I am very proud of what The Occupy Movement has done so far. It is doing a great job in expressing the disparities and dishonesty in our economic and political systems. The continuous harmony of the movement impresses me the most. It’s very rare for me to see people with different backgrounds come together for a common cause. It offers hope that a better society is emerging. The micro-communities that are being formed are strengthening that hope by showing us solidarity, collaboration, direct democracy, and most importantly, love in action. It’s also the perfect platform for people to express themselves openly about the status quo without worrying about ridicule from others; it’s actually encouraged!

With that being stated, there is an important issue I would like to touch on that deeply worries me about the future of this movement. With the rapid worldwide growth of this movement, there hasn’t been any practical, people-powered solutions being presented where supporters can use this momentum to build a society that benefits the whole. Civil disobedience such as protests, marches, and occupying locations are great for sparking awareness to a movement, but what actions actually provide solutions to the economic injustices we face? Let’s go deeper…What keeps the world going around? That answer is the “ultimate occupation”, which I’ll touch on in a few.

As I feel I take a futurist outlook on most things, I would like to present two scenarios; one describing what will happen if we wait for a solution from a bought government and one describing what will happen if we self organize our way to a sustainable economy and planet.

This is Chess, Not Checkers

Scenario 1: Expose The Problem & Wait For A Solution From The “Authorities”

Occupy Wall St. is a great medium to learn about the insustainablity of our economic system. It’s also doing a great job at keeping people harmonized and motivated under an important cause.

My main question to the movement is why are we making demands for more bank and corporate regulations to a government that is owned by those same banks and multinational corporations?

For true freedom to exist, we have to become responsible for our own lives in an interdependent way. Crisis has a great technique of doing two things to groups of people: it either brings us together to solve a problem or it leads us astray into further dilemmas. The elite are fully aware that this system is on the verge of collapse and may have a “loaded solution” to offer to further their agenda. It’s called the “If you can’t beat em, join em” technique.

The Egyptian Revolution was based on ousting Mubarak from rule. Mass support for the movement helped to make that happen but what was the outcome? A military regime whose outlook is possibly not much different from that of when Mubarak was put in power. The people protested in the streets, got their voices heard, and got what they demanded. Unfortunately, nothing is really going to change because the root problems weren’t solved, which are the systemic flaws of our current economic system.

This type of negligence on our part will eventually lead to more and more concentration of power by the few because that’s what a debt-based money system leads to!

“You don’t remove poisonous fruit by picking them off the tree, you change the seed.”

Scenario 2: Occupy The System

Our economic system is the foundation of society. It is the pulse of the nation. It’s like the body’s circulatory system. Imagine if you didn’t have enough blood to circulate to all of your organs? Well that’s exactly the problem with our economy. There’s not enough money circulating to satisfy everyones’ needs. But this is crazy! We have way more than enough money in existence, but it’s just being hoarded (the system rewards hoarding money by the gain of interest). The irony of this is when money is hoarded and doesn’t circulate, we have a bad economy; and when money is constantly circulating, we have a good economy.

Imagine if you needed to borrow blood with interest from a 3rd party to live? This is exactly what the current economic system does to the people.

So it seems to me, we just have to devise an economic model that keeps money flowing (economic booms) without the reoccurring blockages (depressions, recessions). How will a system be structured in this type of way? We need to foster the evolution of four things: Money, Enterprise, Education, and The Social Network.

Occupy Money

Image: Money by Andrew Magill is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Due to our debt-based money system, there’s not enough national currency circulating in the economy to satisfy everyone’s needs. It’s like we have a full circle of people existing, but only a half circle of money circulating in the economy. With the lack of funds to go around, this forces us to ruthlessly compete with each other for resources necessary for our survival.

We evolve money by turning it into information of measurement (numbers) instead of being a thing or a commodity. A commodity can be manipulated to be scarce, but you can not do that with numbers. No one can control how many numbers exist.

This type of evolved money is people-powered and it is called mutual credit. It is a digital “producer to producer currency” that tracks how much someone produces for the community and how much someone consumes from the community. It is abundant and available when needed (just like numbers and inches), so nothing is in the way of exchanges continuing to happen. And the great thing about it is, it’s backed by the goods and services in a community. Starting off, it will be complementary to our national currency. But as our economy gets worst, mutual credit will become more and more preferred as the medium of exchange.

The catch is in order to get this type of money, you’ll have to produce something of value for others. In our current economy, there’s many people available (13+ Million Unemployed Workers) to produce value for others, but there’s just not enough money to pay them. This solution solves that problem.

Money creation is now in the people’s hands. It’s being done in over 2500 local communities around the world, but major media isn’t covering it. We no longer need a “middle man” for our money. We just need to produce value!

Money is supposed to be like "Producer & Consumer Inches" not "Producer & Consumer Certificates". (Information vs. Commodities)