FAQ

 Money had its place and time in the history of human race but now it’s an obsolete institution that does more harm than good. Because there’s always more debt than money in the monetary system, it creates a profit motive on all levels of society. That profit motive pushes us to dire competition with each other, feeds dishonest behavior, increases fear and decreases trust between people. I didn’t want to have anything to do with a system like that anymore. I wasn’t content just to survive; I wanted to live and enjoy life, to see if I could learn to trust other people again, depend on them and lead a fulfilling life.

 Already as a child I questioned the current way of living: “Why can’t I just waltz into a grocery store, get what I need and walk out?” I thought I would anyways fulfill my place in society, especially if I did not need to worry about my daily survival. But adults could not answer questions like this.

Loathing for money continued during my university studies, although Master’s degree in Economics and Business Administration didn’t provide me with the needed understanding on the question what exactly is wrong with the monetary system. I found out the answers only after graduation. On personal level I had started downshifting already: I gave away my car in 2004, most of my stuff during the following years and finally my flat in June 2009.

When I finally understood how simple and flawed the fractional reserve banking system is, I faced a moral dilemma: as every penny in my wallet is someone else’s debt, and I would like to treat my brothers and sisters as I would like to be treated myself, how can I justify using money? I couldn’t and gradually I stopped using money altogether.

Not really. In fact, I can see more clearly now. “You don’t have to worry about running out of money when you are already broke”, I tend to say. Things got much more simple when money was out of the equation. No one tries to fool you. Every day is a new adventure.

My sarcastic answer is usually that “I don’t eat money. I tried but even with a pinch of salt I didn’t like the taste of it.” There is a saying that “only when we have cut down the last tree in the forest we realize that money cannot be eaten.”

People that you meet on the road are by and large very generous and giving. I eat when people offer me food. Sometimes I ask for leftovers from restaurants or just grab whatever is left on the table. When there is a possibility to use a kitchen I go dumpster-diving. Half of the food produced globally ends up thrown away.

Insurance companies and medical industry thrive on the fact that people are afraid. I chose love over fear long time ago. It would be insane to mull over some imaginary “what if” scenarios. If I get sick or injured and cannot treat myself I’m pretty sure things will work out just fine. If having no money gets me killed, it’s not really a big deal to leave that kind of society behind, is it? I could use a dental check, though.

I understood that although we can feel some 18.000 different emotions they all derive from either fear or love. At present most people are driven by fear: fear of losing their life, their health, their job, their partner, their kids, their house, their status, their reputation, their power, their money, their… You get the point.

We can consciously choose not to be afraid, to be driven by deep love within, feeling and knowing that everything in the Universe is interconnected. When that choice is made good things start happening: you radiate positive energy, attract interesting people and events to your life and, most importantly, you can no longer be controlled with fear. You may still occasionally become afraid but you learn to remind yourself about your decision in that moment.

I don’t have a permanent address. I’m constantly on the move but it doesn’t feel like traveling anymore. It’s my lifestyle. I like it because it forces me to meet friends and also to make new ones. In the summer I like spending nights outdoors, under the star-lit sky. It keeps me more connected to nature.

How should I know? I used to be very planning-oriented: setting goals and strategies for my personal development and choices in life. Now I greet life with new enthusiasm every day. I face the reality as it unfolds. However, I’ve always been a bit of a pioneer, getting excited of new ideas and challenging what is perceived to be “normal”. I tend to refuse norms.

I am working all the time. I write, cook and help people in whatever ways I can. I’m very serious about contributing to society and enriching people’s lives both on short and long-term. I just don’t ask money for it and I refuse to draw my identity from a single profession. That would limit my creativity and options. It would also feed my ego.

On personal level it’s fairly simple: let others know what you need and contribute what you can, by doing what you love to do. When you help others, don’t ask for anything in return. When offered money ask them to pay it forward, i.e. help someone else!

Yes. Although I hitch rides that are anyways going my way and sometimes eat other people’s leftovers, I won’t say no if someone wants to buy me a beer. Some moneyless people, like Mark Boyle, wish to grow their own food and be 100% self-sufficient. I haven’t gone to those extremes, yet.

We have been conditioned to think that we have to survive on our own, that independence is somehow a virtue. Well, we have seen how well that has worked out: people are scared, they don’t trust each other, and they get burned out just trying to survive. Maybe it’s time to let go of that and learn to become dependent on each other again.

Many awakened people get the idea of moving into some “sustainable community”. Granted in those communities you could be surrounded by like-minded people. However, resigning from the monetary system doesn’t have to mean that you move into the woods and isolate yourself from the rest of the society. I take it as a challenge to be among the ordinary people because there I can inflict positive change through encounters with others.

I am not married and I have no kids so I don’t have an answer to that question. Granted, you have to be very creative and stubborn if you wish to exit the system with that kind of ties but I don’t think it’s impossible. Impossible just takes a little bit longer.

Maybe in that case living in a community might be a great option. For example in Beneficio there are kids who have been born in the community.

”How can you claim that you live without money because, even if you personally don’t touch money, someone somewhere has used money to produce the food you eat, fuel the cars that you hitch and so forth?” This is the question that I hear most often.

We are all free-riders to an extent
The reasons why people ask this question can be many but I think in most of the cases they are referring to the “freerider-problem”, i.e. someone or something being a parasite in a system – living off of other people’s produce without contributing anything to it. And it seems to be in vain to try and explain your contribution – writing and releasing books for free, cooking for free, or helping others in their projects for free – because you keep facing the same argument again: “Well, you were using someone’s laptop, right?”, “Did you grow the carrots that you cooked?” and so on.

We still live in the paradigm of protestant work ethic; that manual labor is somehow a virtue in itself. Please note that the glorification of manual labor is not only a capitalist phenomenon. Just look at the old Soviet or Nazi Germany propaganda posters and you find it blatantly evident that this very same brainwashing powder has been used in other isms of the industrial era – communism and socialism – to keep the majority of people busy so that the upper elite could stay in power. Well, guess what, we are no longer in the industrial era: machines are doing most of the work nowadays and we’re all free-riding on their produce. Don’t you think it’s time to set the humanity free from the paradigm of mere survival to a paradigm of intellectual, spiritual and social development?

Escaping the system doesn’t mend the system
It is my genuine wish that I could help others in this worldwide movement of awakened individuals to change our broken system; to create better conditions for future generations. Thus, it’s not enough that I would just selfishly break out of the system and escape somewhere in the countryside. That kind of isolation would not solve anything. And even then we could hear the same argument: “Someone paid for those nails that keep the planks of your shack together!”

Many people who wish to “change the system” have no clue about Systems Thinking. Without going too much into detail, it should be noted that systems thinking is valuable because it can help you see the big picture, the inter-relatedness of everything and the forces that affect the outcome of the system. Moreover, it helps you to change the system and to design smart, enduring solutions to problems instead of mere quick fixes.

Money doesn’t create things
The thing that we need to realize about the cars, carrots, laptops and nails is that they don’t exist because of money. They have come to existence through resource extraction, production and distribution processes that any economic system deals with. In our current economic system the man-made construct we call money just happens to be part of the system, and somehow the system itself has become very anti-economical and wasteful.

Nor do the cars, carrots, laptops and nails vanish if money disappears. Imagine that a massive solar flare would wipe out electronic trading and banking systems globally, and that 98% of money – that is how much of it is currently in electronic form as numbers on various accounts – would cease to exist. You would still have the coffee cup you were holding just a minute ago. There would still be milk in the store. And the cow that was generous enough to give the milk would be just fine and dandy. We need to learn to differentiate between what is real and what are just man-made constructs; because, too often, we keep tackling our so-called problems that are not even real.

Let me rephrase
Although most of the people are still indoctrinated to think that money is somehow real you could now step out of that thinking for a while and take it as a mere product of imagination. Then, take a look at what is real: the environmental degradation, the human and animal suffering, and the state of our common planet as a whole. This is called enlightenment: seeing things as they really are. This is one of the key reasons why I decided to ignore money. Yes, I’m still part of our contemporary economic system – no matter how artificial and anti-economical it might be – but at least I can see more clearly now, without all the clutter blurring my vision.

So, I hope this lengthy explanation answers the question. If not, then I have to admit that I have been wrong. Maybe I was. Maybe I have been wrong saying that “I live without money”. After all, this whole question might arise due to semantics. People have a tendency to get caught up in the words we use. Maybe I should say instead: “I choose to ignore money – a social construct and an imaginary agreement between people that I had no part of agreeing on.”

It’s not economical. When the underlying motive in society is to maximize your own gain – to profit – it becomes impossible to cooperate and implement the most efficient and rational solutions we could have with our current-day technology. We don’t do what makes sense but what is most cost effective. And we don’t get rid of problems for good because they are profitable. Without scarcity and suffering there is no business.

And most importantly: as long as all money in circulation is issued by private banks as debt (with interest) we have no choice but to create new debt to pay for the old. This insanity called “continuous growth” pushes us to produce more stuff and to destroy Mother Earth until there’s nothing left.

A society of collaboration and giving, that of mental, physical, spiritual and societal development; not just mere survival. Money, as we know it, has no place in it.

You were born into a moneyless world. Money is nowhere to be seen in nature. It’s just an agreement between people. It’s not natural and ceases to exist without us having to start anything new, just stop the old unsane functioning and expect nothing in return when you help others.

It’s an utopia to assume that we could go on exploiting this planet and each other the way we do now without serious repercussions.

Even the current society, no matter how flawed, is so technologically advanced that it would appear as an utopia for someone living in 1910 – a mere hundred years back.

Short answer: I would design it with others, sharing resources and perspectives in open collaboration, and leaving room for constant evolution of the system. In fact, the very fact that you are on this site proves that the re-design process has started among the people of the Earth, in a very unique fashion: from the ground up instead of top-down.

Professor Tim Jackson says “Sustainability is the art of living well within ecological limits” where “living well” implies both ethical behavior and comfort. Thus, a more just and sustainable system is found in the crossroads of efficiency, environment, equity and ethics.

The basic requirements of a sustainable economic system are that it is able to:

a)      meet basic human needs of the whole global population,
b)      take the carrying capacity of the Earth into account,
c)       allow the diversity of life to flourish now and in the future, and
d)      ensure both human and societal development

The basic components of an economic system are:

1. Need clarification,
2. Resource extraction,
3. Production,
4. Distribution,
5. Use of the produce, and
6. Re-use of resources

Needs
Market equilibrium, i.e. balance between supply and demand, has not been reached in top-down approaches. Capitalism is producer-driven guesswork vulnerable to formation of monopolies and distorted by profit-motive driven creation of artificial needs. On the other hand, the central-planning of socialism and communism cannot answer to rapid changes of people’s real needs and preferences.

In a moneyless society the basic needs for survival are quite easy to fulfill because we all need nutritious food, warm clothes, comfortable shelter, clean water, functioning sanitation and all that. The human needs that guide the basic production are somewhat unchanged and predictable.

However, there are more advanced needs that derive from individual preferences, interpersonal relationships and from ideas for societal development. An individual might want to create a piece of art that requires equipment, two people in different geographic locations might want to meet each other out of a whim and a research team might realize that a bridge needs to be built to link two cities together.

In order to enable all this, people need to have an easy means to express their changing needs so that required products and services can be delivered. We do this already: we order stuff from Amazon, we book trips over internet and we create wikis and documents together with our peers and professional colleagues to plan larger projects. All we need to do is to link the information systems we already have, open them up to public scrutiny and make these massive amounts of data accessible in a common database that can guide production decisions.

If it seems that we cannot possibly fulfill everyone’s needs without exceeding the carrying capacity of the Earth (not enough resources to make everything happen at once), we can then assign numerical values for resources, e.g. time and amount needed for a final product. And then we can utilize various mobile and internet technologies to design tools that allow people to “vote” on a daily basis to inform production of their needs, i.e. use direct democracy to guide the production decisions.

Material and energy extraction
The sporadic, short-sighted and predatory resource extraction of today cannot continue much longer. The same goes for fossil-fuel based and highly centralized energy production and distribution.

In a moneyless society all energy comes directly or indirectly from the sun (including geothermal, wave, tidal, and wind energy). Jeremy Rifkin talks about the “Inter-grid” – the internet of energy – where all of us are both consumers and producers of energy. It is possible to set up with current day technology, today, if we want it to happen.

For the material extraction to be sustainable we need to understand where, how much and what kind of resources we have. This applies both to untapped sources and products that can be re-used.

Manufacturing process
In our current system there is a whole lot of overlap in production: competing organizations create similar products and services with lowest possible cost – often leading to poor quality products – and they all try to sell their stuff to the consumers with whatever the means, creating a lot of artificial needs and desires in the process of doing so.

In a sane sustainable system we would produce exactly what is needed, as locally as possible, to as many as possible, with as little waste as possible.

The shifting needs “from bombs to food” would take us little by little towards abundance. Automation would no longer be viewed as the evil machines that take people’s jobs but as a means to set people free from the drudgery of manual labor, bearing in mind that nothing would stop you from growing your own carrots or knitting your woolen socks.

Distribution
Nowadays we ship stuff all over the world without much thinking of the consequences. Raw materials are shipped to where it’s cheapest to produce something out of them. Then this produce is shipped to be processed where it’s cheapest to do. The cargo then moves through various assembly points to the wholesaler, to the retail store and finally consumers pick it up and ship it to their homes. They use it, trash it and the junk is shipped to the other side of the world. Rational? No. Cheap? Hell yeah!

Distribution in a moneyless society should minimize the distance (i.e. energy use) and maximize the ease and access of use. Most of the food would probably be wisest to deliver to large restaurants or community kitchens in large quantities. Consumer goods such as toiletries could have filling stations where anyone could fill up their soap bottle near where they live. Durable goods, such as furniture, could be ordered directly to your home from the manufacturer. The latest consumer electronics, appliances and tools could be borrowed from a local “library”.

If it would seem that transferring some of the products to another side of the world is not sustainable then distribution would also guide production decisions, and alternatives would be found. We might come into conclusions such as using the common sea-buckthorn for pepping up people in the Northern hemisphere and leaving the luxury of sipping coffee for those living in areas where it’s viable to produce locally. Please note that hard-core coffee addicts would always be welcome to relocate to South America if that is what they value in life.

We would supplement, and over-time probably replace, the current marine, air, train and road cargo services with new more efficient technologies such as Evacuated Tube Transport.

Use
Currently many people buy stuff to feel happy. People want to own a sleek car to show off their prosperity. This ego-driven material happiness doesn’t last long, however. Little by little people are waking up to feel the void within. To fill that void they need love and better relationships, education, culture and arts, time for reflection and experiences in nature. And yes, most people on this planet need to eat.

More important than ownership is access to goods and services that fulfill our real needs. In a moneyless society people would use the products and services that they need to live a good life. You’d be surprised how this might actually be much less – not more – than what an average person owns nowadays. And through sharing durable goods many more people could have access to what they need. The same goes for services: it’s much wiser to use highly effective and comfortable public transportation that always takes you to your destination, rather than worry about fixing and maintaining your car that sits on the parking lot for 95% of the time. Hoarding junk just doesn’t make sense, especially if everything is freely available.

Re-use
Today we live in the culture of disposability and most of the stuff we use ends up in landfills. Even fast moving consumer goods such as oil and jelly is packed in plastic or glass containers that are not going to decompose any time soon. As for the durable goods, just by sharing efficiently what we already have we could for instance have free clothes for the next 10 years.

Re-use has to be designed into the whole process so that each product has gone through a proper cradle-to-grave assessment. If we take this seriously we can soon imitate nature where everything that is disposed of becomes quickly used again in another part of the process we call life.

No. Multinational corporations, with the willing help of government legislators and transnational organizations such as IMF and World Bank, have been privatizing the basic necessities of life for years. Power is centralized to fewer and fewer hands. There might come a time that if you don’t obey The Powers That Be you simply don’t get to eat.

The ultimate solution, in the short term, is to rise up and regain the power back to people, decentralize it. We need to start doing what makes sense, not what we’ve always done. In long term we as humankind need to take a step to the next level of evolution: to go beyond the concept of reality that we receive with our limited five senses, to bridge the gab between science and spirituality, and to take steps to understand our place in the universe. If everyone understands themselves not only as part of same humankind but also the planet and the universe at large, we won’t bother to spend a single thought on meager issues like money.

Education is key in this development, but are people ready to evolve from couch potatoes to highly aware beings is questionable. These are the two sides of the coin: knowledge is power, yet ignorance is a bliss. It’s much easier to stay unaware… and struggle through life just to die with all your possessions.

I believe in people reporting to people, not in accepting readily-chewed information as the ultimate truth. When you educate yourself on what might be going on in the world you don’t jump into conclusions so easily and accept what money-driven media outlets claim is going on. If, for example, birds and fish start suddenly dying around the world simultaneously you don’t swallow the “official explanation” that it was because of fireworks. No. You start digging deeper and analyzing different possibilities. As Robert Anton Wilson puts it: “I am 100 per cent in favor of studying conspiracy theories because, next to quantum mechanics, they represent the best test of how well you can handle ambiguity and uncertainty.”

I’m not advising anyone to go moneyless right at this instant. If you wish to do so it has to be your own realization and that requires certain mental and spiritual readiness. Everyone chooses their own path.

Here are some suggestions though:

1. Knock on your neighbor’s door and get to know them. Erase “stranger” from your dictionary. There are no strangers, just friends who haven’t met yet.
2. Take care of your friends and family. We are going to see drastic societal upheaval before a new culture of compassion arises. When the shift hits the fan you probably won’t survive alone.
3. If you think your job is not contributing to a better tomorrow, start learning more useful skills. Find out what you are passionate about, what you love to do. Concentrate on helping others with what you are good at.
4. Join a local exchange trade system, mutual credit system or a time bank… or start one. These use complementary currencies that are issued by the people for the people. They don’t use interest and they are not controlled by private banks. It’s easier for people to start helping others without traditional monetary gains if they feel that they are still rewarded with some sort of numbers on their account.
5. Educate yourself to see things from a systemic perspective. Understand how our current system operates and what are its repercussions. Familiarize yourself with ancient spiritual teachings and latest science with the intention to understand what it means that we are all one.
6. Getting rid of stuff, sharing and giving it away, allows for space for mental growth. In other words, physically letting go of things enables letting go of old modes of action, such as habitual consumption.
7. Cut your credit cards and try not to take loans. Take your cash out of the banks and ask your employer to pay you in cash. Spread the word and see what happens in time to come.