THE FUTURE
When it comes to big issues like reform of the monetary system, many of us are immediately overcome by a sense of powerlessness. Where on earth do we begin? Yet large-scale systemic change will be unavoidable if we are to progress as a society. And such change is born in the imagination.
For centuries people could not imagine that the economy would survive if slavery or child labour were abolished. Barely a century ago it was normal for women not to have a vote. But also these systems were reformed. When growing numbers of people are able to imagine how things might be done differently, change becomes unstoppable.
How to reform our monetary system?
What should we water?
The reform of our monetary system will also begin with the power of imagination. If it were up to you, what parts of the economy would you like to see flourish? What would you water? What channels will need to be closed, and what new ones dug?
Carlijn Kingma, Thomas Bollen and Martijn van der Linden have developed three scenarios for a fairer monetary system, on the basis of various reform proposals and discussions with dozens of experts.
Power over the money printing press
Who should be responsible for creating money? On what basis should that new money be allocated? And how can we introduce the right checks and balances on such enormous power? Each of the three scenarios presents a different answer to these questions, depending on the values and ideals on which it is based.
THREE FUTURE SCENARIOS
VIDEO RELEASE: DECEMBER 2025
Currently, we are developing three future scenarios in collaboration with researchers, writers, politicians and experts. You can already explore the maps. We will publish the narrated videos that accompany the future scenarios at the end of 2025.
Scenario1: The Valley of Debt-Free Money
The Valley of Debt-Free Money is a society that is no longer dependent on privately owned commercial banks for the creation of money and payment transactions. The public money system provides a safe way to pay and save. A flourishing private investment market exists alongside this, where risks are taken in a conscious and well-considered way. Public safety nets for the financial sector are a thing of the past.
This scenario is being developed in collaboration with former president of the Spanish central bank, Miguel Fernandez Ordóñez and several members of the International Movement for Monetary Reform. It is inspired by The Chicago Plan for monetary reform that was developed in the 1930s.
Until debt do us part
Welcome to The Valley of Debt-Free Money. My name is Deborah. I used to be an investment banker. It was my job to make rich people even richer, by making their money work for them. But since the citizens demanded monetary reform a lot has changed. Also for me. My former job no longer exists. Nowadays I guide people through our new world where the ill-fated marriage between money and debt has come to an end. I had my day, but let’s not repeat the mistakes of the past.
Financial illiteracy
“There is a reason it used to be a crime in the Confederate states to teach a slave to read: Literacy is power.” These are the words of US financial journalist Matt Taibbi. In his famous 2009 polemic, he tried to raise awareness of the financial illiteracy that kept debt-slavery going, well into the 21st century. By making the world of finance needlessly complex, the bankers of old had turned our democracy into a two-tiered state, “with plugged-in financial bureaucrats above and clueless customers below.”
It was only with The Radical Transparency Act, enacted at the height of the Ultimate Financial Crisis, that slavery was finally abolished in all its forms, also the ones to which people in the early 21st century had complacently turned a blind eye.
Though not officially owned by anyone, a large segment of the population had to borrow money to pay for life’s most basic necessities. They were then forced to slave away their precious time in sweatshops, warehouses, and cubicle farms in return for a meager salary. If they were lucky, their pay covered the interest on the mortgages and personal lines of credit they took out to provide their families with food and shelter.
Today, the importance of financial literacy is recognized by all. It is now quite common that children learn to read financial ledgers before they can recite the alphabet without mistakes.
“Isn’t it awful?”
These words were heard often at 21st-century dinner parties, fundraisers, and sustainability events. We said them in response to all kinds of things, from squalid working conditions, to the fact that young people couldn’t afford to buy a home, to the disappearance of the purple-winged ground-dove from the Brazilian rainforest.
Crying out “isn’t it awful” had a remarkable effect—if only on one’s self-image. It made us instantly feel so much better about ourselves that it took away any pressure to actually do something about the root cause of these injustices: the flow of money (or lack thereof). While half the world’s population had almost no access to liquidity, the banking sector kept flooding corporations and their ultrarich shareholders with easy money. While burying citizens beneath a mountain of debt.
Putting your money where your mouth is
In the old world, people kept their life savings in bank accounts and mandatory pension funds, often unaware that bankers were using their money to fund ventures that worsened inequality and depleted our natural world. The only thing people saw (or wanted to see) were flashy facades with slogans about growing a better world and annual letters from management about banking for better for generations to come. As long as the returns kept flowing in, our clients asked no questions.
The Radical Transparency Act ended this practice. The Act required banks and investment funds to explicitly disclose where every euro or dollar from their customers was invested. This gave rise to a different attitude: “Put your money where your mouth is.”
The 21st century trend called “impact investing” turned out to involve little more than lip service to investing in socially responsible projects. Instead of simply putting their money “in the bank,” most people now actively invest in their community and their world, and everyone can be held accountable for the social and environmental consequences of their choices. As a result, big banks lost their market share to cooperative investment funds, credit unions, direct lending platforms, and crowdfunding initiatives that moved money in fundamentally different ways.
To discourage short-term speculation, flash-trading, and other parasitic acts by financial intermediaries, the Tobin tax was introduced. Named after the US economist James Tobin, the tax was levied on all financial transactions.
The best paid civil servants
It’s hard to believe, but in the old world the important public function of money creation was performed by privately owned commercial banks. The government was only involved through an institution that had no democratic accountability and was run by the bankers themselves. They called it the central bank (or the Fed in the US).
But the central bank didn’t control the money supply. Central banks had to rely on the cooperation of commercial banks, which were tasked with creating state-backed money. Commercial banks conjured up new money with every bank loan they granted. The more loans they provided, the more money they created, and the more money creation profit, so-called seigniorage income, was earned. This income did not flow back to the government but boosted bank profits instead. Bankers were long seen as the best paid “civil servants” on earth. I was one of them.
A mountain of debt
Didn’t commercial banks take advantage of this privilege, creating too much money and debt whenever markets went up and too little during a downturn? Wouldn’t that lead to asset price inflation and housing market speculation, while crowding out productive investments? These are among the most frequently asked questions school children voice during their yearly visit to the Museum of Monetary History.
The answers are self-evident. Of course we, the bankers, took advantage of these great opportunities to earn ourselves a nice bonus. Wouldn’t you do the same? With recurring bank runs as an inherent feature of the banking system’s design, it could only survive with public backstops. Even our youngest citizens can explain why this formula of “privatizing profits and socializing losses” generated a moral hazard that saw banks creating more and more money and an equal amount of debt. While the banks saw higher profits, global debt soared to a staggering 350 per cent of GDP in 2021. Inequality grew further.
The monetary authority
After the Great Depression of the 1930s scholars had already demanded the decoupling of money and debt-creation in their “Chicago Plan for monetary reform”. After the crisis of 2008, this plan was updated for the digital age by a new generation of scientists and citizen initiatives. The powerful banking lobby, however, succeeded in branding their proposals as “too radical.”
A digital form of public money was only introduced in the late 2020s, bearing the most unsexy name imaginable: Central Bank Digital Currency, or CBDC. On top of the plain name, its features were also limited, an attempt to protect the profitability of the then still-powerful banking cartel. But despite these shortcomings, the CBDC opened the door to further reform.
Following another spree of bank runs, banks were prohibited from financing long-term investments using direct-demand funds. They eventually lost their privileges to create state-guaranteed money. We also got rid of the central banks. Now we have our Monetary Authority, a democratically accountable institution that creates and registers the public money supply on its ledger. It’s like a public aqueduct that waters all parts of society with debt-free money.
Nowadays we wonder in amazement: how could people accept that money and debt were two sides of the same coin for such a long time? And that isn’t the only thing we now look back upon with bewilderment. Even the excess liquidity tax on uninvested funds above 250,000—now an indispensable source of government funding—had not yet been implemented. No wonder so many public facilities were of such poor quality!
Statements were recovered that appear to have been made by Miguel Fernández Ordóñez, a central bank governor who later became a monetary reformer. They shed a light on why he and his fellow central bankers failed to act. He said: ”When you’re constantly trying to avoid total collapse of the system, there’s little time to study the fundamental causes of instability.” Only three years after retiring did he realize how blind he’d been to an obvious first step toward a better system: giving citizens direct access to a digital form of safe public money. “It’s very difficult to make people criticize the institutions that pay their salaries,” Ordóñez later admitted.
As a former banker myself I can only agree. But oh boy, do I miss my yacht, watching those sunsets with a glass of champagne in my hand.
Scenario 2: The Agora of Democratic Money
The Agora of Democratic Money visualises a society where power over money has been democratised. The monetary authority is subject to democratic control, and it allocates the new money in the form of a universal basic income. Shares and voting rights in companies are held by the employees.
This scenario was developed with the Greek economist and former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis and is inspired by his book Another Now.
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Welcome to the Agora of Democratic Money. My name is Costa, I was only a child when the revolution broke out, but my dad and mum told me all about it. They used to be so-called corporate management consultants. After corporate management became obsolete they lost their jobs. It took them a while to get over the embarrassment, but in the end they looked back at their younger selves and laughed about how seriously they took their bullshit jobs. My mum taught me how back in the day people confused “economic growth” with “building a meaningful economy”, two very different things. Follow me and I will show you our new world, where corporate power over democracy has finally ended.
There Is No Alternative
People in the old world knew: shareholder capitalism led to growing inequality and gravely harmed our natural environment. And it was no secret that the economic system was prone to financial instability and recurring crises. Yet all attempts to change the system failed, due to that mantra stuck in people’s minds: There Is No Alternative, or TINA, a phrase coined in the 1980s by British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. For a long time, people were convinced that shareholder capitalism was the only option, apart from dreary Soviet Communism. That was also how my parents saw the world. And between those two, the choice is easy. Under capitalism, at least we all have a chance of improving our lot by one day becoming shareholders ourselves.
Rest in pieces
We’re now standing atop one of the continent’s most popular landmarks—the megabank ruins. Guided tours depart here twice a day. You can also choose to wander freely over the graveyard of the megacorporations. A plaque in front reads: “Rest in pieces. In honour of the dissolution of corporate power”.
The ruins tell the remarkable history of how the megabanks used to operate. They’d spend considerable talent and energy conjuring up complicated trades to boost both share prices and debt levels. This financial engineering fed the frenzy of mergers and acquisitions that created ever-larger corporations, ultimately concentrating wealth and power in the hands of the few.
For a long time, people swallowed the gospel of economies of scale. My parents’ generation believed that corporations had to be large to be efficient—the bigger the better. We now know it’s all a myth. The purported productivity of megacorporations was in fact a coverup—to kill competition, raise barriers to entry, avoid taxes, and above all, maximize profits for shareholders.
From TINA to TATIANA
The Ultimate Financial Crisis marked the turning point. Questionable financial products and dubious loans had been kept off the balance sheets of the big banks for years. Thanks to public subsidies and with central banks turning a blind eye, the bubble grew ever bigger. But eventually the gaps in the books became visible. The ensuing crisis was devastating for ordinary people, and many started to see things differently. The dead-end mantra of TINA became TATIANA: That Amazingly There Is An Alternative.
This new mindset sparked the rebellion for economic change that we still commemorate each year on our biggest public holiday. Celebrations are held in Revolution Square, where statues of the revolutionary heroes gaze out over the revelers. The book Another Now by Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis, which chronicles the rebellion, remains a bestseller. It can be found in the history section of any public library.
A living democracy
Our people have achieved what was long considered impossible: power and capital are now fully dispersed and democratized. Today, citizenship is no longer reduced to casting a vote once every four years, “choosing” between mostly upper-class candidates all schooled at the same elite institutions and distinguishable only by the color of their party logos. Instead, decisions are now made through direct democracy.
Living in a democracy means something again. People have active roles in government and public institutions, taking part in citizen councils and juries selected by lot. I have participated in two councils since I turned 18. One on public housing and another one on how to preserve the slowworm in our local forest. At first I didn’t know what to expect, but it turned out to be interesting. It felt very meaningful to be involved in public decision making.
The aqueduct of public money
Once subject to the whims of megabanks, today’s monetary system is fully democratized and money is treated as a precious common good. The monetary system is designed like a public aqueduct, fully transparent and governed by decentralized committees. Above the entrance to the Monetary Authority an inscription reads: “Beware of power, for it does to ethics what water does to salt.” Various citizen councils manage the money flowing through society, directing it where it’s needed most. The councils assess how investments contribute to society, and then base their decisions on a project’s value for the community, rather than an applicant’s creditworthiness. People can invest their own personal savings in a similar community-minded way, lending out their money in exchange for a share of the profits. This does not give them ownership or voting rights, however. Those rights are retained by each individual employee and cannot be bought or sold.
Public dividends and taxation
The tax system has been greatly simplified: we have a corporate tax and a land tax. Tax deals and exemptions are no longer allowed, in order to end the once so common practice of tax avoidance by the ultra rich. We now look back with bewilderment upon the former imbalance of labor taxation compared to wealth and capital taxes. I still don’t understand why it was that the people who put in so much of their time and effort into the economy, accepted that they also had to pay higher taxes than those who didn’t do anything but own stuff?
Instead of drawing a pension at retirement, everyone now gets a trust fund when they turn 18. In this way we all share in the public dividends on society’s capital. This system largely eliminates that old practice of spending a lifetime moving money around in search of numerical gains, which often had no correlation with tangible benefits for society.
The modern company
Scattered throughout the continent, we see small and medium-sized businesses everywhere, fully owned by employees. And all employees have an equal voice: one person, one share, one vote. Shares can’t be traded, just as your right to vote is yours alone. We’ve achieved something that was inconceivable in the old world: stock markets are extinct, while the economy is booming and more stable than ever.
Companies today have a flat organizational structure, where the principle of one employee, one share, one vote ensures that Big Business is gone forever. Employees found they couldn’t run a company of more than 500 people fairly, so they chose to split up larger organizations into smaller, more manageable ones. Cutthroat tactics and forced takeovers were soon eclipsed by healthy competition and friendly collaboration between these smaller firms, which made for better working experiences—and better results.
During its archaeological studies of business structures in the 21st century, the Citizen Council found evidence of a job—now obsolete—that was once quite popular. The position was called “manager”. Records show that these managers collected high salaries for a job that seems to have consisted mostly of socializing with other managers—in skyboxes, boardrooms, and at exclusive lunches—while the rest of the employees put in long hours to create the actual value. Of course people today look back with perplexity at this level of idleness and unfair remuneration. And with gratitude that nowadays, pay is decided democratically. Every employee is paid a basic salary, plus a bonus that varies from person to person. These bonuses are set collectively, with everyone having a fixed number of merit points to distribute among their colleagues (but not themselves), like the scoring system for the Eurovision Song Contest of old.
Beware of long meetings
When you visit the agora, beware of long meetings. Although everyone is taught how to chair meetings and keep discussions on topic, any place without hierarchies carries a risk of endless debate. The more egalitarian society became, more and more people had time to read and educate themselves. That old academic habit of trying to impress one’s neighbour by quoting at length from the philosophical classics has become a common trait. I have to admit: sometimes I can also be a bit of a show off, causing problematic delays in the decision-making process.
Revolution Square
How did we get here? Well, the statues at Revolution Square remind us of the brave action groups that paved the road to our new world. I don’t know how many bank bailouts it took, but that last one was just one too many. Inequality had reached a point where 10 men owned about 50 percent of our total wealth, and one by one the inhabitants took the path of rebellion. One of the action groups forced governments to introduce stringent limits to pollutants and reduce net-carbon targets to zero. Another one convinced people to stop paying their mortgages and withhold pension payments. Once it had started, the movement was unstoppable. Pension funds were forced to divest and the private banking system collapsed. The established power structure was overthrown.
Central banks had no alternative but to step into the void and provide citizens with bank accounts. After more than three centuries, they finally became a bank for everyone instead of the elite member club for banks.
The Great Biodiversity Park
At the outskirts of the Agora, you can visit the remains of the financial markets, torn down during the revolution. Shareholder capitalism completely misprized our natural habitat and caused untold damage, but nature has shown remarkable regenerative powers. Vegetation is again thriving, taking over the old stock exchanges and money markets. Because the financial markets often flooded due to excess liquidity from banks and central banks, the ground there is so fertile that the area is bursting with biodiversity and lush new growth. It is my perfect destination for a lazy Sunday afternoon walk.
The Republic of a Thousand Coins
In The Republic of a Thousand Coins everyone can make their own money. The state no longer dictates what currency must be used to pay taxes. This creates a diverse monetary landscape in which currencies coexist and compete with each other.
This scenario was developed in collaboration with supporters of free banking and initiators of various community currency projects. It is inspired by The Denationalization of Money by Friedrich Hayek and the work of Belgian economist Bernard Lietaer.
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Welcome to the Republic of a Thousand Coins. My name is Bernarda, I was named after the economist Bernard Lietaer whose writings on monetary diversity were an inspiration for the Republic—and especially for my parents. I will guide you through our world in which the monolithic money system that took us hostage is replaced by a blooming ecology of various coins that complement and compete with each other.
One coin to rule them all
In the old world, people were forced to pay taxes in their country’s national currency. Freedom of coin did not yet exist. Famous examples of such ancient national currencies were the British Pound and the US Dollar. They were essential tools in the expansion of the British and American empires. The demise of their currency heralded the collapse of these imperial powers that once ruled the world.
Perhaps the most well-known failed currency was a coin called the “Euro”. Conceived by megalomaniac politicians and central bankers in the late 20th century, the Euro was designed to be the “one coin to rule them all”. For a few decades powerful people would do “Whatever it takes” to postpone its inevitable downfall. Their hubris finally came to an end when the Ultimate Financial Crisis hit. The people of Europe lost faith in the Euro experiment and joined the blossoming monetary ecosystem of coins we know today. Now the Euro serves as the textbook example of how inflexible such monolithic money systems tend to be and the severe economic problems they can cause.
The hostage situation
The most striking design flaw, and the one which ultimately led to the downfall of national currencies, was the fact that governments determined which coin would be accepted for public use, while commercial banks were given the privilege of issuing the money. This privilege gave rise to perverse incentives in the system. Predatory banking practices, hostile takeovers, and excessive risk-taking were rewarded, resulting in a highly concentrated market. A select group of homogenous banks was lined up like dominoes. One small shock and the whole payment system could come crashing down, leaving economic mayhem in its wake.
This setup allowed an oligopoly of big banks to hold the government hostage. Banks would pocket the profits when times were good, while society was expected to pick up the tab if the tide turned. Whenever their reckless risks backfired, these too-big-to-fail banks, their shareholders, and their high-profile depositors then demanded public lifelines and bailouts. Time and again the state gave in to the banks’ demands. Taxpayer money, as well as freshly minted state money from the central banks, ended up in the coffers of bankers.
The fall of central banking
At the start of the 21st century, central banks were arguably the most influential institutions in the world. Officially they were appointed to supervise the sector, to ensure it would provide a fair and stable monetary system. But instead of serving the public interest, the central banks became the guardians of bank profitability. One of the revolving doors between the commercial banks and their regulator was dug up in recent excavations and put on display.
We celebrate our freedom each year on that popular holiday, The End of Central Banking Day, marking the end of the big banking monopoly and the birth of monetary competition. Parades are held that rival the wildest Carnival festivities, and everybody dresses up. You’ll see mock bankers among the costumed, sporting oversized suits with white dress shirts and drab, unimaginative neckties—and of course toting the obligatory briefcase.
Babel III
Highlight of the day is a silly competition for a cash prize, consisting of one unit of all available currencies in the world. It’s awarded to the individual who can get the furthest without making a mistake when reading aloud from the old banking tome, the Basel III, which most people now consider a ridiculously bloated work. Counting three times more pages than the Bible “Basel III” is commonly referred to as “Babel III”.
As big believers in democracy and decentralization, people today see the drafters of the Basel rulebook—the Bank of International Settlements, or BIS—as a frightful institution. Overregulation of money matters posed a barrier to entering the market, stifled competition, and placed too much power in the hands of a few unelected bankers. Old speeches by the former BIS governors, like Agustín Carstens, are now being screened in cinemas as scary movies.
On ordinary days, too, we make fun of the central bankers of old and their illusions of top-down control. Historical balance sheets and inflation forecasts put out by the central banks during the years leading up to the Ultimate Financial Crisis were recently discovered. They are being used to teach university students about the dangers of groupthink, goal reasoning, and wishful thinking.
Creative destruction
Faced with the crisis, the government first tried to break up the banking oligopoly, then switched to a more radical strategy. Not only were banks stopped from issuing state money, but state money itself was abandoned. For the first time in history, we now have a truly competitive money market where everyone can issue their own coin. Citizens enjoy the freedom to use a variety of currencies that all have their own designs, values, and risk profiles.
Fierce antitrust laws ensure none of the currencies can become too big, as competition is paramount. The pressure of competition has a disciplining effect on coin issuers and money managers, making them far more prudent. That has calmed the capricious business cycle’s extreme highs and lows, flattening the wild price fluctuations that plagued our continent in the past.
Public safety nets or bailouts do not exist for any of the coins. The creative destruction applauded by economist Joseph Schumpeter can be seen everywhere: only healthy currencies survive and flourish. Sometimes people have to take losses, but diversification makes the personal impact bearable. The ecosystem of currencies as a whole is now much more resilient.
A decentralized economy
Coin diversity gave rise to the emergence of local and international communities with a range of governance structures and underlying ideologies. This ecosystem of currencies has also decentralized the real economy. Small and mid-sized companies have regained market share and local markets are flourishing. That’s because communities today can use currency design to protect their economies, from the large capital in- and outflows that were so destabilizing back in the era of monetary imperialism.
Digital technology has made it possible to program social and ecological values into the monetary system. This feature eliminates the need for excessive government control or monitoring. Although, those who prefer this kind of society have founded their own community, idealizing books like We, 1984, and Brave New World. Others, like myself, are committed to transparency and a free press to facilitate the flow of information.
Freedom of coin
That old world preoccupation with chasing profits has all but disappeared, while ecological values and social justice now make up an integral part of the currency design process. Currencies linked to natural resources or renewable energy have enjoyed enormous popularity. They’ve proved to be the missing link for our transition to a greener and more just economy.
Any coin can be used to pay taxes, so there’s no need to hold currency you don’t support. To make this freedom of coin possible, however, the tax office had to double its capacity by building a second tower. After all, managing thousands of different coins with floating exchange rates has meant additional work for the treasury—and additional expense.
Never HODL
The transition to our current system accelerated in the late 2020s, though the first signs had emerged almost two decades before. In response to the 2008 financial crisis, a small group who was fed up with market interventions and toothless antitrust laws started experimenting with alternatives. A decentralized digital coin called bitcoin was all the rage for a brief period.
Bitcoin’s popularity, however, was also its downfall. When everyone started collecting bitcoins as an investment, folks would buy and then simply hold on for dear life, no matter what. That meant the currency never really got off the ground as a medium of exchange in daily life. Although bitcoin did not survive, it’s still widely regarded as the inspiration for moving away from state currency. Bitcoin’s mysterious founder is not forgotten. The statue of Satoshi Nakamoto remains a popular pilgrimage site to this day.
However, the bitcoin community’s mantra HODL, Hold On for Dear Life, is now seen as very foolish indeed. Kids today learn as early as kindergarten that private coins can fail and that diversifying is crucial. With the help of digital wallets, you can easily convert one currency into another. Holding your savings in multiple coins and paying with any of them now seems completely natural. Digital wallets are complemented by a physical plaza that houses not only a currency exchange but also the museum of monetary history. A bust of Friedrich Hayek, who wrote The Denationalization of Money, is carved into the museum’s facade. And the scholar Bernard Lietaer, who foresaw a future with multiple currencies back in the 20th century, is celebrated here as a visionary. I guess my name isn’t so bad afterall.