost everyone we might consider “ordinary” – those without an agenda, simply wishing to get on with their lives – now finds themselves policing their own relationships and interactions with the outside world.

Speaking truths rooted in common sense, or even in the way things have always been, increasingly risks offending those who demand the world operate according to their own design.

The Marginalisation of Independent Thought

Even reflecting on what is, at best, the marginalisation of independent thinking – and at worst, the steady criminalisation of individual thought – opens up a maze of debates.

These debates inflame questions about the role, scope, and power of groupthink, and how establishment narratives are not only shaping, but increasingly dictating blueprints for how everyone must live their lives.

Encroachment by the Establishment

To believe we are free in a world, country, and culture where the establishment seeks not merely to encroach but to manage every part of life is alarming enough.

Yet it becomes even more disturbing when we recognise that these restrictions and attacks on freedom are not created for the common good, but to benefit someone else.

The Role of Money as Gatekeeper to Life, Peace, Happiness and Freedom that is Governed by Someone and Something Else

Freedom Defined by Money, Not Ourselves

Yes, we are already in a fight for those freedoms outlined above.

The fight is increasingly hard because a division has already been created between what we believe freedom is, and what we believe we already know it to be – which itself isn’t what we are experiencing.

That we continually look outside of ourselves for validation should make sense, because when we think about the difference between what we imagine freedom to be – doing whatever we want – and what society actually allows us to do, shaped by those who create the narratives that control society, we quickly begin to see that there is a significant difference involved.

The Manipulation of Meaning

Creating circumstances where somebody can change the meaning of something so that a word comes to mean something very different from what we know it to be could never happen in an environment where people are confident in who they are, their communities, their culture, and what it ultimately means just to be themselves.

We have now reached the point where even the term common sense is being brought into question, sometimes considered offensive or demeaning.

This is because the fundamental basics of life – the value set that upholds the framework for a good life – have been replaced by a system that places money at the heart of everything.

Money at the Centre of Every Choice

Money has become so ingrained in every part of life that, without even questioning our motives, it dictates the decisions and choices we make.

Everything in life is based on what we can afford, earn, save, accumulate, or the cost and risk of cost.

Jobs are about what we earn now and in the future. Insurance is about betting against risk. Education is about securing a career that pays more than a working wage. The house we live in depends on the mortgage and deposit we can save or borrow. What we own depends on money already earned or borrowed. Holidays depend on savings or loans. Cars depend on leases or borrowing, unless bought outright.

Contracts Before Basic Essentials

It doesn’t matter who we are or what we earn. The world now requires us to sign up, subscribe, or rent services and products we once simply bought.

These arrangements are backed by contracts that must be paid before any income can be considered disposable.

Only food and basic essentials remain in the realm of pay-as-you-go – and even those are increasingly tied to credit cards, buy-now-pay-later schemes, or payday loans.

Judgement Through Wealth and Appearance

We judge people by their appearance, their property, their clothes, or their transport – signals of “who the world tells us they are.” And when we consider how much future earnings and financial security matter, even ordinary people outside the elites evaluate partners and marriage commitments based on what a potential partner can afford.

The Private Turmoil of Dependence

Few can see just how powerful, overwhelming, and controlling money has become.

Fewer still talk about it comprehensively.

Yet the reality is that what we do, what we have, how we are perceived, and whether we are accepted or rejected all revolves around money.

This leaves us in private turmoil and pain – what some might call or know as hell – because parts of life, or what is respected as life today, are cut off or restricted by money’s role.

The System’s Sick Success

This system is not natural. It has been deliberately created for the benefit of those who already have much more than they will ever need.

Its success lies in convincing the masses that freedom and status are directly proportional to wealth.

Meanwhile, the mechanics of the system ensure that resources flow away from those who have every right to them, leaving them dependent on credit and enslaved by debt.

In return, people have unwittingly surrendered property, ownership, and the peace of mind that comes only from self-sufficiency.

Fear as the Final Driver

Everything in life is driven by money – or more precisely, by the fear of not having it.

Everyone, at every level, makes decisions and behaves according to financial implications.

When people or businesses are pushed into dependence on external finance, even reason itself is abandoned. Questions of viability or self-sufficiency are ignored, as survival becomes the only priority.

When this mindset dominates, it doesn’t matter who someone is or what position they hold. They become vulnerable to the power and control of whoever influences what happens next.

This is the world we live in today. The plans, strategies, and changes overtaking life – many of which defy common sense – have taken hold because someone, somewhere, intended and created it to be this way.

This Is by Design

Where this all becomes difficult to accept is in recognising that nothing about the journey which has brought the world to this point is accidental.

It is by design.

The reason is simple: people who know they are free, cannot be controlled.

Freedom Cannot Be Controlled

If people cannot be controlled, they will not accept, take part in, or contribute to a system that is stripping away everything from them.

Everything that should, and always will, remain naturally theirs.

The Drive to Own and Control

Those who want more – who want to control more, own more, and take everything from everyone else – cannot succeed unless they first control people themselves.

They cannot take everything away unless they make the process appear legitimate.

Control must come first, because without it, the system suffocates and then collapses, under the weight of its own injustice.

Freedom Does Not Look Like This

Because most of us are not physically imprisoned and we face each day with choices that seem to be ours, many believe we are free and living free lives.

However, what we are experiencing – where we are coerced by narratives, advertising, groupthink, the media, and even the “free-minded” influencers we follow online to keep up – is not freedom at all.

Coercion Disguised as Choice

Beyond the natural requirement to meet the basic and essential needs of maintaining human life, anything that influences our behaviour or sets frameworks for “acceptable” choices is not freedom.

It is an infringement upon freedom.

At its most basic level, it is simply doing what we are told.

Money as the Measure of Freedom

Because of the way the money system has been designed, people believe they are free if they have enough money to do what they want or to buy what they think will meet their needs, as the system suggests them to be.

But money has become the value itself – rather than the work, the products, the property, the services, or the people involved.

We now believe we can only have anything, whether it is to meet needs or wants, if we have or can obtain the money to pay for it – and that these things are all the same.

Our freedom is dictated entirely by our relationship with money.

The Illusion of Value

If money were as real as we believe it to be, the value of the money in our pockets or the salary we earn would not reduce without us doing anything that changes anything.

Yet it does.

And the value of our money changes, because money is under someone else’s control.

The game, or rather the whole deck of life, is stacked in someone else’s favour.

The Mathematics of Decline

In the UK, inflation typically reduces the value of the £Pound by 2–3% each year.

This means prices rise, and your money buys less over time.

Inflation is measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI).
If inflation is 3%, £100 today will buy only what £97 did a year ago.
The effect compounds: after 5 years at 3% inflation, £100 is worth about £85.87 in real terms.

Year	Real Value (£100 Start)
0	£100.00
1	£97.00
2	£94.09
3	£91.27
4	£88.53
5	£85.87

To keep up, your income must rise at least as fast as inflation. Otherwise, your purchasing power declines each year. And in truth, when we look more closely at the figures against what it costs to buy the things that we rally need, inflation seems to be putting those prices up a whole lot more.

Running to Stand Still (Revised)

Because inflation in the UK typically reduces the value of the £Pound by at least 2–3% each year, you must increase your income by at least this amount just to maintain your current standard of living.

The effect compounds: after five years at 3% inflation, £100 is worth only about £85.87 in real terms.

This means you are running uphill simply to stay in the same place.

Of course, this is assuming the official rate of inflation is accurate – if the real rate is higher, the decline in purchasing power is even greater.

It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way – The Alternative Is The Basic Living Standard and an economy that puts People First

Because money sits at the heart of everything in life, very few of us can visualise a way of living that works differently. And as we’ve already discussed, you aren’t supposed to – because this is how you come to believe you are free, when in fact you have been enslaved.

Money as the Toolkit of Control

Money, in the way we use it today, is the toolkit of the greatest crime ever inflicted on humanity.

Its genius lies in the way it convinces people to participate in, and even further, the very crime being committed against themselves.

In this system, money is the only god. But it is not benevolent or caring.

It is unjust, unfair, and strikes no balance when it comes to equity, equality, or what is good for mankind.

Two Masters Cannot Be Served

Man cannot have two masters.

For as long as money and the money system remain the only god, people, community, the environment, and basic human values will never be what life is truly about.

The system is designed to keep us dependent, fearful, and compliant. Whilst it slowly takes or destroys everything that is genuinely important and of value to us all.

The Alternative: The Basic Living Standard

There is an alternative. And although it may sound radical to suggest that one rule changes everything, the truth is that a future awaits where real freedom is not only possible for some, but becomes the way of the world for all.

The Basic Living Standard (BLS) is that rule.

It guarantees that everyone’s essential needs – food, shelter, energy, water, clothing, healthcare, and the means to participate in society – are met.

It is not charity, welfare, or a handout. It is a universal right, paired with universal responsibility.

Real Freedom Through Self-Sustainability

By meeting everyone’s basic and essential needs, the BLS creates the foundation for self-sustainability and genuine freedom.

It dismantles the false god of money by ensuring that survival is no longer dependent on debt, wages, or exploitation.

This is the only way to achieve real freedom: freedom to think, freedom to do, freedom to be, and personal sovereignty that gives peace to all.

What Financial Freedom Is and What It Means

The simple difference between the world that is destroying us and the world we need is this principle: We should only take what we need to meet our basic and essential needs, and reject completely the idea that there is anything good in accumulation, control, or influence beyond that.

No person or organisation should have the right hold or control any more than they need for themselves or those they have direct and meaningful responsibility for.

Abundance

Natural abundance is the state of having our basic needs met and knowing they will continue to be met through our contribution and work – without interference or control from others.

Yet what we have come to believe abundance to be is wholly manufactured. It equates to accumulating, owning, and controlling as much as possible, regardless of the cost to others or to the environment.

When we recognise that true abundance is simply safety, security, health, happiness, and the basics that sustain them, we will also understand that these are the real foundations of inner peace. And peace is what abundance is really all about.

The Peace to Relax

Think carefully about how you feel when you no longer have to worry about what you will earn, borrow, or buy; how people will judge your clothes or job title; or anything else that creates fear of loss, anxiety about the future, or depression about what you think you may have already lost.

Yes, life has its own natural anxieties – relationships, health, and personal challenges.

But these are not manufactured to benefit someone else or a system that exploits us in every conceivable way.

When you have natural peace – because you are not in a constant race to keep up (while condemned to fall behind unless you add more than 3% value to your financial ‘worth’ each year) – if you are not already too far behind – you begin to see life through an entirely different lens.

Freedom to Think

When we have the freedom to think, we have the freedom to learn what life is really about.

We can be open to joys and pleasures that appear too simple or meaningless when we are trapped in pursuit of someone else’s agenda.

These joys hold value and meaning that help us grow into the human beings we truly are.

With this level of freedom, we see life’s mechanisms and systems in a healthier way.

Our expectations become simple. We develop patience with others and understand that we are not defined by what we have or earn, but by how we treat and respect others – even when there is no advantage to gain.

Freedom brings the ability to experience natural joy, not happiness sanctioned by someone else’s criteria.

It allows us to make and learn from mistakes, seeing them as value rather than cost – a perspective denied by the money-centric world.

Personal Sovereignty

Freedom on this level opens the door for us to be exactly who we are meant to be.

It facilitates personal sovereignty – the ability to make real, independent, and meaningful choices that affect only us, without fear of consequences from outside of ourselves.

This sovereignty exists beyond the participation and contribution required of us within the community to do our part, ensuring that everyone’s basic and essential needs are met.

It is the balance between individual freedom and collective responsibility, and it is the essence of financial freedom.

The Framework for a People-Centred Life

The Basic Living Standard is the formulaic basis of the life we all need.

It guarantees that everyone has access to everything necessary to meet their basic and essential needs, in return for each person contributing through work and activity to ensure that every necessary process – and yes, every business – is completed so that everyone’s needs are met.

Businesses That Serve Needs, Not Greed

The entire system revolves around this formula.

Businesses and organisations exist only where a basic or essential need must be met.

They never grow beyond the size necessary to serve the community in which they are located and involved.

This ensures that the purpose of business is not accumulation or profit, but service to people and the environment.

Technology as Support, Not Replacement

In this system, people are supported and aided — but not replaced — by technology and AI. The need for human contribution remains central, because participation is not about money or profit. It is about people, community, and the environment around which our lives revolve, and the experiences we share together.

The Same Rules Must Apply to Everyone

For fairness, balance, and justice to exist, the same rules must apply to all.

Part of the human condition is the instinct to survive – an instinct that quickly evolves into selfishness.

It drives us to use any advantage, whether through opportunity or design, to take more, hold more, or obtain power over more than we actually need.

We often justify this behaviour by believing it makes us special compared to others, or by using it to visibly demonstrate superiority.

Survival Instinct vs. Shared Responsibility

Yes, it can be argued that this is how humanity naturally behaves.

But just because it appears to be the default response to fear of lack, it does not mean it is right.

When there is enough of everything for everyone, and when we have the knowledge and understanding to build and manage a world that works for all – as we now have, the pursuit of excess is neither natural nor justified.

The True Depth of the Basic Living Standard

In this sense, the Basic Living Standard is not just a benchmark or guarantee of dignity and financial independence.

It is also a framework that requires everyone and everything to function with its principles in mind.

Every process, system, and mechanism must flow from and to its implementation.

The BLS is not simply about meeting needs – it is about ensuring that the way society operates is aligned with fairness and responsibility.

No Special Rules, No Hierarchies, No Excerptions

There can be no special rules for anyone. No exceptions or hierarchies where some hold more power or influence than others. No materially based differences that allow one person to be perceived as fundamentally different from another.

Only when everyone and everything plays by these basic but essential rules, can the integrity of the system be assured.

Integrity Between Person, Community, and Environment

Ultimately, it is the integrity of the relationship between person, community, and environment that must be protected.

This integrity ensures that fairness is not just an ideal, but a lived reality – one that sustains balance and justice for all.

The Local Economy & Governance System (LEGS)

The Local Economy & Governance System offers the framework and societal structure that enables the Basic Living Standard to function.

It ensures that everyone can thrive and enjoy the freedom to think, to be, and to do – the personal sovereignty that guarantees peace for all.

A Human Economy

LEGS is a human economy.

Everyone who can, works or contributes, and contribution replaces currency as the foundation of exchange.

This means that the value of each person’s effort is measured not in money, but in the way it sustains people, community and the environment.

The End of Inequality

Most of the social issues we experience today are the effects of inequality – wealth inequality, social inequality, and the distortions created by a money-centric system.

In LEGS, these issues disappear. They no longer exist because the system is built on fairness and the natural law of cause and effect: when everyone contributes and takes fairly, everyone’s needs are met.

Businesses That Serve Communities

As described in the Basic Living Standard framework, businesses and organisations exist only to meet essential needs.

They remain the size necessary to serve their communities, never expanding into monopolies or profit-driven empires.

This ensures that resources are not hoarded, and that abundance is measured by access, not accumulation.

Technology as a Partner, Not a Master

Technology and AI support people but do not replace them.

The purpose of contribution is not profit, but participation.

Work is about sustaining life, community, and environment – not about chasing growth or accumulation.

In this way, LEGS ensures that human dignity and responsibility remain at the centre of society.

A System Built for People

The Basic Living Standard cannot work within the collapsing money-centric system that we have today.

It requires a new foundation – and LEGS provides that foundation.

By reorienting governance and economy around people, community, and environment, LEGS makes possible a society where freedom is real, sovereignty is respected, and peace is shared.

Benefits of the Basic Living Standard and LEGS

The benefits of the Basic Living Standard (BLS) and the Local Economy & Governance System (LEGS) are wide-ranging.

They work not only at the individual level, but also across communities and the environment.

Together, they create a framework where fairness, responsibility, and sustainability replace fear, inequality, and exploitation.

Reducing Crime

When everyone’s essential needs are guaranteed, desperation disappears.

Crime rooted in poverty, scarcity, or inequality declines because survival is no longer at stake.

Contentment and Peace of Mind

True abundance is not accumulation, but having enough.

By ensuring that everyone has what they need, BLS and LEGS foster contentment.

People are free to live without constant anxiety about money, status, or survival, creating peace of mind and stability across society.

Removing the Mental Health Crisis

Much of today’s mental health crisis is driven by insecurity, debt, and the relentless pressure to “keep up.”

With BLS, those pressures dissolve. Freedom to think, be, and do allows people to experience natural joy, rather than manufactured happiness tied to wealth or possessions.

Ending the Benefits Problem

The current welfare system is built on dependency and stigma.

BLS replaces this with a universal guarantee: everyone has what they need, and everyone contributes what they can.

This ends the cycle of benefits, bureaucracy, and inequality, creating dignity and independence for all.

Sustainable Living and the End of Overuse

Because businesses under LEGS exist only to meet essential needs, they never grow beyond the size and capacity required by the communities they serve.

This prevents monopolies, overproduction, and exploitation of resources.

Communities consume sustainably, and the environment is protected.

Work and Contribution as Valid Beyond Pay

Contribution replaces currency. Work is valued not by wages, but by its role in sustaining the community.

Whether paid or not, every contribution matters – from caring for others to maintaining essential services.

Valuing Every Kind of Work

In a system where survival is guaranteed, people see the value in every kind of work.

No job is “beneath” anyone, because all jobs contribute to sustaining life.

Happiness in Any Role

People become happy and content to do any kind of job, because work is no longer about survival or status.

It is about contribution, community, and purpose.

Experience as a Shared Tool

Life experience itself becomes valued as a tool for the benefit of all.

Wisdom, skills, and lessons learned are shared within communities, enriching collective wellbeing.

Care Rooted in Community

Care for those who may be too young, too old or unable to contribute for any other reason is carried out by members of the community who are best able, and who still receive what they need to meet their basic and essential needs.

This ensures that care is not commodified or dependent on profit, but is a natural part of community life.

A System That Benefits All

The benefits of BLS and LEGS extend beyond individuals.

They strengthen communities, restore dignity to work, protect the environment, and create peace of mind.

By removing scarcity, inequality, and fear, they build a society where freedom, sovereignty, and justice are not privileges, but universal realities.

Life Beyond Survival

Freedom Creates Time for Life

When freedom and personal sovereignty are real — when the compulsion to “keep up” is gone – something remarkable happens. Time and space open up.

Social activities, sports, and hobbies stop being luxuries or calculated uses of “spare” time that isn’t really spare at all. They become normal parts of everyday life.

The Basic Living Standard and LEGS make this possible by removing the constant pressure of survival and competition.

Instead of chasing money or status, people can invest their energy in pursuits that bring joy, health, and connection.

Communities thrive when individuals have the freedom to play, to create, and to participate in activities that enrich life rather than drain it.

Yet the greatest gift of this freedom is not only the chance to do more, but the chance to be more.

With peace of mind and comfort secured, people gain the space to think differently and expansively about who they are and what their existence really means.

Freed from fear and scarcity, we can explore our true selves, discover new perspectives, and embrace the human experience in full.

Rediscovering Real Relationships

Equally important is the refocusing and repurposing of face-to-face, in-person, real-life relationships.

In the money-centric system, digital interactions and transactional exchanges have all too often replaced genuine human connection. But under the Basic Living Standard, relationships regain their rightful place at the centre of life.

The priceless social skills and social learning that come from real-world interaction equip every person for a happy, healthy life.

They foster empathy, cooperation, and understanding – qualities that cannot be replicated by algorithms or screens.

When survival is guaranteed and competition is replaced by contribution, people are free to build communities rooted in trust and shared experience.

This is not just a benefit of the system; it is its very purpose.

Human beings are not data points or consumers. We are social creatures, and our wellbeing depends on the strength of our relationships.

Conclusion: A Future Built on Real Freedom

The journey through this essay has shown that what we call freedom today is little more than an illusion.

Rules, narratives, and the money system have combined to create a world where survival is dictated by fear, debt, and inequality.

Yet this system is not natural – it is by design, and it benefits only those who already have more than they will ever need.

The Basic Living Standard and the Local Economy & Governance System offer a different path.

Together, they dismantle the false god of money and replace it with a framework built on fairness, contribution, and sustainability.

They guarantee that everyone’s essential needs are met, that businesses serve communities rather than greed, and that technology supports rather than replaces people.

The benefits of this transformation are not limited to crime reduction, mental health, or dignity in work. They reach far wider – across personal wellbeing, community strength, and environmental sustainability.

They reshape how we understand abundance, how we value relationships, and how we live in balance with the world around us.

They restore the integrity of the relationship between person, community, and environment, ensuring that freedom is not just an individual experience but a shared reality.

Beyond these practical gains, BLS and LEGS deliver something even greater – the freedom to live fully.

Time for hobbies, sports, and social activities becomes normal, not a luxury. Real relationships are rediscovered, and the social skills that equip us for happy, healthy lives are restored.

This is not utopia. It is a practical, people‑centred system that aligns with the natural law of cause and effect: when everyone contributes, everyone’s needs are met.

It is a vision of a world where freedom is not defined by money, but by sovereignty; where justice is not a privilege, but a universal reality; and where peace is not manufactured, but lived.

The choice before us is simple. We can continue down the path of fear, inequality, and exploitation and the destruction of humanity that it guarantees. Or we can embrace the Basic Living Standard and LEGS, and build a future where freedom, fairness, and community are the foundations of life.

The Basic Living Standard and LEGS create a human economy, where balance, fairness, and justice underpin life. They place people before money, with priorities fixed upon community and environment. The BLS is the simple benchmark rule — the rule of all rules – upon which all systems of trade and commerce are aligned. By recognising abundance in its natural form, where everyone has enough to meet their needs but not their wants, the dynamics of life are transformed. Every need beyond the tangible can then be met, because peace, freedom, and personal sovereignty flow from financial independence. This is what allows each of us to enjoy and learn from the human experience in full.

Glossary of Key Terms

Basic Living Standard (BLS):
A universal framework that guarantees everyone’s essential needs—such as food, shelter, energy, water, clothing, healthcare, and the means to participate in society—are met. It is not charity or welfare, but a right paired with responsibility.

Local Economy & Governance System (LEGS):
A proposed societal structure that replaces currency with contribution, ensuring that the value of each person’s effort is measured by its impact on people, community, and environment. LEGS supports the BLS and aims to eliminate inequality and exploitation.

Personal Sovereignty:
The ability to make real, independent, and meaningful choices that affect only oneself, without fear of external consequences. It is the balance between individual freedom and collective responsibility.

Contribution Economy:
An economic system where work and participation are valued by their role in sustaining the community, not by monetary reward. Contribution replaces currency as the foundation of exchange.

Universal Rights and Responsibilities:
The principle that everyone has the right to have their basic needs met, and the responsibility to contribute to the wellbeing of the community so that others’ needs are also met.

Abundance (Natural):
A state where basic needs are met and will continue to be met through contribution and work, without interference or control from others. True abundance is defined by safety, security, health, and happiness—not accumulation or control.

Money-Centric System (Moneyocracy):
A societal structure where money is at the heart of every decision, relationship, and opportunity, often leading to inequality, dependence, and loss of freedom.

Groupthink:
The tendency for collective narratives or establishment views to shape and dictate how individuals think and behave, often at the expense of independent thought and personal freedom.

Self-Sustainability:
The ability for individuals and communities to meet their own basic needs without reliance on debt, wages, or exploitation. It is a foundation for genuine freedom.

Universal Guarantee:
A commitment that everyone’s essential needs will be met, removing the stigma and dependency associated with traditional welfare systems.

LEGS: The Human Economy – A Blueprint for Transformation

Introduction

In a world increasingly shaped by the pursuit of economic growth and the dominance of monetary values, our understanding of what truly matters has become distorted.

The language of economics, once intended to serve human wellbeing, now often justifies systems that place money above all other forms of value.

This Local Economy & Governance System (LEGS) challenges the prevailing money-centred worldview, exposing the myths that underpin it and the consequences for individuals and society.

By re-examining the purpose of the economy and redefining value at the level of the individual, we offer a blueprint for transformation – one that places human needs, freedom, and wellbeing at the heart of economic life.

The following pages invite you to reconsider what it means to live well, to recognise the moral costs of excess, and to envision an economy built on natural abundance, justice, and personal sovereignty.

The Rise of a Money‑Centred Worldview

Over time, the words economy, economics, economic policy, and economic theory have been shaped by a money centred worldview.

They became part of a language and narrative designed to justify systems that placed money above all other forms of value.

This worldview gradually embedded itself into culture, until money was positioned at the centre of almost every aspect of life and treated as the primary measure of worth.

How Policy Reinforced the Myth of Economic Growth

Governments, politicians, and established institutions reinforced this belief by placing the economy at the heart of public policy.

They encouraged the idea that a good life was only possible if the economy was considered healthy and growing.

Measures such as GDP were promoted as the ultimate indicators of national wellbeing, and people were led to believe – often without explanation – that their personal success was somehow tied to the financial success of the economy itself.

Reducing Human Value to Economic Data

By turning everything of tangible value into something economic, measurable, and defined only in relation to the economy, society gradually stripped away the inherent value of each person.

Individuals became reduced to data points – digits on a screen – an effect amplified by digital tracking and the rapid development of AI.

The Hidden Myth of External Power

The central myth that upheld this money centric system was not only the false belief that money is inherently valuable.

The deeper, more powerful myth was the idea – never openly stated but widely accepted – that real power lies outside the individual.

Because money appears external to us, it became easy to believe that our worth and our agency also exist outside ourselves.

The Illusion of Money as Value

In truth, money has no intrinsic value. It is simply a tool for exchange.

The belief that money is value created the foundation for many of society’s problems.

The FIAT System and the Concentration of Power

This belief was further exploited through the rise of the modern FIAT monetary system, which used complexity, misplaced trust, and practices that would otherwise be considered unethical or criminal to shift wealth – and therefore power – from the many to the few.

All of this was presented as progress. As the natural direction of a modern world.

The Moral Cost of Excess

Yet in any genuinely civilised society, there is no moral justification for one person to hold more than they need when that excess comes at the expense of others.

When someone accumulates far beyond their needs, someone else – often someone they will never meet – is forced to go without the essentials required for a life free from deprivation.

How Scarcity Is Manufactured

Taking more than we need, in any form, inevitably creates shortage elsewhere.

Possession alone does not justify allowing others to suffer lack.

No individual has the fundamental right to hold more than they require when doing so directly or indirectly harms others.

Economics as a Tool of Justification

In this way, the language of economics became a tool to legitimise imbalance and injustice.

It normalised greed and elevated the pursuit of material wealth and power to something admirable – something to be celebrated above all else.

The Local Economy & Governance System: Defining the Economy and Economics for a Humane Existence and Way of Life

Real value does not exist within money itself, nor within the material possessions that money – despite having no intrinsic substance – can be used to persuade others to “buy or sell.”

True value can only be defined at the level of the individual. It arises from the meaning and importance a person attributes to something from within themselves, not from any external price tag or monetary label.

Money is simply a practical tool. Its purpose is to make the exchange of value easier when direct barter or exchange – trading goods, services, or labour – is not possible or convenient.

Money is a facilitator. Not the source of value itself.

In reality, people are the economy.

People are the reason the economy exists, the purpose behind it, and the driving force within it.

Every meaningful economic activity begins and ends with human needs, human choices, and human wellbeing.

With this understanding, the LEGS interpretation of economy can be defined as follows:

Economy is the collective presence, activity, and contribution of people working together to provide and supply all the goods, services, and forms of support that are essential for every individual within a community to live well.

Its purpose is to ensure that no person experiences need or scarcity severe enough to undermine the natural state of abundance – a condition in which all basic and essential needs are reliably met.

In this state of abundance, individuals are freed from the pressures of deprivation or want, allowing them to experience a form of personal freedom that is not compromised by the struggle to secure the necessities of life.

Thus, the economy is not merely a system of production and exchange, but a shared human effort to sustain the conditions that make genuine freedom, well‑being and the experience of Personal Sovereignty possible for all.

Summary

These pages challenge the prevailing money-centred worldview, revealing how economic language and policy have often placed monetary value above human wellbeing.

They expose the myths that underpin this system – especially the illusion that real power and value exist outside the individual – and highlight the moral costs of excess and manufactured scarcity.

The Local Economy & Governance System (LEGS) offers a transformative blueprint: it redefines the economy as a collective human effort, focused on meeting essential needs and fostering abundance, justice, and personal sovereignty.

True value, as argued here, arises from within each person – not from external price tags or monetary labels.

Money is a facilitator, not the source of value itself.

By placing human needs, freedom, and wellbeing at the heart of economic life, The Local Economy & Governance System envisions an economy where no individual suffers deprivation, and everyone is empowered to live well.

The path forward is one of re-examining our assumptions, recognising the moral imperative to share resources fairly, and building systems that sustain genuine freedom and wellbeing for all.

The Local Economy & Governance System | Online Text

The Basic Living Standard Explained

LEGS – The Human Economy PDF_Vers1_1Dec25 Download

Breaking The Money Myth: Rethinking Value, Exchange, and Equality

An Economy That Cannot Function Without Money Will Not Work for Anything Else

Coming to terms with the role money plays in our lives is challenging for most people. But the difficulty doesn’t end there.

We have come to value money not just as a tool, but as the benchmark by which we measure everything in life.

This leads us to a deeper truth—one that must be faced, rejected, and overcome: an economy that functions for money, with money, or through money cannot, will not, and does not work for anything else.

An economy should always serve People, Community, and the Environment. These are the only foundations that truly support a good life and foster genuine equality for all.

Most people instinctively reject the idea that any form of economy or trade could operate without money. This reaction stems not from truth, but from habit. We’ve grown so accustomed to money being present in every transaction that we take it for granted—not because it’s inherently necessary for exchange.

The reality is this: an economy designed for the people must be capable of operating without money, currency, or any medium whose value can be universally—or nationally—controlled or manipulated by external parties.

Instead, value must be determined solely by those directly involved: the buyer, the seller, and the facilitator (or a community body that sets local trade rules for the exchange of essential goods and services).

This doesn’t mean money or currency must be eliminated entirely. Rather, it means that their value must remain free from inflationary or deflationary forces.

Any variation in exchange value must reflect only the true worth of the goods, services, or contributions involved.

The Moneyless Economic System

The essential shift—both in action and mindset—is from a system where money is required in every transaction, to one where the exchange of life’s necessities does not inherently depend on money at all.

One of the fundamental truths of our world is that not all things are equal. However, the way we treat people and the planet should be equal and fair for all.

It follows, then, that money—or any form of currency used as a medium of exchange—should not be governed by a universal benchmark, especially when that benchmark can be manipulated by a powerful few to serve their own interests.

It is normal that we all contribute work to meet our needs. Therefore, the things we need should be accessible to everyone, based on the value of what they can offer through their work.

The imbalance in this equation today arises not from scarcity, but from the greed of those who control access to what others need.

This imbalance is reinforced by systems of privilege, power, and the illusion of ownership that steps beyond the requirements of genuine personal need.

Our Local Future | FULL TEXT

Money IS The Greatest Crime of Our Time

The Coming Collapse and The Revaluation of Everything Needed to Regain Personal Freedom and Control

Breaking The Money Myth PDF_Vers1_12Nov25 Download

Overtaxed, Overburdened, Overpowered: The role of the UK State has become all bread and no jam for too many of us, and we are fast approaching a place called stop

Each of us see the problems this country is facing from different points of view.

Whilst conversations about the crisis now unfolding with a range of different people would almost certainly deliver a range of common themes, the emphasis, value or meaning of each of them will almost certainly be different.

However, the one commonality, which isn’t about anything that we all have in common at all, would be the solutions that almost all of us will have based on our own world view, that in the bigger scheme of things, may be in no way similar at all.

Ironically, because so many of us have so many interpretations of the whys, hows and whats that have got us all here, and share them with what will be a relative few, we spend next to no time – if indeed any time at all, thinking about any of the common problems that we all really do share.

We certainly don’t think about the ways we can work together to create a better way of life for everyone and then how we get the leaders and mechanisms in place that will actually get us there.

The devil is in the detail

It really is no accident that the UK is in the kind of mess that it is. Because life has become so very complicated – and deliberately so.

The more detail, the more distracting and the more impossible a solution to just about anything might seem. Even to those amongst us who really can see that the status quo cannot continue and that no matter how bought into the things we like about the way we live – which we want to keep but don’t recognise that they are actually the part of the problem that’s making everything so impossible to fix – we really do need to snap out of the fixation with noise that’s doing none of us any good.

We must recognise that the things that work well for everyone and will work even better for everyone are much simpler than what we have been convinced we need.

It is inevitable that we will keep tripping ourselves up each and every time we think of the next step as being only about putting our own self-interest first.

Unfair, Unjust and Unworkable living, demonstrated best by Tax

Perhaps the best example of how we get lost and misdirected by the detail of what needs to change for us, rather than focusing on what needs to change so that it works for everyone, relates to the question of tax, taxation and everything else that means people like you and I are stumping up cash that we could often do with being able to spend, just so we can live without debt or in some cases rely on handouts or even food banks.

Yes, even framing the ‘tax issue’ this way will make some prickly – and that really is the point.

The UK Tax code is today thought to be over 21,000 pages and 10 million words long, giving everyone the distinct impression that the subject of how the bill for government action and delivery gets paid for (ostensibly on our behalf), needs to be tailored specially to everyone as if bespoke governance is the only kind of governance that’s really fair to everyone.

Have you heard of Tax Freedom Day?

This is ‘The day when Britons stop paying tax and start putting their earnings into their own pocket’. Or alternatively, the final day of the year when every penny we’ve earned goes to the government – if we start counting on January 1^st, which was this year (2025) calculated as being June 11^th by the Adam Smith Institute.

The reason I’m using this figure isn’t to piss anyone off by drawing attention to the fact that as an average, we arguably all work for no other reason than to keep the wheels of government turning every year for at least 5 months.

I’m doing so because it may be the only way to look at the relationship all taxpayers have with the government in the same way. Given how easy it is to get sidetracked by the question of what everyone earns!

June 11^th 2025 was the 162^nd day of the year (as 2025 is not a leap year), and with 365 days in 2025, this means that in comparative terms, people are giving over 44% of their earnings (162 days divided by 365 days), before they can even begin to think about what they need to spend money on, in turn before anything that they might actually want.

For a moment, let’s forget the amount anyone is actually earning for themselves, as we know that some have considerably more than others, whilst many just don’t have anywhere near what it takes to live without struggling to make ends meet, and then take it as read that everyone is giving up 44 Pence in every Pound they earn (£0.44).

After realising just how much of everything we do have taken from wages and then what we pay for that includes some form of tax, it doesn’t take much to realise that government or rather the model of government that we have is simply unaffordable, unsustainable and that we must do everything we can to find a different and much better way to pay for the things that we share.

Regrettably, the complexity of rules and regulations supposedly there to benefit and protect us don’t stop at taxation.

One of the reasons that every part of life, that doesn’t already relate to the question of financial affordability in some way, seems so difficult or restricted, is because our freedoms and therefore our independence from the system and government are already being actively controlled in many different silent rules that have deliberately been put there using the excuses like health and safety, and protecting us or someone in some way.

Even if we aren’t actively being followed around by a police officer all the time the fact that we are aware of and abiding by these rules usually adds up to being the same.

Government isn’t what it should or was ever supposed to be

Whilst many would actually like to see the wealthiest in our society directly paying at least 44% of their income to the government to help run everything outside of our front doors, we still need to keep some perspective when it comes to the obvious question we will come back to in a moment about who pays and begin with the question, ‘Does government actually work?’

Government certainly functions. Even the deepest or most vocally critical of what government in the UK does will find it difficult to argue otherwise.

Because no matter the organisation or service that comes under the rather large umbrella of government, they all continue to do something. Even if they are not delivering what we might agree to be the correct results. And that’s the only reason it can be argued that it all works.

However, functioning and succeeding are not the same thing.

The time is long overdue that we all took a very hard and questioning look at every part of government and decided what, if anything, public services should or could be; just exactly where the scope and reach of government should end, and then and only then, what many believe to be the most important question of all, ‘How whatever government and the public sector does is paid for and by whom’.

Whilst it remains the case that there are services, infrastructure and even public facing roles that every modern society needs to be provided by the community, so that everyone can have universal experiences and opportunities which will always be the same, no matter who, where or what you are, the practical approach to not-for-profit service delivery – which this really should in almost all cases be, is not the same as the public sector and system of governance that we have today.

Every part of government and the public sector that we have today is focused on delivering (political) and therefore biased agendas which will inevitably advantage some people more than others in some way. Or is all about the jobs, terms and conditions for whoever the incumbent employees are who currently have the jobs.

There have always been politicians, officers and suppliers who for many reasons have chosen to advantage themselves in some way, if and where they failed to have the integrity to exercise their roles properly. And regrettably, it’s the position of trust we gave them all that enabled them to behave in such questionable ways.

Yet even more shocking reality that we all face today is that the whole public sector and everything that runs within it is now dysfunctional in terms of delivery in some of the most critical ways.

It has only been able to become this way because decisions have either been made (or not made) at the very top by people who really should have known better, and whose actions have allowed or facilitated everything that serves the public unwinding in this way.

Money before People

Regrettably, like so many areas of life today, the role of money – which stretches far beyond the scope of the tax question that we’ve already considered – is also the key element within the dysfunctionality of government and public services across the UK. Because the poor leaders that we have are obsessed with the idea that the only way any problem can and will be fixed is by having enough money to spend – no matter where it comes from, which is itself is these days even better for some politicians who dare not do anything which could restrict what they are already committed to spend.

Idealism and agendas cost a lot of money. Because their implementation requires the creation of systems, rules and infrastructure somebody wants but nobody needs.

The very perverse outcome from decades of government and the public sector serving itself, its people and whoever or whatever influences them, is that the changes that have been made in every way imaginable to support this are now costing too much for either the Taxpayer or government itself to sustain.

We have a VERY BIG problem. Because nobody in government or who wishes to form one either can or will be honest about the true depth and breadth of the mess that the UK is now in.

With Tax rises thought to be well on their way this coming Autumn, the reality that too many of us face is the 44% (or probably much more) that we are already contributing to this public sector black hole through so many of the things that we buy, pay for or earn, are set to keep going up.

All to cover the exploding costs of incompetence, waste and the furtherance of playing up to what are very dangerous egos. Because somewhere in amongst all of this the point has been lost that government does not and never did have the right to exist over the people that it was created to represent.

For any kind of government to be unrepresentative of the people it represents, would by its very nature and intended purpose mean that it represents someone or something else.

Money: The drug wrecking everything to enrich and empower the few

The way that money actually works, how it is controlled and worst but not least, how it is actually created at will, is the truth that sits behind everything bad, that few of us will willingly believe.

It’s much easier to believe that it is all good rather than even having the potential to be bad – even when almost everyone can see the destruction that money or the lack of it is causing to everyone in some way or form.

At the heart of the money tree and its root and branch system sits the mechanisms that supposedly fund government, but actually do so by doing everything to help grow the volume of money that is in circulation, so that the public spending – and the only way that politicians know how to get themselves out of trouble, can leverage ‘growth’ so that the entire shitshow can be hid.

Unfortunately for all of us, the exponential growth of the ‘money’ that has entered circulation, particularly since the responses of government to the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 and the Covid Pandemic of 2020, has wildly contributed to the inflationary spiral that accompanies such an expansion of available cash.

The creation of money that doesn’t relate to anything else like productivity or output devalues the money and incomes that normal people already have, as well as what they have the ability to earn.

It does so at breakneck speed whilst the real value of everything is funnelled towards those who control and benefit from what is a fully legal, legitimised but nevertheless completely corrupt system that appears real, because they have typically become millionaires and billionaires in the process.

Put simply, the lowest paid and most vulnerable now have zero chance of ever being able to earn enough to live independently of benefits, charity, debt or worse.

For as long as the money madness continues, the bubble containing all of those who are branded as being a drain on the system will rapidly continue to expand.

The leadership void or black hole

When a country has such shit, incompetent leadership, and has done for the period of time that the UK has, it wouldn’t be unfair for any of us to be asking, ‘How did we get them?’ and ‘How did they get to where they are?’.

However, as we all need to realise, very few of us do ask these questions or indeed any questions that are like them. And because we don’t, each time an election takes place locally or nationally, we are, as a majority, making the same mistakes over and over again.

We are chewing at the very same shit sandwich with the bits just wrapped differently with words, rosettes and faces – all hiding the same miserable self-interested and dangerously incompetent content that always delivers outcomes that are the same.

Because we have a very bad, self-destructive habit of going along with the idea that the political fairies come along and give us all a genuine choice at election time – as all good democracies surely would, we have not only accepted that government after government and council after council has worked on all of our behalf. We have also jumped into an elephant trap of our own making that tells us these same fairies will deliver the politicians to choose from at the next election, who will sort out and solve the very same mess that they and their own kind created (with a little help from their friends) in the first place.

Sadly, there are no exceptions to the reality that we must face that there are no real leaders in politics today.

The so-called leadership we see, and what the people we identify as leaders say, is much more likely to be aligned with us hearing and seeing whatever we need to fuel our own confirmation biases than it either is or ever will be about the solutions and outcomes that we might not be ready to hear about, but nonetheless actually need.

Victim or Victimiser: There is no longer an in between

As a society and culture, we are collectively suffering what might be the worst type of addiction of all. Simply because it is majority of us are addicted rather than the few.

Meaning that that same majority is completely out of touch with the realities of what that addiction does and will remain so, until the supply runs out – which is where all those who cannot afford to live independently within the current system have or are beginning to find out.

Money, or rather the way that money is used by those who control the system – and that means government and politicians, who are very much under their control too, has become the key factor in every equation and consideration in our lives.

The role of money and its reach has dehumanised everything to the point where money and the power, influence and control it is perceived to give at every level of life has become more important than the value of life and community itself.

Few realise just how their lives are completely at the mercy of the ability to spend, borrow and achieve the momentary of transitory hit that this money centric, Moneyocracy we inhabit demands of everyone and which is enforced by the barrage of non stop marketing and remote, typical digital pressure which comes at us constantly and demands that we all conform.

Money; what it does, what it can do and what it says about you is the qualification and gatekeeper that runs through every part of functional life and if you are in, you are in and if you are out, you really are all the way out and fully at the mercy of those who continue to be ‘in’.

The tragedy of the system is the ruthless and methodical way that human behaviour has been used against the masses by the few and the experts they pay who understand it.

The sweeties and trinkets that have been flowing towards for decades have only been bettered by what has appeared to be the endless ability to secure more and more credit to buy it with, all the time becoming more and more essential to secure as real earnings and wealth have been stripped by the printing of all this extra ‘pretend’ or non existent money that even relatively wealthy people have no chance of keeping up with.

The irony is that those of us who continue to believe we benefit from what the establishment is doing and therefore acquiesce or go along with it are – through our actions – making those who cannot the victims.

All for no better reason than this whole situation could not exist without the elites treating the masses as a resource that is not real. But is instead just like oil, coal, precious metals, forests, farms, land and even animals – and just something else for those who ‘own them’ to exploit.

We all need to contribute to what we share in life. But real life cannot continue if we are required to contribute everything we have

Whilst we must all accept it is correct for everyone to contribute to the upkeep and maintenance of the systems and infrastructure that serve us all, from the moment we step onto the pavement or road outside of our homes, what we share is not and never should become more important than the right to have a fully independent, functioning and self supported life experience.

The system that we have discussed is at breaking point and cannot continue as it has, or as it is today.

Those in charge don’t know how to do anything other than borrow or tax us. And as the system can no longer sustain the borrowing that idealism and agendas have made necessary, the current government are now looking at everything they can tax beyond everything they already do.

One way or another, the system is going to collapse. Because we are all living unsustainably in a system that itself is unsustainable and at the centre of which is a plague which is the absence of real leadership, replaced with what is instead no better than incompetent management that makes it the most unsustainable part of it all.

Real life and a money-centric economy are mutually exclusive outcomes

Government already costs us way too much – even at 44%.

That’s before we even begin to consider the work and additional value to public service that charities and other nonprofit organisations bring, that we are all in one way or another contributing to too.

The whole model of economics needs to be restructured and redeveloped so that it supports life, rather than feeding off it like the giant parasite that the financial system and the role that government plays in it now is.

A realistic level for everyone to contribute to ‘the community’ would be around 10% – without any form of exception for anyone.

We should also be considering the added requirement that everyone able to work also contributes the equivalent of 10% of their working time and the skills and experience they offer, to help make our communities, their governance and infrastructure work.

Thereby creating real buy-in and ownership for what we all share, whilst drastically cutting the scope and influence of an out-of-control sector, and the ballooning costs that are actually paying for lots of agendas snd idealistic ideas, but very little that is actually about people and certainly nothing that’s doing everyone equally any good.

The identity, qualification and process of finding good leaders

Good public leaders, public representatives and public servants, would not facilitate or contribute to the creation, implementation and furtherance of agendas, ideologies and idealism that doesn’t serve the genuine best interests of those who they have been elected, appointed or recruited to serve.

Yet we have been experiencing decades of exactly that. And we have no hope that this will change if we continue to rely on a system that needs to change giving us the leaders who will then do the right thing when it comes to the delivery of that change.

Contrary to accepted thought, we do not need money to play the role across society that it has been deliberately engineered to do.

Power and control are certainly not a gift that should be secured within the hands of a distant, faceless, unanswerable few who we will never meet and whether intended or not, are treating humanity as a resource and no better than a numbers game that they can do with as they like. All as if they are now, as the result of decades of manipulating the system and bending it to their will, the new gods of everything with everyone else’s destiny theirs and only theirs to decide.

The truth that few see is that the centralisation and push for remote control of everything that globalisation and everything that walks alongside it has been, has been the active and complete restructuring of our society and culture, so that nothing can or will work without the say so and direction of those who make all the decisions.

None of this was accidental. Locality, local relationships, local businesses, local supply chains, local decision making and everything that goes with it promotes sovereignty and independence. It encourages and grows a living environment and cultural model that is good for everyone other than those who want to advantage themselves and be in power or control.

Meanwhile, the downsides of centralisation and everything that goes with it are the for every one of us to see.

However, despite the various attempts, compelling rhetoric and highly credible narratives that work so well when playing up to the addiction for material living that we currently have, there is an alternative and much better alternative to running life and everything that we and our communities need. And the real upside of this real alternative is that it centres completely around putting normal people and our local communities back in control.

The fact that generations of political leaders and those they favour or are influenced by have misused and abused their position to create a system with faux legitimacy – simply by legalising immorality to make it appear moral and therefore unquestionable, doesn’t make it right. And it certainly doesn’t become right, just because those in power today continue to insist and behave as if it is so.

We have a legitimate right to hold power and control over our own destiny.

The power of collective decision making should sit as part of a new structure of governance within our communities, amongst people and representatives who we ourselves select and know we can trust.

A moral obligation arguably also exists to reset the entire system and the various devices such as money and the tools of governance the existing system uses, so that we once again bring the focus of everything in life back to people, to humanity and to creating the best kind of environment that we can to ensure that every person has the life experience that everyone – and not just a selective few should have.

However, nobody else will step up or step in to do this for us – no matter how compelling or necessary this might seem.

Whether addicted or not, the choice and the steps necessary to return power to people and to our communities, and with it the creation of a genuine democracy we can all trust and believe in, are ours and only ours to take.

Nobody in the public sphere today can or will do this. None of them will give us back the influence that is rightly ours. Because they all imagine themselves as leaders who can only lead by having absolute control over everyone and everything else.

We don’t have a roadmap agreed for the future.

But there are plenty of ideas we can share about the outcomes that will serve all of us equally well and in a balanced, fair and just way.

This is where the conversation should start.

The one thing we can be sure of is that real leaders do actually lead. But also know that it is real equality, balance, fairness and justice that applies equally to everyone where the pathway to everything good for everyone really starts.

Links:

Our Local Future | FULL TEXT

Our Communities are the only place that a workable political solution can begin

Demystifying the Money Myth: How the Monetary System Devalues Your Wealth

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

Overtaxed Overburdened Overpowered PDF_Vers1_20Aug25 Download

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.

The Illusion of Freedom

The Role of Money as Gatekeeper to Life, Peace, Happiness and Freedom that is Governed by Someone and Something Else

This Is by Design

Freedom Does Not Look Like This

It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way – The Alternative Is The Basic Living Standard and an economy that puts People First

What Financial Freedom Is and What It Means

The Same Rules Must Apply to Everyone

The Local Economy & Governance System (LEGS)

Benefits of the Basic Living Standard and LEGS

Life Beyond Survival

Conclusion: A Future Built on Real Freedom

Glossary of Key Terms

Further Reading:

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Introduction

The Rise of a Money‑Centred Worldview

How Policy Reinforced the Myth of Economic Growth

Reducing Human Value to Economic Data

The Hidden Myth of External Power

The Illusion of Money as Value

The FIAT System and the Concentration of Power

The Moral Cost of Excess

How Scarcity Is Manufactured

Economics as a Tool of Justification

The Local Economy & Governance System: Defining the Economy and Economics for a Humane Existence and Way of Life

Summary

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An Economy That Cannot Function Without Money Will Not Work for Anything Else

The Moneyless Economic System

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The devil is in the detail

Unfair, Unjust and Unworkable living, demonstrated best by Tax

Government isn’t what it should or was ever supposed to be

Money before People

Money: The drug wrecking everything to enrich and empower the few

The leadership void or black hole

Victim or Victimiser: There is no longer an in between

We all need to contribute to what we share in life. But real life cannot continue if we are required to contribute everything we have

Real life and a money-centric economy are mutually exclusive outcomes

The identity, qualification and process of finding good leaders

Links:

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How many carrots does it cost to buy a wheel?

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

In simple terms

The Future of Money

People are the only legitimate economic constant

Locality based economies and economics

The blight of greed-driven thinking

Further Reading (Updated 14/1/26):

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