Life didn’t become expensive because it had to be. It became expensive because too many people wanted more than they needed, and in chasing profit they made freedom unaffordable for millions.
That greed has shaped the way we live, the way we work, and even the way we imagine what’s possible.
The Illusion of Permanence
We’ve been conditioned to accept the system as if it has always been this way and always will be.
For those who benefit, that’s convenient blindness. For those who suffer, it’s a kind of brainwashing – convincing them that change is impossible.
But everyday life tells a different story. Anyone who shops regularly knows how quickly prices rise.
A £3 item can jump by 30p in a week, far beyond the official inflation rate. At Christmas, tins of chocolates are dressed up as “reduced,” even though they cost 20 to 50% more than they did a year ago. And energy bills keep climbing even when wholesale prices fall. These aren’t natural increases; they’re engineered.
The Myth of Big
This manipulation is reinforced by another illusion: the myth of big.
We’re told that scale equals legitimacy, that size equals strength. But “big” doesn’t mean better. It means the system has grown so vast that exploitation can hide behind its scale.
The bigger it gets, the smaller we feel – and the easier it becomes to believe we can’t change it.
The Machinery of Exploitation
Once you see through the myth, the machinery becomes clearer.
Supply chains and hierarchies strip away accountability, amplifying selfishness until exploitation feels normal.
At the heart of it all sits money – created, policed, and controlled by those with power.
Profit comes first, people last, and the system is designed to make us accept it as normal.
The Human Cost
This isn’t about people failing. It’s about people being failed.
Lives are destroyed not because individuals did something wrong, but because others took more than they needed.
The uncomfortable reality is that we don’t have to live like this.
There is another way.
Redefining What We Value
We’ve been taught to believe success means others must lose, that material wealth defines worth.
That’s the great lie. It externalises our humanity, making us dependent on possessions instead of recognising our intrinsic value.
To change course, we have to learn to value who we are, not what we own.
Putting People First
Imagine a system where everyone’s basic needs are guaranteed.
This isn’t a pipe dream or a challenge to the “law of the jungle.” It’s simply the right thing to do.
A good life depends on the contributions we all make together, knowing that at the end of the week we’ve done our part and received what we need.
Beyond Division
We are not isolated individuals. We are members of the human race.
Hierarchies and divisions are tools of oppression, legitimising greed and selfishness.
Those who benefit from them do so only by exploiting the needs of others, however distant those others may seem.
A Framework for Fairness
Enshrining the Basic Living Standard in law would be the transformative step toward a society where dignity and security are guaranteed for all.
This principle ensures that every individual’s essential needs are met, fostering resilience and social stability.
The adoption of the Local Economy & Governance System and the framework it offers would strengthen communities by decentralising decision-making and empowering local actors.
Such a system encourages sustainable growth, supports small businesses, and keeps resources circulating within the community, thereby reducing dependency on distant, impersonal structures.
Together, these frameworks dismantle exploitation, promote fair contribution, and prevent the concentration of wealth and power that undermines collective prosperity.
By prioritising fairness and local empowerment, society will lay the foundations for enduring economic vitality and shared well-being.
However, I have noticed that when people search for BLS using AI, a whole chain of stories and information—often including quotes attributed to me—has emerged, much of which is either out of context or entirely fabricated.
This is concerning, especially when those outside the mainstream are trying to share solutions and perspectives that challenge the compliance and blindness of today’s system.
We must recognise that the so-called AI takeover is being built on delivery levels that, in many cases, are no better than the efforts of a lazy teenager responding to an encouraging parent. And the outright creation of false information and narratives—even regarding work from independent voices—is troubling.
Given that AI now tells those seeking a quick overview that the Basic Living Standard is a way to fix our broken economic system, I feel it is time to clarify: while I believe BLS is a pivotal solution, it cannot and will not work within the current economic paradigm.
The integral priority of BLS is to put people, not money, first.
The Basic Living Standard: Not Intended for the Current Economic System
I have never created or published financial models or projections to ‘cost’ or predict the impact of BLS on the current economy or financial system, because the two are mutually exclusive.
BLS was not designed to be part of, or to work within, the existing paradigm, which makes it impossible to do so.
Decision-makers, legislators, and their influencers will not openly admit that our system is structured against equity and equality.
It is only because the system works progressively against these values that the disproportionate levels of wealth and benefits enjoyed by those in power can exist as they do.
Paying Lip Service to Parity
While the National Minimum Wage should be the benchmark or minimum earnings floor necessary for financial independence, the reality is that no person can be financially independent or live free of benefits, charity, or debt on this wage when working a typical 40-hour full-time week.
The current economic and financial system survives because the National Minimum Wage does not reflect the genuine cost of living for the lowest paid, who must then be subsidised by government benefits, seek help from charities such as food banks, or go into debt to meet the growing cost of living.
The FIAT, Neoliberal, Global-Driven Money System: The Perfect Crime?
A hard truth about our broken and collapsing system is that its design centres on wealth transfer and impoverishment, relying on the ongoing creation and addition of new money to the economy.
Currency debasement devalues the worth and ownership of the masses, while creating additional wealth for the elites and enabling them to secure property, public infrastructure, and ownership of everything devalued by their actions.
System Collapse and the Choice We Must Make
The finite lifetime of what may one day be considered one of the greatest ongoing crimes against humanity is fast approaching its end.
How the masses respond to financial and systemic collapse will dictate whether the Basic Living Standard, or a similar benchmark, forms the basis of a new people-centric economic and governance system.
This new system would put people back at the heart of everything, rather than the money-centric focus we have now.
The current system is collapsing because it is fundamentally corrupt and wrong.
Introducing a system like BLS within the current system—even under the name National Minimum Wage—could not achieve its true purpose, because implementing it honestly would speed up, if not immediately collapse the current money-centric system – and that’s why nobody in power today who benefits from this system will ever agree or willingly help for it to be done.
Embracing the Shift: Making Life About People, Not Money
If we accept and adopt an economy and governance system cantered on People, Community, and Environment, we will naturally move away from financial modelling, projections, profit margins, and all the tools that reinforce money as the only important value in life.
The Basic Living Standard provides a clear focus for the paradigm shift from money-centric beliefs to what everyone needs—not wants—and establishes the basic standard for independent living without dependency.
However, BLS is not a policy that can work in isolation or as an add-on to the current system. It is a fundamental building block of the universal change we must choose and embrace, because we cannot fix what cannot be fixed.
The Basic Living Standard: The Basis of a New Way of Living
By restarting, reestablishing, regenerating, reforming, and replacing our economic and governance systems, the Basic Living Standard becomes the benchmark for guaranteeing that the lowest paid can sustain themselves and be financially independent in return for a standard working week.
It requires all businesses, organisations, and systems within a new framework of economy and governance to realign with ensuring that every person experiences this minimum standard as the foundation of society, business, and culture.
Improving lives today really should be as simple as creating a Minimum Wage and changing everything for those who need help in one day. But changing perceptions is not the same as changing the way everyone thinks.
That is why the introduction of a system that genuinely works for everyone cannot be openly embraced before the pain of collapse and the reality it brings.
Everything we know today exists because of a system built around money as a value set—a flawed belief system we have all been conditioned to accept.
Only when this system fails and excludes people, step by step, do those affected awaken to the reality that something is fundamentally wrong.
Yet those excluded are often viewed by those still inside the system as the ones who are guilty and wrong.
Out of Our Problems, an Opportunity Awaits
The collapse offers a moment when the balance can flip, and those who have been excluded may reach a critical mass that signals to everyone participating in the money game that a better, equitable way exists.
However, ordinary people must see, understand, and accept this en masse.
Whatever happens next will lead to wholesale change—whether we choose it or simply go along with it.
Only by being aware and honest about what we need, rather than what we want, can we take the leap of faith necessary to change everything and contribute to the creation of a new system where people, community, and environment come first.
The Basic Living Standard offers a benchmark for the frameworks and opportunities of a new way of living. Yet, it will remain unknown and inaccessible to those unwilling to step away from the comfort of an unsustainable relationship with the past.
Money, democracy, ownership, business priorities, and practices are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the breadth and depth of necessary change.
Everyone must own and be part of the transformation ahead, because the change is about the needs of everyone, not just the wants of a privileged few.
There’s More…
In the coming days, and hopefully as soon as this week, my next book will be published, building on all I have been writing and sharing for over three and a half years.
Evolving directly from Our Local Future, first published in summer 2024, this latest work brings more detail and focus to the mechanics of implementing a new system for economy and governance, while simplifying previous concepts to make them more accessible and relatable.
The Basic Living Standard lies at its heart, and I am confident that we can flip everything to work for People, Community, and Economy, once we see the benefits and share the determination to implement a system and new code for life that truly works with equity and equality for all.
Regrettably, I long since realised that whilst many of us talk about change, kick and scream about the need for change, and discuss how we’re going to get those in power to facilitate change, very few of us are actually prepared to do what it would take to embrace and create the kind of change that all of us actually need.
This leaves writers, bloggers, commentators and thinkers either massively frustrated and in some cases falling into the trap of sensationalising their messages to get attention. Or like me, just accepting that people aren’t yet ready to accept that an unsustainable situation can no longer be sustained.
My back catalogue therefore quietly grows. The upside is I can at least say that through the 29 books and the material now published and available to read on the internet, I’m pretty sure I’ve covered all the bases when it comes to attempting to shine some light on everything that’s wrong; what needs to change; what is preventing change; what will create change and of course what change might actually look like. Which is where I have just left the desktop, now.
The reason change isn’t happening, isn’t because we don’t have the ideas, energy, guts, commitment and values present across our society to bring about significant change. It’s because we are too busy arguing over the first step; who’s right; who’s wrong and who should be in charge.
Because of this, I felt it was time to take a leap into the future and commit to writing what the world would need to look like, feel like, and how it would need to function, IF we were to open ourselves up to a way of living that genuinely works for the greater good and is beneficial to us all.
But doing so means dealing with some very uncomfortable truths, and those aren’t easy to convey without being open about where things really are today.
Our Local Future is, by design, abstract. There’s so much about the world we live in today that is out of balance – that we must leave much of it behind – including things that we think are good but are actually hurting us – rather than expecting that we can keep everything we like and simply leave the damage it causes behind.
We leave the damage in our wake each and every day. And it’s the problems that wider society and the environment we live in now face that are manifesting as a result.
What we fail to see is that taking everything for granted and as entitled as we have increasingly become, means that the basic essentials of life are now at significant risk.
The issue of Food Security and the growing risk that the UK population could go hungry or experience serious food shortages are what concern me as a former politician and community leader myself.
So much so that I attended and completed a postgraduate course in Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security at a well-known UK university earlier this year.
Acknowledging the role of so many stakeholders in the Food Security problem remains important. But it’s not enough, as almost without exception, everyone on the problem end of everything still believes that the usual suspects will have a lucid moment of realisation, then change their approach.
The truth is simpler, and I believe it’s correct to be open about the reality that the empty shelves we experienced during the COVID lockdowns could very quickly become normal in times ahead – especially when it comes to our access to basic, essential types of food.
Never mind the heavily processed and unhealthy stuff that many of us mistake as being just that.
In publishing Our Local Future, I have lent heavily on the opportunity to use an AI image generator, and after publishing nearly 100 created images to accompany every published page, I was alarmed to discover that no matter how I instructed the software to create an image, there was no way that the programme would produce anything to illustrate what empty supermarket shelves would look like.
The words and title used were clearly also ringing algorithmic alarm bells somewhere in the cloud, as Facebook then also rejected the post after I adopted a different approach to the imagery – within seconds of publication – telling me that I had committed a community violation and that the post had immediately been deleted.
We can only speculate upon why there is a refusal to allow open and honest discussion about the genuine risk to UK Food Security and how it is increasingly likely to affect the UK population.
The harsh reality we face is that the food supply and food production are quickly becoming a key method of societal control.
Increasingly so, as British Agriculture – the industry that provides it – seems to be in what can only be described as a form of terminal decline that looks remarkably deliberate. Even to the untrained eye.
Many who still trust The System may well ask, ‘How could it possibly be the case that someone wants to control access to what we eat, when food is as important as the air that we breathe and the water that we drink?’
Adam Tugwell 