THE ABUNDANCE PARADIGM:

WHY AI FORCES A RETHINKING OF MONEY ITSELF — PART 1

A Universal Basic Income (UBI) has long been proposed as a way to cushion the blow of jobs lost
to automation. Under that model, everyone receives a modest monthly payment – enough to
cover basic needs and prevent extreme poverty. 

But Elon Musk has gone further. On April 16, he posted on X:
Universal HIGH INCOME via checks issued by the Federal government is the best way to
deal with unemployment caused by AI.

AI/robotics will produce goods & services far in excess of the increase in the money
supply, so there will not be inflation.

Rather than a subsistence stipend, Universal High Income (UHI) would be a level of income
allowing ordinary people to live well in a world where machines do most of the work. Musk has
also said that AI and robotics are the only things that can solve the massive U.S. debt crisis. 
That sounds promising, but where will the government get the money to pay the UHI? Critics
say any government that tried it would go bankrupt. There are also other concerns, which will
be addressed in Part 2 of this article. Here we will look at the financial underpinnings: why UHI
is even thinkable, why AI forces a reexamination of how money enters the economy, why the
current system cannot scale to meet what is coming, and the implicit transition needed to meet
that challenge.

Why the Current Money System Cannot Scale

The national debt of the U.S. government just topped $39 trillion. China’s is $18.7 trillion.
Japan’s is $8.6 trillion. Those of the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain are each in the multi-
trillion-dollar range. Collective global debt now stands at $353 trillion, 305% of the world’s
annual economic output. So even if, hypothetically, everything produced in the world in a year
were applied toward liquidating the debt, it still would not be enough to pay it all off. 
In fact the debt can never be repaid, because of the way money currently enters the system.
Nearly all of the money supply today is created by banks when they make loans. Banks do not
lend their existing capital. The loan itself creates the money. The bank adds the loan amount to
the asset side of its balance sheet and balances that sum with the same amount on the liability

side. When the borrower withdraws or transfers the funds, either the bank takes them from its
reserves in “vault cash” or the Federal Reserve debits the bank’s digital reserve account at the
central bank. But the lending bank typically has funds coming into its reserve account at about
the same rate as they are going out, so its reserves are continually replenished. Thus a very
small reserve account can support a much larger money creation engine. For decades before
the Fed discontinued the reserve requirement in 2020, it hovered at around 10%.
The chief problem with this debt-based system is the interest, which the bank does not create
in its original loan. For a typical long-term loan, interest can double the total tab or more.
Where is the money to come from to pay this added liability? Across the system as a whole, it
must either come from more borrowing or from existing funds. In the case of governments,
that means issuing interest-bearing bonds or tapping taxes and other revenues. The interest on
the debt compounds, meaning the government is paying interest on interest. This makes the
debt increase exponentially, until it is mathematically unsustainable. Then bankruptcies occur,
of banks or even whole governments. Booms turn into busts, and the cycle begins again.
Today, interest on the federal debt is the second largest budget line item after Social Security,
exceeding $1 trillion. Meanwhile, workers are losing jobs to AI/robotics, shrinking the income
tax base. The system is clearly unsustainable.

How to Raise Demand to Scale to the Upcoming Supply

A Universal High Income would replenish the shrinking tax base by replacing the lost wages of
unemployed workers. But where will the money come from to pay the UHI? The only
sustainable solution is for the government to issue it interest-free. That does not mean through
the Federal Reserve, which creates money in the same way banks do: it buys federal interest-
bearing securities with accounting entries. The Fed collects the interest, which it is supposed to
return to the Treasury after deducting its costs. But since 2008, its costs include paying interest
on the reserves of its participating  banks, which consumes its profits.

The only interest-free, debt-free solution that will actually increase the money supply
sufficiently to match the projected productivity of AI/robotics is for the money to be issued
directly by the Treasury.

This is not a radical new idea. It is authorized in the U.S. Constitution, which provides in Article
1, Sec. 8, that “The Congress shall have Power To … coin Money [and] regulate the Value
thereof .…” Abraham Lincoln used government-issued “Greenbacks” to avoid a crippling debt to
British-backed bankers. Debt-free government-issued money was also the funding mechanism
by which the American colonists succeeded in creating a thriving economy and liberating
themselves from the oppressive yoke of the British Empire.

In his 1729 pamphlet “A Modest Enquiry into the Nature and Necessity of a Paper-Currency,”
Benjamin Franklin argued that a lack of currency was a tax on industrious farmers and
producers, and that a reliable, locally issued paper currency was the “oil” for the gears of trade.
The “Nature and Necessity” of this currency was to facilitate the movement of goods between
neighbors. Franklin observed that the British strategy of keeping the colonies short of cash was
a method of economic suppression. By forcing the colonies to use gold and silver, which were
constantly drained back to London to pay for imports, the Crown kept the colonies in a state of
permanent debt and low productivity. When the money supply matched the productive
capacity of the people, universal prosperity resulted without inflation. 

This logic evolved into the “American System of Political Economy” championed by Henry
Carey, economic advisor to Abraham Lincoln. He wrote:
Two systems are before the world… One looks to pauperism, ignorance, depopulation,
and barbarism; the other in increasing wealth, comfort, intelligence, combination of
action, and civilization. … One is the English system; the other we may be proud to call
the American system, for it is the only one ever devised the tendency of which was that
of elevating while equalizing the condition of man throughout the world.

In the context of the 21st century, the “oil” that best lowers the friction of trade is debt-free
government-issued money similar to Lincoln’s Greenbacks and colonial scrip. Rather than
implementing a radical financial innovation, we would be returning to our roots.
Inflation or Deflation?

The chief objection to the colonies’ paper “scrip” was that they tended to over-print, so that
“demand” (money) outstripped supply. Too much money chasing too few goods produced price
inflation. But in the 21 st  century, we will soon have the opposite problem: too little money
chasing too many goods. Machines don’t need food, clothing, shelter, transportation, medical
treatment or other services. So who will buy those goods and services?

 
Money needs to be issued to human consumers, and not just to a few wealthy human
consumers serving as debt brokers thriving on interest. To create sufficient demand for the
voluminous output of AI/robotics, it needs to go to the whole national population, evenly
distributed. Not only can UHI work in that sort of abundant supply without producing price
inflation; it is actually essential to prevent deflation.

In a conversation on X, Musk wrote:
In a normal economy, issuing more money simply increases the dollar price of the
existing output of goods & services, meaning people do NOT get more stuff. If

AI/robotics massively increase goods & services output, then you actually MUST issue
dollars to people or there will be massive disinflation. 

As paraphrased on Yahoo Finance (reposted from Benzinga), Musk wrote that handing out
more dollars becomes a problem only when the economy’s supply of goods and services fails to
surge alongside the money supply. His claim is that AI and robotics could lift production so
sharply that the bigger risk would be falling prices, not rising ones.

But aren’t falling prices a good thing? In this case, no. Prices would be falling due to a lack of
demand, meaning producers can’t find customers for their products. They wind up laying off
workers and eventually going bankrupt. When spread across the whole economy, the result is a
deflationary spiral: prices fall, businesses lose revenue, and the economy contracts, not
because production is inadequate but because purchasing power is insufficient. The result is
recession or depression. In the Great Depression of the 1930s, food was rotting in the fields
while people were starving, because they were out of work and had no money to spend. 
Job cuts from AI are already happening. According to the same Benzinga article:
Evidence of near-term strain is showing up in corporate announcements: employers disclosed
more than 27,000 job cuts linked to AI in the first quarter of 2026, according to Challenger,
Gray & Christmas. The outplacement firm said that figure was up 40% from the same period a
year earlier. 

Robert Reich reports that wages are around two-thirds of the typical corporation’s total cost,
and that in the first four months of 2026, big U.S. corporations cut over 128,000 jobs. 
How Soon Will All This Happen?

Another Benzinga article, reposted on Yahoo Finance on March 16, detailed Musk’s projected
time frame:
Speaking remotely to the Abundance Summit last week, Musk told XPRIZE founder Peter
Diamandis that the global economy is on the verge of an explosion so massive it defies
historical precedent.

“I’d say the economy is 10 times its current size in 10 years,” Musk said, before quickly
clarifying that the growth could be even more explosive. “Greater than,” he added,
framing the projected shift in economic output as a “fairly comfortable prediction.” …
“Obviously if there’s like World War III or something, that could put a kink in those plans
or those expectations,” Musk warned. “But in the absence of World War III, if current
trends continue, I would say the economy 10xes in 10 years.” …

The catalyst for this vertical climb isn’t traditional manufacturing or trade, but the “hard
takeoff” of artificial intelligence. Musk explained that civilization is currently moving
through a period of recursive self-improvement, where AI models are increasingly being
used to design and build their successors.

Ray Kurzweil, author of The Singularity Is Near, sees AI reaching Artificial General Intelligence
(human-level intelligence across virtually all domains) by 2029, and full transformative
abundance by 2045.

Other experts question these time projections, but a radical transformation of traditional
manufacturing and trade is likely to happen sometime in the reasonably near future. The
question is, will the money system transition soon enough to rescue all the laid-off workers
from homelessness and famine?

The Sovereign Wealth Fund Alternative

There is another model for distributing the gains of automation, one that can be phased in
gradually as the AI workforce expands. It comes from Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI. In an ironic
twist, Altman and Musk, who jointly founded OpenAI in 2015, are now locked in a high-profile
legal battle over whether Altman diverted Musk’s $44 million investment to transform what
was conceived as a nonprofit “for the benefit of humanity” into a highly lucrative for-profit
enterprise.

That dispute aside, Altman’s alternative model for sharing AI-generated wealth is a national
sovereign wealth fund seeded by the profits of AI and robotics. His proposed American Equity
Fund would take public stakes in the companies and technologies driving automation, capture a
portion of the resulting productivity gains, and distribute them as universal dividends. The Fund
would not replace a Universal High Income but would complement it.

This approach has several advantages. It ties payments directly to real output, scales
automatically with productivity, and can be introduced gradually, avoiding the shock of issuing
large payments before the supply side has fully expanded. It would resemble the Alaska
Permanent Fund, which distributes oil revenues to residents, except that here the resource
would be the most powerful general-purpose technology since electricity.

Conclusion: A New Monetary Logic for a New Productive Era

For centuries, money has been issued as a claim against the future productivity of human labor,
repaid from the income that labor generates. The logic of this debt-based system collapses
when machines become the primary producers of goods and services. Then the limiting factor
becomes purchasing power — the ability of human beings to access the abundance their own
technologies create. That requires a monetary architecture that expands with output rather than debt, and distributes income not through wages alone but through mechanisms tied to the
productive capacity of the whole system.

Universal High Income and a sovereign wealth fund are two ways of doing that. One ensures a
stable floor of demand; the other ensures that the public shares in the gains of automation.
Both would be grounded in real production. But for the public to have access to those gains, the
money supply needs to expand in proportion to the expanding pool of goods and services. This
can be done by restoring the innovation our forefathers baked into the Constitution: debt-free
money issued by the government itself.

How to fund a UHI without triggering inflation or driving the government into bankruptcy is the
first objection critics raise, but there are others. They argue that people would stop working or
stop learning, that society would collapse into idleness or chaos, that life would lose meaning
without jobs, that the government would have the power to control how people spend their
money.  Will a UHI ring in the promised utopia or lock us into a state-controlled digital prison?
Part 2 of this article will address those concerns.

This article was first posted as an original to ScheerPost.com. Ellen Brown is an attorney,
founder of the Public Banking Institute, and author of thirteen books including Web of Debt, The
Public Bank Solution, and Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age. Her
400+ blog articles are posted at EllenBrown.com.

The Moment Earth Day Was Always Waiting For

Twenty-nine years ago this Earth Day, a short film called Connect: A New Ecological Paradigm aired on MTV. At that time M-TV was a big deal. The film featured a gathering of young environmentalists and asked a simple question: what if we organized civilization around life instead of against it?
The world wasn’t ready. It might be now.

Something has shifted in the last few weeks. Hungary — a country whose democratic machinery had been systematically dismantled over 16 years — produced nearly 80% voter turnout and swept its authoritarian government out of power. Not through revolution. Through collective decision. Millions of people who had stopped believing change was possible decided, in the same moment, that it was.
Palestinians and Iranians have more support in the US than the Israeli government – in spite of the massive Israeli propaganda machine. And we’re seeing greater public engagement here in the states.
The question Earth Day has always been circling — how do we build a world that supports life instead of extracting from it — requires exactly that kind of collective change of heart. Not a policy, a shift in what people believe is possible.

The tools exist. We’ve been building them since the first Earth Day, April 22, 1970.

Henry Ford built a car from bioplastics including soybeans and hemp in 1941 — lighter than steel, safer in impacts, made from the earth and returnable to it. The petrochemical industry buried the story. A documentary now in production at fordlostcar.com is bringing it back.

Hemp — one of the most regenerative crops on the planet — is finally finding its economic infrastructure through cooperative marketplaces like Hempopolis.net. Bioplastics, combining industry with agriculture (a Henry Ford dream), free energy, organic food – all ignored in favor of a consumptive lifestyle that profits the elites and makes our lives and that of the Earth poorer.

The knowledge was never the problem. The will to replace the old has always been the issue, especially as we threaten archaic industries like oil. Curiously, the war in Iran is doing more to move the needle away from fossil fuels than all the NGOs and protests over the years.

World 5.0 is the name for what comes next — a civilization built on three simple truths: that reality is complete in this moment, that intent is the animating force of any living system (including we humans), and that only love — not fear, not stress, not hate— makes us genuinely happy.
Earth Day named the wound. The moment to heal it may finally be here. There are clear signs the old system is failing. The formerly hidden network of elites controlling money and politics is being revealed through the Epstein saga. New, regenerative energy and food systems are coming online. We, the people of Earth are awakening like never before. I’m hopeful the 2027 Earthday shows us incredible change toward a positive future.

[Watch Connect: A New Ecological Paradigm — Earth Day 1997]

Jim Prues is a Cincinnati filmmaker, author, and founder of World 5.0. Learn more at world5.org.

When Is Reality?

What is reality is a trick question, because it is so dependent upon place. Yes, both your interior state of being, and your particular place on this Earth. So many questions about reality, especially in this broken culture which misunderstands everything. Reality for each of us is dependent on where we are in space, yet what is absolutely clear is when reality exists.

Reality exists only Here in time only Now, where everything everywhere is happening all at once. According to chatgbt…

“This present moment—the “tiny point in time” we’re all sharing—seems like it should be a common reality for everyone, but it’s actually deeply subjective because of the way each person perceives it.

1.  Perception and Interpretation: While we might all be sitting here at this exact second, each of us is experiencing it differently. Sensory processing speeds vary, as do interpretations of what we’re seeing, hearing, and feeling. Imagine a sunset: one person might see beauty, another feels nostalgic, and yet another is focused on the science of light scattering. These individual interpretations mean the “reality” of that sunset differs for each person.
2.  Individual Attention: Our focus directs our reality in each moment. Someone might be absorbed in their phone, while another person is watching the trees sway in the wind. What we choose to focus on in each moment filters our experience, shaping a different subjective version of reality even if we’re in the same room.
3.  Memory and Context: Each moment exists in the context of our past experiences and expectations. A sound or a sight may trigger a flood of memories or emotions in one person, while for someone else, it’s just a neutral experience. This layer of personal history infuses the present moment with meaning that is unique to each individual.
4.  Time Perception: Our sense of time is subjective; for some, a minute may seem to stretch forever, while for others it flies by. This subjective experience of time adds another dimension to how each of us feels the present moment.

So, even in this shared point in time, we’re all experiencing it through unique filters—our memories, focus, feelings, and perceptions. This subjectivity is what makes every “now” deeply personal, even though we’re all in it together.”

Typical craptastic response from AI.

Life, and hence we, exist only in this moment because it is only this moment where eternity and time co-mingle. We are being in eternity and doing in time, both at once. It’s the central truth of our existence. Life Is, and it is nowhere else. So simple, and yet so foreign to us for the reasons chatgpt gives us above.

And yet it is only when we ground ourselves Here, ever mindful of this present, this presence, that we can learn to master our intent and learn joy. Knowing our eternity releases us from fear. And what is left when the fear is gone is something we can all enjoy.

Of course, me as a younger man and for most folks the idea of being with fear seems impossible. So it was for me when I would grind my teeth at night and worry over so much. It was a book called ‘A Course in Miracles’ that opened the door to my questioning just about everything I learned growing up.

And then 20 years ago I was struck with the idea of our new operating system, World 5.0, whose central tenant is ‘the totalilty of now’. It never leaves, only we so often leave THIS with our overactive brains. You can know this moment even as I do, and knowing it never ends, there is nothing to fear.

Much more on the site World5.org if you haven’t been there, including a free PDF download of my book, World 5.0 – We Move From Here.

This Restorative Process

Healing happens here in the present.

When humans are in conflict, things need to be sorted out. It may be a simple quarrel, or it may be a horrid crime committed. Still, the process is the same. Restoration.

Restorative Justice is the term that came into being in in the early 1990s. “Restorative justice is a fast-growing state, national, and international social movement that seeks to bring together people to address the harm caused by crime,” write Mark Umbreit and Marilyn Peterson Armour. “Restorative justice views violence, community decline, and fear-based responses as indicators of broken relationships. It offers a different response, namely the use of restorative solutions to repair the harm related to conflict, crime, and victimization.” -from wiki

A similar phenomenon occurred in school systems eager to find a better methodology than punishing and expelling students for unacceptable behavior. In this case the same process is referred to as ‘Restorative Practices’. Both terms share the same key features.

As noted above in the quote, the old methods of demonizing a bad actor are recognized as the result of broken relationships. Indeed, it is these relationships which must be healed. Whether the result of a criminal act, or someone acting out in school, the process is the same. Restoring relationships.

Typically, the process begins with a cooling off period, where offender and victim or two or more acting out are removed from contact with others until emotions become settled. Then offender and victim, or those acting out, are brought together for a conversation. Ideally the setting is a ‘Restorative Circle’.

In a Restorative Circle, those involved and one or two mediators form a circle with chairs. This is in contrast to situations where, say in a classroom, where someone is ‘in charge’ at the front of the room. The circle becomes an equalizer. All participants share in the physical circle.

Then the task is to encourage everyone to be ‘present’. From the World5 perspective, we recognize that Life happens only Now, so it is but aligning with the truth of our reality. Regardless, the point is to see the humanity in everyone who is engaged in the process, and to approach the session with a clear mind and warm heart. No name calling, no speaking over one another, no blame. Openness is key.

Once the space for healing is established and everyone is present, meaningful conversations begin. And they begin with questions. The questions are not accusatory… “Billy why did you hit Bobby?” The questions are honest efforts to understand those involved. “Billy, what were the circumstances that led you to think hitting Bobby was the best option?” “How were you feeling when the encounter occurred?” How do you think Bobby felt during the encounter?” What do you thing we might do to minimize the damage done, to each of you and your classmates, and prevent such situations from reoccurring?”

Again referring to the quote above, these are not ‘fear-based questions’. This is an honest effort at healing. An honest effort toward restoration.

Clearly not everyone and every situation is going to be in the space to leverage This Restorative Process. In severe criminal cases, it might be months or years before the space to forgive and heal exists for a victim. Yet the value of This Restorative Process is not hampered by the time required to seek restoration.

It’s quite simple when we’re paying attention. De-escalate the situation. Make sure the folks involved are able to get past the emotions of the moment. Once such a settling has occurred, we get present with each other. Hence, THIS Restorative Process. And once we’re settled and clear minded, we ask Questions That Matter. These are key because there is no attempt to punish or blame, just to understand what happened with as much clarity as possible. And then all do what is needed to heal and make amends.

This process is ground-breaking. It has the potential to transform policing, the criminal justice system, school systems, families and our very lives. I leave you with a 20 minute film that highlights Restorative Practices in the Finneytown School System, a suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio…

This Transformation We Require

So we’ve been taught, and grown up, in a culture that values money and its attendant power above all else. Why is this case instead of say, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness being our top priority? It’s actually quite simple. It’s because 600 years ago the British Crown made ‘The Corporation’ a viable business entity. Horrible idea.

Which makes on wonder about nation-states as well. There’s been the natural evolution over the ages, from small villages to cities, city-states and more recently nation-states. Not as horrible an idea as ‘The Corporation’, but one that has seemingly outgrown its usefulness. Some might argue that it’s usefulness was pretty seriously challenged by European colonialism, which so much reshaped the world to support Empire’s ruthless agenda.

Since WWII the U.S. has taken over the mantle of Empire, trying to bend the world so that U.S. hegemony can continue forever. Ain’t going to happen. The trends that supported corporate and nation-state growth are no longer trends. And the supposed virtues of corporations have been seen for what they are. Bullshit, lies, corruption and falseness at every turn. We need a new way forward.

Even the ground rules of the old culture are busted. We assume, and Einstein even postulated, that there are an infinite number of points in time, just as there are an infinite number of points in space. He was wrong. There is only one point it time where Life, and hence we, exist. The point of Life is Now. Less punny, the totality of Now just aught to be the central tenant of any culture. In this one it’s a wildly foreign idea. Yet that makes it no less true.

Once we narrow the playing field of time to Now, we begin to see more clearly the power of our intent. Our collective lives are a mess, pollution is everywhere, if the nuclear war doesn’t kill us, the climate chaos will. Ugly times. And yet, locked into the reality of Now, we understand that we still have options on how we think, feel and act. A tremendous freedom awaits those of us who hold this truth tightly.

Oh yes, and learning Life is relegated to this tiny point in time where the future becomes the past offers another requirement. We are all Here together. Always. We are all always moving from here. Together. A pretty refreshing notion as well.

So we need to find our common ground first. Perhaps then we can begin moving together to solve our horrendous problems.

Our problems, from generations of abuse and corporate overreach all over our planet, are legion.

This Consumer Culture

I imagine that in ancient cultures the goal was water, food and getting basic needs met. Beyond that explore, play, learn, even as other animals do. Getting along was a given. The tribe shared the vibe.

From there we’ve found ourselves gobbling up plastic crap to no end, from our grocery bags to gadgets. We were taught that money is the road to happiness, and more is always better. He who dies with the most toys wins. It’s not only ruining our planet, it’s not making us happier. It was all a lie.

New phone. New car. New shit. We adore it. We’ve been well trained.

The tribe in that ancient culture had a greater sense of abundance than we do. No monthlies, credit cards and the fears of lack so many of us hold. It’s worth noting that they met their needs locally, water, food and wood for energy. We have the same needs now. We just have a corporate greed/corrupt government model today. It is this that must be transformed.

This War Machine

Living in nation-states that disagree sure seems like a great system if you’re in the war business. Recall that a whole slew of nation-states were drawn up by the British Empire. Fuck. And there are amalgamations like China, one political system reigning over a huge number of tribes. And places like the U.S., where we wiped out the indigenous people and brought a bunch of slaves along. Land of the free my ass.

It’s generally been like this since Medieval times, the greatest change being the equipment of war. Catapults hardly compare to the many death machines this war machine has come up with. And now AI and the robots are coming. And of course the frequency. In the Middle Ages we had breaks between our wars.

As many of us recognize, the war in Ukraine goes much deeper than Putin, no angel, wanting to claim Ukraine to remake the old USSR. It’s all part of the demented maniacs willing to destroy we humans out of their greed. The many unknown forces determined to keep us abused and confused, we cannot let them continue. It is this that must be transformed.

This Corrupt Political System

The corrupt political culture, here in the U.S. and on display across the globe, is so evident it needs no discussion. There are a few relative beacons, like the very northern European nations (Norway, Sweden, Finland) but there aren’t a lot of great examples.

At the same time we have a ton of dictators, authoritarians and fascists. This makes for terrible lives for millions and even billions of us as these ‘leaders’ care nothing for you and me. And it doesn’t look like it will fix itself. While it is my sense that most of us humans are pretty decent folk, our politicians and leaders clearly are not. It is this that must be transformed.

The Way Forward Is a New O/S

While healing and restoring are much needed ingredients, we start with a new yet ancient paradigm. We recognize that we exist within Life, and that Life happens only now. Ergo, we only happen Now. This necessitates that we are All Here Together as well. There is quite literally nowhere else in time we can be. All else is speculation or memory.

Once we grasp this great truth, we can focus our attention, our intent, on how we are playing this living moment. Our fears and pains are seen more truly, where they can be more easily released. And we must begin by healing ourselves. Otherwise whatever new system emerges will end up corrupt as well. Integrity is requisite, and is only found where we humans are able to heal and grow.

Once we have our own selves together, we can begin to remake this crazy world we find ourselves living in. We reject the legal status of ‘The Corporation’ and its effect of globalism, which is a terrible system for getting our needs met, but a great system if your own goal is making gobs of money.

Our priorities could be peace, good governance, localism, organic food and learning, without which we are at the mercy of corporate control. Of these objectives, localism most directly strikes at the heart of the corporate controllers. There are innumerable cases where sourcing needed materials comes from the other side of the world because it makes corporate financial sense, though it makes no sense at all for a healthy culture to be doing such things.

We Must Rise Up

As the great historian and intellectual Noam Chomsky has noted, there’s hardly a time in human history where substantive change occurred without the citizenry rising up. Politicians and demagogues are not inclined to give up power unless confronted by citizens that will no longer tolerate their corruption. We see that quite clearly here in the United States.

For Progressives, locked into the two party system, the lesser evil typically means voting for Democrats, in spite of their lust to appease their corporate owners. The Republicans are off the charts now, going to any lengths to make this country ‘white and christian’, which it has never been. Whether we consider the maybe 10 million indigenous people or the maybe three million slaves, non-whites have played a huge role in our country’s history. Sadly, it’s a very ugly history.

Yet we find ourselves now facing a great precipice. If we do not change our children and grandchildren face much more cruel lives. Our climate chaos continues to wreak havoc, and the permanent war paradigm destroys entire populations in the name of greed. We must rise up.

Now is the time we change or perish. Welcome to World 5.0…