“The source of poverty and environmental problems in the world is the people who own the Federal Reserve Board and their policies of prioritizing the rich and everything to the rich. That is the essence of the problem." (…)

But “the dollar can be destroyed. And oil is an obsolete energy technology. You can burn water. You separate out the hydrogen and burn it. And this whole nonsense about how you have to put in more energy than you get out is just not true. There are many ways to get at least four or five times more energy out of it than you put in. A senior Japanese politician told me they had the technology for more than 30 years. There is a Nikola Tesla technology that’s 100 years old. In other words, they’ve been holding back human technological progress in order to maintain control over their oil monopoly and, you know, take the peoples’ money." (…)

“It’s really a question of realizing that it’s all one planet and we’re all one people. And, you know, maybe they’re doing that, but I still see ecosystems being destroyed on this planet. And I see a very, very incompetently-managed Planet Earth. There are so many things they could do: Why don’t they terra-form EARTH? For example, they could put huge pumps in the dead parts of the tropical oceans and pump the nutrients up to the surface, and you’d increase the amount of fish by 10 times, for example. If you end poverty, then people aren’t going to have to, you know, burn down forests. You’ll end environmental destruction, and you’ll have so many more intelligent humans helping the planet. In other words, they should fix the problems on Planet Earth. It’s easy to do. It’s just a question of cooperating with all the other peoples.” (…)

“It’s just gonna be… Wonderful, wonderful things are going to happen. That’s the idea. Just absolute magic. I mean, everybody’s dreams will come true. That’s the goal.”

Author, researcher and former Asia-Pacific Bureau Chief of Forbes magazines, Benjamin Fullford Source: Project Camelot interview with Benjamin Fulford by Kerry Cassidy and Bill Ryan. transcript 1, transcript 2, transcript 3 / Video 1, Video 2, Video3

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Let's make money sound by making it democratic and green

The United States have a long history of political leaders testifying about the disastrous nature of our monetary system assigning the power to create money out of thin air to privately owned banks. Yet it is the non-democratic top of the banking cartel that up until today maintains power over governments, society and economy through their monopolistic control over credit. This debt-money system has forced the whole world into a devastating competition-and-expansion economy that in fact is stumbling from crisis to crisis while putting our common future at stake in so many ways. Moreover, this system is the main creator and maintainer of artificial scarcity. We simply have what it takes to feed the world and to effectively deal with the big social, economic and ecological problems. We even have the technological capacity to create relative abundance for all within the planetary carrying capacity. The only thing that hinders is - let's face it - our rather insane monetary system.  

This is why the Ecovaproject proposes a monetary alternative that includes the introduction of debt-free social and ecological money. More precisely, we suggest to create a legal framework allowing to convert the actual value of our basic economy (i.e. all the unpaid work) and the ecological capital into legal debt-free money. Together they represent an estimated value of at least 120% of the Gross Domestic Product. Introducing this value under the form of a new debt-free currency system as explained more in detail on our website, will enable us to guarantee unconditional social security, economic stability and environmental recovery.

Debt money vegetates on scarcity; debt-free money allows abundance. That's why Ecova currency will bring about a true free-market economy, creating prosperity for all.

The Ecova proposal includes a stable alternative for government financing, suggesting to replace taxation systems by direct value-to-money conversion systems.

The Ecova program as a whole will allow to really encourage a smooth transition towards a world of leisure and abundance. Companies and research teams are developing homefabricators and bioprinters, while the ongoing robotizing process and many other brilliant technologies will continuously reduce the need for paid labor. By applying the Ecova proposal, people will keep a full-fledged and unconditional guaranteed income, enabling them to freely develop and participate in tomorrow's society.

The Ecovaproject is also about encouraging local economy and unchaining a true green revolution. In brief: let's make money sound by making it democratic and green.

Author & ©: Rafael Staelens, July 04, 2009

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 Prosumer rights.

‘It’s high time to change course: in our current society (and in tomorrow’s) there is an increasing number of people which are not accomplishing (/ will not accomplish) monetary rewardable labor but which are providing ( / will provide) very valuable contributions. Consequently, it isn’t clever and very expensive to aim at a classical job for all these people.(…) We need to evolve quickly to a juridical situation in which ‘living without salaried employment’ is considered as an activity.” (…) Citizens who are formally unemployed often are very enterprising and contribute valuable ‘work’ that never will condense into commercially rewardable labor.”

Paul Blondeel, De Morgen, April 30, 2009: ‘Being unemployed is real hard work’

In Western countries the amount of unpaid work represents at least 50% of all economic activity. In developing countries this amount can even rise up to more than 90%. Nevertheless this non-money- or prosumers-economy is exactly the indispensable element on which the formal money economy is vegetating. Besides, all kinds of technological developments, such as homefabricators, indicate a fast growing prosumers economy, while on the other hand for instance also the robotizing process will reduce the need for paid labor.

According to a study of the International Metalworkers Federation (Geneva) we’ll evolve in the course of the next thirty years toward a society in which all goods for the entire world population will be produced by only 2% of the current labor forces. But even now there are sufficient signs which indicate that paid work in the formal economy can no longer be considered as a common norm for building up social security.

In a report from April 2009 the OECD, a think-tank from the Western industrialized countries, wrote that all over the world a majority of 1.8 billion people are working in the informal sector as against 1.2 billion workers with a labor-contract. In India even 90% of the people are working in the informal sector, so without any kind of social security at all. According to the OECD, the amount of informal labor will rise up to 66% of the world labor force by 2020. 1.2 billion informal workers now have to live on less than 2 dollars a day and 700 million on less than 1.25 dollar a day.

By counting up all the paid and unpaid informal work, we’ll see that only 15 to 20% of the worldwide economic activity nowadays consists of formal labor. According to some prospects, that percentage will further decrease. Or, to put it in other words: it is completely useless to stick to the utopia and the obligation / pressure of a full formal employment with a view to a permanent financing system for social security.

On the other hand, it would be much more realistic and rightful to let a universal entitlement to social security result from a formal recognition of the prosumers economy by a monetary valorization of it. When we look at the prosumers economy in a broad perspective, we’ll find it to be the only economy in which almost everybody participates. Besides, all this unpaid work happens to be a permanent, sustainable base for developing the formal economy. The introduction of a universal social security as a basic prosumer right will be a forceful weapon against exploitation and exclusion. It will be a real opportunity to globally optimize labor rights and neutralize the difference between formal and informal work. It will have a positive impact on the global wage development because it will reduce wage-costs in high-wage countries while improving the position of employers in low-wage countries.

To finance this universal social security, the ecovaproject proposes a monetary alternative, based on the conversion into legal debt-free money of the current value of the prosumers economy and the ecological capital. More social security for all and less taxes thanks to an alternative, non-inflationary and debt-free money creation system of which the principles are described in the Summary. This system also enables a step-wise introduction of a universal basic income. A universal social security with free health care, child benefits and a decent pension arrangement will be the first step. And a universal guaranteed income will be the final target that is an inevitable requirement for the further development of a worthy almost laborless high-tech civilization.  

Apart from a universal social security, the ecova alternative is also offering some other essential advantages that will lead to a real green revolution and that are described in the Summary as well.

Because the application of the ecova system will introduce legal debt-free money into society, this will also open the door to the development of a true free-market economy in which the dependence of the current virtual debt money will decrease. Hopefully, this will lead to another, more humane kind of banking with services and products that are much better responding to the individual and public interest. A true free-market economy like that will be the motor of unprecedented global prosperity from which no one will be excluded while fully respecting the capacity of the ecosystem. This global prosperity is not a utopia but the logical consequence of an ‘intelligent’ application of new technologies, on the condition that it involves an appropriate adaptation of our monetary and social systems.

All of us, and politicians in the first place, should have the nerve to develop a real democratic society which is releasing itself from the dominance of a ruthless financial system controlled by a few hundred non-democratic elected persons who’s power and greed can keep on cultivating with impunity the exclusion and poverty of a large majority of the world population as well as the disruption of the global environment.

The fake solutions our political leaders now have chosen to deal with the financial crisis, is nothing more than creating a new soap bubble – now one existing of government bonds – to compensate once again the derailed greed of bankers at the expense of the tax payers. What the world really needs now is efficient monetary reform, not just to protect the interests of the financial elites, but to serve the development of all humans. The recognition of the value of the prosumers economy and the prosumer rights resulting from it, as proposed in the ecovaproject, could play an essential role in these reforms.

Rafael Staelens, May 15, 2009

Read more >>> on our new page about prosumer rights and the prosumer economy

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The Ecovaproject proposes the creation of debt-free social and ecological money

“… It’s not enough to just change the players. We have to change the game.”

(President Barack Obama in the Washington Post, January 4, 2007, Page A17)

When we take a closer look at how governments manage society, a couple of things might catch the eye that are policy-determining factors and at the same time fundamental obstacles for a really liberating social and economic development within the carrying capacity of our environment.

A primary factor concerns our debt-based monetary system. For more than two centuries many of our political leaders testify about the malicious and destructive nature of our man-made banking and monetary system, concentrated in the hands of a few. Yet it is the non-democratic, non-elected top of the banking cartel that up until today maintains power over governments, society and economy through their monopolistic control over credit.

As a direct consequence of this debt-money system, the whole world population is forced into a devastating competition-and-expansion-economy that is threatening our planetary future in many ways.

A second factor is that there is no official strategy to deal with the growing evolution towards an almost jobless society. Companies and research teams are developing desktop production systems such as homefabricators and even bioprinters, announcing a prosumer revolution that will be stunningly complete. And on the industrial side the ongoing robotizing process, including many brilliant new technologies, will continuously reduce the need for paid labor. These developments are widely considered irreversible. Nevertheless our politicians keep on chanting the same old ‘jobs, jobs, jobs’ mantra, obviously holding on to the precepts of an era that’s almost gone.

One more crucial factor is the total undervaluation of our basic (or prosumer) economy and the ecological capital. Both are essential pillars of human and economic development, but have always been used and exploited by the formal economic system without any proper recognition or compensation. The undervaluation of the ecological capital, which has led to a permanent denial of the limits to global carrying capacity, has thrown us in a global climate crisis that urges us to take right now a kind of drastic measures that go much further than the official remedy plans. As for the basic economy, which consists of all the unpaid work, it should be a major mistake not to recognize it as quickly as possible as a legal generator of unconditional social security. This basic economy represents at least 50% of all economic activity in Western countries and even up to more than 90% in some developing countries. As almost everybody is participating in our basic economy, this provides a much better basis to build up stable social security systems than decreasing formal labor does. At global scale, formal labor even forms the smallest part of all paid work. According to a recent OECD-report (Is Informal Normal? March 31, 2009) a majority of 1.8 billion people are working in the informal sector as against 1.2 billion workers with a labor-contract. (By the way, 1.2 billion informal workers have to live on less than 2 dollar a day and 700 million on less than 1.25 dollar a day.) By 2020 the amount of informal labor is expected to rise up to 66% of the world labor force. But by counting up all the paid and unpaid informal work, we’ll see that even now only 15 to 20% of the worldwide economic activity consists of formal labor, a percentage that will further decrease during the next decennia.

To deal with all these big social, economic and environmental problems, the ECOVAproject proposes a monetary alternative that also can be applied at the global level. We advocate creating a legal framework that enables to convert the actual value of our basic economy and the ecological capital into legal, debt-free money. Both values are scientifically measurable and offer a stable and effective counterbalance for the inacceptable deficiencies of the monetary casino that rules the world today. The value of the basic economy alone is for instance estimated to be roughly equal to the world gross domestic product of the formal economy (i.e., according to the CIA World Factbook, about $70 trillion in 2008, or $10.400 per capita). So by converting these fundamental values into what we call ECOVA money, the world will have at its disposal all necessary means to create real social, economic and ecological security and to finally enable this huge green revolution that is needed now to save our common future.

Ecova money could be –if necessary gradually – introduced together with an appropriate, well-balanced circulation-and-flow-back system that is explained more in detail in the summary on our website. This system will not disturb the market functioning of the real economy, nor will it affect selling prices or profit margins in a negative way.

Ecova money will be input interest-free and debt-free to realize in the first place specific urgent social and environmental objectives. In the social field it can be used to finance an alternative social security system with free and unconditional health care, child benefit and pension, and to introduce an unconditional basic income that soon could develop into that kind of guaranteed income Dr. Martin Luther King was already talking about in ‘Chaos or Community?’ (1967).This input will reduce formal wage costs while raising the lower incomes and stabilizing most other incomes. But most of all, if applied globally, it would offer full-fledged social security for all instead of just for 20% of the world population like it is now.

At the ecological level, the impact of Ecova money input just might be what it takes to turn the tide before it’s too late. We propose:

* The introduction of an ecova-ecocoupons system, a sort of complementary money with an official value but only usable for specific environmental-friendly purposes to stimulate a fast green revolution;

* An investment program for the further development and application of renewable energy;

* An investment program to realize world food security through organic agriculture, including a basic income for organic farmers.

Because this ECOVA-program implies an enormous alternative investment and financial encouragement in developing a sustainable global economy, it could be linked to an impactful ecotax system that will strongly discourage environmental pollution and polluting production. It is obvious that ecotaxes in the long run will become rare because the ECOVA system will be a permanent incentive for non-pollution.

In general, we suggest to replace taxation systems by direct value-to-money conversion systems as a new basis for government financing. Together with a substantial input of debt-free ECOVA money, this should enable the development of a true free-market economy, creating prosperity for all. Debt money vegetates on scarcity; debt-free money allows abundance. We’re developing so many amazing new technologies these days. The Ecovaproject wants them to become the building blocks of a sustainable world of peace, leisure and abundance, allowing a free and full development for all. And, just as people like physicist Freeman Dyson have foreseen, many of these technologies will be part of a dazzling green revolution.

Building up this sustainable world will create at first substantial new job opportunities. However, this won’t reverse the fast increasing impact of labor replacing technology. So it’s better to adapt our social systems right now in order to allow an optimization of this huge amount of new fascinating free activities to be done. At the local level initiatives such as community currency and freeconomy are just splendid solutions. The ECOVAproject aims to offer the addition of a suitable social security system, thereby enhancing the development possibilities.

Since the introduction of the Shekel in Mesopotamia about 5000 years ago, money has been many different things. And in fact, money can be whatever we make of it. The current monetary system, that is indeed a scarcity-related system, has a key responsibility in the causes and the increase of the big global problems. More than half the world lives on less than $2 a day. Even though we could feed the world, over one billion people are suffering from chronic starvation. According to the new ‘Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States’ report, U.S. temperatures are expected to increase by as much as 4 to 11°F (2 to 6°C) by 2100. This is serious business. So, let’s just face it: time’s up for this devastating monetary system to control the entire world. Instead of obliging each and everyone to accept this dependency on debt-money, created out of thin air, mainly serving the interests of a small non-elected elite without any collective responsibility at all, governments should engage in the creation of debt-free social and ecological money, serving everybody’s interests, by legalizing the value-to-money conversion of our basic economy and the ecological capital as proposed by the Ecovaproject. This alternative will allow us to effectively handle all the big issues of today and includes a recognition of prosumer rights as well.

We all know that the time for action is now. We have the knowledge and the technology to transform our world into a much better place for all within the planetary carrying capacity. What we need is a suitable monetary alternative to enable this transition now. If we all join forces, monetary democracy will soon be reality. So let’s make money democratic and green!

Author & ©: Rafael Staelens, June 28, 2009

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There must be some kind of way out of here…

"The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the People vs. the Banks."

ECOVA: new social and environmental security currency, introducing prosumers rights

“Personally, I think that even in the most industrialized countries most work is not monetized. In many poor countries, the monetized part of the economy may not be more than 5%. I also think that most non-monetized work is productive, and that most monetized work in reality is non-productive. (Terry Manning)

Towards a sustainable leisure society

As Marshall Brain explains in ‘The Robotic Nation’ (see below), we are standing right now “on the edge of an era where the number of jobs in our economy will be drastically reduced by robots. No Presidential speech or act of Congress is going to change that.”

The ECOVAproject proposes a monetary alternative to reach worldwide social, economic and ecological security while realizing the transition to a full leisure society. Rafael Staelens, January 4, 2009 Read more >>>

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Embrace the end of work

“The issue we really ought to be talking is what jobs Americans, and everyone else, will be able to find when machines are able to do just about everything.” Robert Bernard Reich, United States Secretary of Labor under President Clinton from ’93 to ‘97

‘Embrace the end of work’ is the title of an article written in February 2004 by James Hughes, Executive Director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET) and bioethicist and sociologist at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut USA.

According to James Hughes, we can avoid a bleak future of “widespread immiseration, economic contraction and polarization between the wealthy, the shrinking working class and the structurally redundant” by “re-embracing the techno-utopian vision and consciously striving to shrink working life by reducing the work week, mandating paid vacations, raising the minimum wage, improving workplace protections and providing health insurance and a basic income as a right of citizenship.”  Read more >>>

Link to full text: click here

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Robotic Nation

“Robots have the potential to do so much good for the world, because they will finally free people from the requirement of human labor. The only way for all of us to experience these benefits, however, is to create an economic system that maximizes freedom and choice for everyone in the economy.” (...) “We should use robots to give every citizen true economic freedom for the first time in human history.” (...) “If people could make a living without being employees, we could unlock an unimaginable ocean of human creativity and human potential,” says Marshall Brain. Read more >>>

Link to full text: click here

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Let's join forces to create sustainable global welfare

Today we’re facing a mix of multiple social, financial, economic, demographic and ecological problems that are demanding our attention in a way that no longer allows a partial or fragmented approach, because these problems just as their solutions are more interconnected than ever before. The crucial question is if we can expect any suitable solutions from a system so closely knit with the causes and the increase of almost all of these problems, especially now we’re running out of time. Rafaël Staelens, December 8, 2008  Read more >>>

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Valuing the ecosystem.

A financial validation of the ecosystem appears to be a viable target for companies like Canopy Capital. But why not take this just one little step further by directly converting the value of our ecosystems into money, as the ECOVAproject proposes? Read more >>>

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ISEW: Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare: for a valorization of the ecological capital and the unpaid work

The ISEW or ‘Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare is an economic indicator intended to become the standard for sustainable economic development and to replace the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as the determining indicator.

In addition to the GDP, the ISEW also takes the value of the ecological capital into account. Besides, it valorizes the unpaid work such as domestic work, informal care, parenting, voluntary work. Read more >>>

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The Ecovaproject advocates for a future-minded transformation of school and education systems

‘…the system is broken. It is designed to feed an economy, which will not be there when the kids get out.’

Alvin Toffler, Interview by Tavis Smiley, June 16, 2006.

To read our new chapter on education and school systems: click here.