We need to talk about what to do now.
Dreaming of a better future isn't enough. Not as a sweeping reform or final solution but as a series of small, evolving projects—each one bringing us closer to a system that suits the world we live in and the future we aim to create.
Some pragmatic mechanisms to help guide us in that direction. And still—this is not an instruction manual. It’s a living framework. A suggestion. A provocation. One that will, and should, mould itself along the way, as the world changes, needs evolve, and new paths become visible. What you’ll read in this chapter is not the final answer. They are not claims to authority. I am not the one who decides what the future should look like, and I don’t pretend to be. These are not decrees. These are ideas, and ideas are invitations—to test, to challenge, to evolve.
The goal is straightforward: to bring these possibilities into the conversation. Because if we never hear them spoken aloud, how can they ever become reality? If we only ever discuss the current list of political parties and policy adjustments, how do we expect to create something new?
We need to discuss our next steps. So, here’s what comes next:
A series of suggestions—covering governance types, layers, checks, and transitions. Not to be regarded as dogma, but as material for reflection. Many are inspired by existing models, experimental systems, and human experience. I do not claim to be the one to design them. I’m not qualified to do that. However, I believe they should be envisioned openly so others can develop them further.
And with that—let’s begin.
Legitimacy Without Domination
This is where we start to shift the foundations of our assumptions.
What if legitimacy were about who demonstrates the ability to serve, rather than who has the power to decide? What if systems were judged not by how strictly they control behaviour, but by how effectively they facilitate cooperation, solve problems, and protect the vulnerable—without the need to impose?
Legitimacy in this model becomes a verb. Not a crown you wear. Not a flag you fly. But an ongoing activity. A process of transparency, responsiveness, clarity, and care. A structure that people engage with because it works — not because they’re afraid of what happens if they don’t.
And yes, that’s idealistic. But it’s also achievable, especially if we redefine what authority means. People will listen if someone’s decisions consistently lead to better outcomes—measurable, lived, and shared. Trust becomes genuine if those decisions are open to review, correction, and reversal.
We don’t need eternal institutions. We need responsive systems.
What Does This Mean in Practice?
You don’t need to control people if what you’re doing actually works.
Think of a good team leader at work. The one people trust — not because they have the title, but because they get things done, listen, and support everyone. Now imagine if all of politics worked that way.
This idea doesn’t want to “get rid of rules.” It emphasises that we should stop granting authority to people simply because they won a popularity contest or were born into it. Legitimacy should stem from being useful, honest, and accountable — not from tradition, threats, or elaborate titles.
The Layered Model
Let’s outline a possible structure founded not on dominance, but on knowledge, contribution, experience, and clarity. Everything is defined from the bottom up. And every level upwards demands more light of transparency.
Imagine three primary layers of governance:
Local Layer with Direct Democracy
Domain Layer with Assemblies
Global Layer with Coordination Structures
These layers are not a hierarchy of importance. They are different scopes of responsibility—each designed to handle what it is best suited to manage.
Let me explain them.
1. Local Direct Democracy
The roots.
Most decisions should be made here. The further away from people’s daily lives a decision is, the less legitimate it becomes. Local governance enables people to participate in shaping their environment—housing, infrastructure, cultural life, education, and resource sharing.
Local decisions should be managed through participatory (what a word!) methods:
Consensus models
Citizen councils
Digital voting
Deliberative assemblies
—whatever proves most effective for the context. These communities are where knowledge of lived experience is most robust.
No “party loyalty”
No distant ideologies
Just people organising around what matters, where they live.
Freedom of association is crucial. People must be permitted to form interest groups, cultural alliances, and movements that express their values. However, there is a boundary that must be upheld: no group, regardless of its size or passion, should be allowed to organise in a way that overrides the individual rights of others. Rights are not subject to majority rule. No ideological group can claim governance simply because it is better organised or louder. The system must incorporate structural safeguards to prevent organised dominance while promoting cooperation.
What Does Local Direct Democracy Actually Mean?
Imagine if your community—your neighbourhood, town, or district—could make decisions without waiting for national politicians to notice.
That means making decisions about housing policy, schools, budget allocations, the cultural life you want, and how to care for one another. You don’t vote only once every four years. Instead, you participate regularly in decisions that directly affect your life.
This isn’t chaos. It’s not endless voting. It’s a system where people show up, share knowledge, listen, and agree on solutions—often through citizen assemblies, digital platforms, or local councils, where everyone's voice can be heard and counted—not just the loudest ones.
2. Domain-Based Assemblies
The stem.
Where local governance handles daily decisions, domain-based governance tackles shared challenges that cross borders. These include water management, pollution prevention, health data coordination, or digital privacy. Such issues do not respect national boundaries. Domain-based governance exists to coordinate across regions, cities, and communities—focused on the issue itself, not land ownership.
These domains would function as their own layered structures, potentially crossing local and national boundaries. Governance here is determined by the nature of the issue, not by historical borders.
For example, managing water in Northeastern Africa involves Ethiopia, Sudan, Egypt, and others — but it constitutes one hydrological domain. A domain-based governance body could concentrate solely on that water system, with participation from all affected regions, experts, and stakeholders, regardless of nationality.
These bodies don’t replace local governance. They complement it. They ensure that when an issue affects multiple regions, there is a structure for resolving it based on expertise, lived experience, shared impact, and long-term thinking—not just power or politics.
Domain governance is no longer a mere dream. In some sectors, it already exists in a basic form: the Internet Engineering Task Force, the World Health Organisation, the European Environment Agency, etc. However, most of these organisations lack binding authority or local accountability. Some even rely on funding that influences their independence. The goal is to establish domain governance that is highly participatory, transparent, and accountable to the communities it serves.
Explainer:
Suppose your house is flooding because of a dam upstream. That dam is in another country. Their government says it’s “not their problem.” But to you, it clearly is.
Now imagine a governance system that states: “This water system is its own domain. Everyone affected has a say. And decisions are made by the people who know it best and are impacted most—no matter what side of the border they’re on.”
That’s the purpose of domain-based governance. It’s not about where the issue is – it’s about what the issue is.
3. Global Coordination Without Domination
The canopy.
At the highest level of this structure is the layer of global governance. However, this is not a centralised superpower, nor a global government with military or economic control. It is a coordinating body—a transparent, limited-purpose structure designed to oversee planetary needs that cannot be addressed locally or regionally.
Its responsibilities are focused: ecological thresholds, planetary science, data integrity, long-term infrastructure planning, and, most importantly, global equity mechanisms like universal income.
Please note that this extends further than Earth itself. Global governance extends to our solar system and beyond, carrying with it principles founded at the interlocal level. The first actual topics here would be Earth's orbit, which is extremely crowded and almost privatised already, and the Moon.
Economic Examples: A Transparent Global Bank for Universal Income
One of the most tangible institutions at this level would be a global bank — not in the traditional sense of wealth accumulation, profit, or control — but as a means of universal access to basic needs.
Everyone on Earth would have an account at this bank. Participation would be optional but strongly encouraged by providing access to food, shelter, healthcare, communication, and education. The currency would be digital, public, and completely transparent, controlled by open-source code and never influenced by human interests.
This currency is not enforced. It’s a tool—offered as a bridge between our current systems and a future where money may no longer be needed.
The bank has no interest rates.
It does not hold or invest on behalf of anyone.
It exists to distribute, not to grow.
Payouts are capped—for instance at one year of accumulation.
Any amount beyond that cap is returned to the system for redistribution.
Three Levels of Currency
The economy must also operate in layers to support this layered governance model. One currency cannot serve every scale without distortion. Instead, we envision three distinct levels of currency, each tied to its scope of impact:
Local and Interlocal Currency
These remain closest to what we use today: local or national currencies rooted in something tangible, exchangeable as physical or digital cash. They carry minimal surveillance and are free to use for daily life: food, housing, culture, and community trade. The principle here is privacy. Transactions between people at this level should not be tracked or controlled.
Domain-Based Currency
You step into a different category when you trade in goods that affect a shared ecological domain—large-scale logging, fishing, or mineral extraction. These transactions have cross-border consequences and must be monitored for thresholds. A domain currency ensures accountability, requiring transparency for activities that could disrupt rivers, oceans, or shared resources.
Global Currency
At the highest level sits the global currency. This is the one tied to humanity’s everyday survival: large-scale trade in energy, rare minerals, planetary resources, and the distribution of universal basic income. The global currency is entirely transparent. Every transaction is visible, auditable, and capped by the guidance of the commons. It cannot be hoarded in secrecy or weaponised through speculation.
Anyone can exchange between these currencies, but the higher the level, the greater the transparency. Local currencies resemble cash—private and flexible. Domain currencies introduce accountability. Global currency is fully transparent because its impact belongs to everyone.
Explainer: Consider it three lenses: local trade is close-up, private, and flexible. Domain trade zooms out to regional ecosystems. Global trade pulls back to the planetary scale—where secrecy is not an option.
This isn't a dream of digital socialism or a utopian crypto token. It's infrastructure, designed with one purpose: ensuring no one is left behind while the world transitions to better systems.
This global governance model has no armies, economic leverage, or legal enforcement outside of transparency and data stewardship. It serves. It doesn’t rule. It exists only because the layers beneath it—local, domain, and continental—agree it’s needed.
Explainer II: Global Governance That Doesn’t Rule
Think of global governance as a traffic control system for the planet. It doesn’t tell you where to drive. It doesn’t control your car. But it shows everyone the conditions, helps avoid collisions, and ensures we don’t destroy the whole thing just because no one was watching.
Reclaiming the Meaning of Resources
If there is intelligent life beyond Earth, it would be arrogant to plainly assume otherwise. I don’t believe it would judge us by our inventions and industrial might. But by what we’ve chosen to value. Any civilisation able to traverse the stars must have learned restraint. To look at Earth from that vantage is to see a species still mistaking possession for progress. A lifeform that has treated its cradle as a quarry. Even from a purely human sense of care, this system robs us of moral leverage. What claim could we possibly make to wisdom, cooperation, or peace, while we strip our only home bare?
Money has become a religion, serving as a tool rather than a means of transferring resources. Every “expert” discussing the economy publicly is either employed by or paid by those very banks and financial institutions whose sole focus is wealth accumulation. By confusing money with value and treating it as the end rather than a means, we’ve created a system where only those who have already amassed enough wealth can participate freely. And they use that access to shape the world according to their wishes.
We should be clear: the current state of the world is not a neutral system. It is designed and maintained by the modern-day neo-feudal elite. The financial oligarchs, industrial titans, and wealth-hoarding dynasties who have turned resource flow into resource capture. They distort not only markets but also meaning itself. They confuse price with worth. And they do so while basic needs remain unmet for billions.
They have kept generations trapped in cycles of dependence, poverty, and meaningless overwork.
We need a new measure of value.
One that recognises caregiving, teaching, maintenance, restoration, and cooperation not as “valid forms of labour”, but as essential pillars of a healthy society. When we rethink what “resources” truly are, we see the daughter who cares for her ageing mother as part of the global economy. We start to see how much human potential is wasted simply because it doesn’t generate profit. Profit. For whom?
Globally, we must also confront our greatest misallocation of all: the military. We have built an entire species-wide economic structure around warfare. A resource consuming black hole. This is not speculation. This is pattern recognition.
The Military-Economic Trap
Nowhere is resource distortion more perilous than in the global arms race. The United States has been a military-industrial complex for centuries. And now, with the war in Ukraine, Europe is gradually becoming one, too.
Once an economy relies on arms manufacturing, security contracts, defence alliances, and selling rebuilding contracts, peace turns into a liability. War is no longer seen as a failure. It becomes a business model.
If Europe, after Ukraine, develops its economy around defence spending, it will either need constant threats or risk economic collapse. That’s not a stable system. That’s a machine that depends on enemies. Which, quite morbidly, is also a limited resource. Unless you create them.
Rethinking global resources involves moving them away from destructive cycles such as military. Disabling the exploitative, and speculative ones and directing them towards a common goal that benefits humankind.
And here's the crucial point: this isn't idealistic mathematics. Diverting just a small part of global military budgets could finance universal basic income, renewable infrastructure, energy for everyone and educational reform on a planetary scale.
“But War Is Necessary, Isn’t It?”
Most people think war is unavoidable because they’ve never seen a different option. That’s not proof - it’s trauma.
Countries prepare for war out of fear, but the system then demands war to justify the preparation. That’s how you foster a global addiction to violence and call it defence.
The aim is not to be naive. Conflict will still occur. However, violence doesn’t have to become a profit motive. True security comes from resilience such as infrastructure, trust, local stability, and systems that don’t fail at the first border challenge. Attacking should become illegal. Period.
One for the Road Ahead
Let’s be clear: when we discuss taxing the rich, we’re not referring to your local doctor, lawyer, or small to medium-sized business owner. These individuals are valuable resources contributors to their communities, much like nurses, teachers, builders, and many others who are often paid far less.
The people we are referring to are the billionaires. The ultra-wealthy. The financial actors who transfer wealth, not generate it. The ones who manipulate ownership of land, housing, infrastructure, and labour for unchecked gain.
We must make it impossible to hide wealth in tax havens, real estate portfolios, or opaque ownership structures. Transparency must become the default, not the exception. Without it, we will never be able to reclaim resources for the common good.