"Progress is the Realization of Utopias"

How do we rewrite the source code of the global economic system to avert catastrophe?

Yesterday, I wrote about the wrecking ball that is Trump’s economic plan. Today, I thought I would offer a workable (if, admittedly, utopian) alternative. I developed my economic proposal for humanity’s collective future through studying thinkers such as Murray Bookchin, Buckminster Fuller, Antonio Negri, Hannah Arendt, Oscar Wilde, Lynn Margulis, and many more.

Our current economic system—global finance capitalism—operates on a corrupted source code: We’re trapped in a program that inexorably drives humanity toward ecological and social breakdown. Our economic system treats the planet’s finite resources as limitless inputs, fueling a machine engineered for one purpose only: endless growth. The ever-widening inequality, the relentless production of toxic pollution (including excess CO2), and the suicidal exploitation of natural resources are not bugs in the program. They are features, wired into its core design.

Therefore, the only viable path forward is not piecemeal reform, but comprehensive system change. It is obvious that such a system reboot or reset could only happen in the immediate aftermath of a massive crash (much as the UN was created and the Bretton Woods agreements happened in the aftermath of World War Two). Right now, we seem to be driving straight toward that crash, with madman Trump at the helm. Perhaps, unconsciously, we are doing this as a species to force an initiatory encounter with reality itself, breaking through the abstractions that keep us imprisoned in obsolete social and economic arrangements to create something new.

We can engineer a peaceful, intentionally designed transition to a post-capitalist, regenerative society that addresses global warming as well as the other planetary boundaries. This is more than a technical challenge: It requires a “revolution” or transformation of human consciousness, individually and collectively, on a species level. Such a transformation of consciousness can be accomplished via media and other applied communications technologies, such as community forums (“tribal councils”).

Negri, a post-Marxist political philosopher from Italy, noted that in post-industrial civilization, the most important form of production is not anything material or physical, but “the production of subjectivity,” in itself.

It isn’t polite to say this, but “subjectivity” is already manufactured for the masses. A certain bandwidth or frequency of subjectivity is imprinted on people by school, television, dopamine-driven social media, video games, advertising, and so on. The Right Wing is well aware of this, which is why they are working hard to “seize the means” of media production, such as Twitter, Paramount, CBS, Truth Social, The Free Press, and so on. The goal of Fascist media is to enforce a narrow consciousness of human possibility and force us to accept domination, war, and hierarchical control as inescapable conditions. They seek indoctrination; I propose initiation, instead.

The economic transformation required to avert systemic catastrophe and near-term extinction is built on several foundational pillars designed to work in concert, much like the interdependent systems (nerves, bones, organs) within a healthy organism.

Property

First, we must redefine our relationship with property. I argue, following thinkers like Rousseau (Discourse on the Origins of Inequality), that the concept of private property is the origin of our civilizational dis-ease. Private property creates artificial scarcity, enforces competition, and estranges us from an authentic relationship with the world. It locks the world into a rigid division of "Haves" and "Have Nots," compelling the former to protect their assets and the latter to feel no responsibility for a world that has been cordoned off from them.

What I propose is a gradual, engineered transition, or phase-shift, from ownership to stewardship. Through media campaigns, we would revive concepts like usufruct—the right to continue using a tool or a piece of land, so long as you don't damage it and make productive use of it.

In “The Soul of Man under Socialism”, Wilde noted that private property had a deformative impact on both the wealthy and the poor:

By confusing a man with what he possesses, [private property] has led Individualism entirely astray. It has made gain not growth its aim. So that man thought that the important thing was to have, and did not know that the important thing is to be. The true perfection of man lies, not in what man has, but in what man is.

There are indications that this shift is already underway in the burgeoning sharing economy and mutual aid movement. This could be the beginning of a larger move toward a post-ownership world where resources are shared cooperatively. We could certainly use advanced AI to help us maximize how we share and allocate finite resources, without turning over our agency to AI.

Money

Second, we must redesign how money operates. Our current monetary system is not a neutral medium of exchange; it is a debt-based, interest-bearing system issued by private central banks that actively creates scarcity, enforces cut-throat competition, and mandates destructive growth. We can replace this monolithic currency with a diverse "ecosystem" of currencies designed to serve different purposes. This would include negative-interest currencies for global trade, like the Terra, designed by economic theorist Bernard Lietaer. The Terra would discourage hoarding and accelerate circulation in alignment with nature’s cycles of decay and renewal. At the local level, we can implement Time Banks and Local Exchange Trading Systems (LETS) to build community capital and resilience, keeping value circulating locally rather than being extracted by distant corporations.

The technological backbone for building this new financial architecture already exists with the blockchain, the technology behind Bitcoin. The blockchain allows for the creation of transparent, decentralized, peer-to-peer systems for exchanging value. This could facilitate everything from a global direct democracy to what Nathan Schneider calls “platform cooperatives” which will supersede profit-extractive models like Uber with equitable, worker-owned platforms.

Corporations

Third, the plan calls for a "design revolution" that repurposes our industrial and corporate infrastructure. Rather than smashing corporations, we must see them as powerful, hyper-efficient engines that have simply been programmed with the wrong directive: to maximize profit at any cost instead of serving the collective good. Over time, we can shift industry from a linear model of extraction and waste to a closed-loop, "cradle-to-cradle" model based on biomimicry, where there is no waste and all outputs become inputs for other processes, as nature works.

The visionary designer Buckminster Fuller, a key inspiration, understood this as a shift in focus from political struggle to creative problem-solving. He argued:

All who are really dedicated to the earliest possible attainment of economic and physical success for all humanity – and thereby realistically to eliminate work – will have to shift their focus from the political arena to participation in the design revolution.

Ultimately, this economic transition is inseparable from a social and spiritual one. The goal is a post-work society of "cultivated leisure," where automation and intelligent systems perform necessary drudgery, freeing humanity to pursue creative, spiritual, and communal ends. This requires a universal basic income or subsidy, guaranteeing security for all and breaking the coercive link between work and survival.

By implementing this holistic plan—transforming our relationship to property, redesigning our monetary system, and repurposing our industrial capacity—we can consciously choose evolution over extinction. We can build a regenerative society that works for everyone, restoring the health of our biosphere for generations to come, while freeing our human family to live, love, thrive, explore consciousness, and create in peace.

I know this seems very unrealistic and implausible. However I don’t think that makes it impossible. Wilde wrote:

A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realization of Utopias.

The consumer paradise of hyper-capitalism was a type of utopia. Capitalist market-driven economies brought something into being that was a collective yearning of humanity for many thousands of years: Today, we are able to sample all of the treasures and flavors of the planet, to access all of our legacy of music, culture, religion, and literature at the merest touch of a button. This was the successful culmination of a utopian project.

Now, we need to set our sights on a new collective utopian vision — one of shared abundance, mutual aid, healed trauma, and community care. When enough of us have imagined and internalized that vision, we will realize it together.