CHAPTER FIVE MONETARY REFORM IN THE CONTEXT OF GLOBAL TRANSFORMATION: AN EXAMPLE OF HOW TO MAKE THE CHANGE THE FACT THAT this book concentrates on the issue of monetary reform as one important aspect of the total global transformation which we are about to witness does not mean that it is more important than other aspects. From organizational to individual transformation, from technological to spiritual transformation, we need change. Money, how it works and what it does to society, has been notoriously overlooked although it seems to be a fairly central piece of the puzzle. Neither experts nor those who occupy themselves with alternatives to the present economic system seem to worry much about this issue. It may not be more important but it certainly is not less important than others. It simply affects everybody.
REPLACING REVOLUTION WITH EVOLUTION While the three reforms - in money, land and tax systems proposed in this book constitute only a small part of the overall changes that are necessary for survival on this planet, they may fit readily into many attempts to create a new relationship between human beings and nature - and human beings and their fellow human beings. Social justice, ecological survival and freedom are threatened where we allow the proliferation of societal structures which in themselves tend to work against these goals. The proposed reforms clearly combine the advantages of both capitalism and communism. They avoid their respective shortcomings and provide a "third type of solution." They would allow individual freedom and growth together with a free market system, and with a far greater degree of social equity. At the same time, they would stop the exploitation of the large majority by a small minority - without introducing the heavy regulations of a planned economy and an almighty bureaucracy. The communist attempt to create freedom from exploitation failed because, in order to secure a minimum existence for everybody, communism eliminated personal freedom. The capitalist tendency, on the other hand, by letting land and capital be exploited in an unrestricted practice of personal freedom has endangered the minimum existence of the majority of people. Both systems have gone too far in their respective directions. One has set the priority of freedom from hunger above freedom to choose one's own life style. The other has set the top priority on personal freedom which, in the present monetary system, can only be achieved by very few people. Both are partially right, but both have failed to create the preconditions for a genuinely human existence including genuine freedom. The reforms proposed here could reduce governmental intervention and create an ecological economy in which goods and services could be produced at an optimum size and level of complexity because that is where they would be the cheapest, i.e., most competitive in a free system.
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