We humans are a clever lot. We are curious about the world, and we are natural problem solvers within it. When we are free from ideologies and other delusions, we have a strong affinity for the natural world, and a genuine wish to live within its means and to protect it from harm.
But we humans are now chained to an economic system that is currently a planet destroying machine. So if we want to break free, and gain the power to save the planet and the human societies it nurtures, we need to understand the nature of the problems that make the economic system so destructive, and then decide on the best solutions to correct those underlying causes of dysfunction, and set some transition plans and put them into action.
As we start to look at what makes the economic system so destructive, we immediately come to realise that finance is at the heart of the problem. The system that creates the money on which the economy operates is driving the perpetual expansion of the volume of economic activities that deplete the planet’s finite resources and natural systems.
Already, armed just with the concept that finance is the problem, we gain enormous power. The way that finance works is subject to our political institutions, which are in turn subject to our collective political will. So finance is not some independent force of nature, it is something that we can control, should we be willing and able to gather the necessary political will to do so.
In this article we will come to see that fixing finance actually comes with enormous social and ecological benefits, along with dramatic improvements to the efficiency and stability of the economic system.