“What we refer to with the token ‘jobs’ is a derivation that has its source in ‘meaningful relationships and roles’. Nearly everyone has an innate desire to participate in meaningful roles and relationships — but ‘jobs’ are a crude substitute for this — one derived from a representation of a community, which cannot ever really become one. Like many of our ‘modern’ faux-social institutions, this representation is toxic to that which it represents…

Similarly, ‘money’ is a representation of value; it affords access to goods, services and relationships that might otherwise be inaccessible in our present culture. But like jobs, it is a crude representation, since it is a replacement for mutual interest, care and concern. These are the values that our humanity is founded upon, and once we represent them, we are in grave danger… because representations cannot fulfill the roles they are derived from.

So I imagine (and have modeled) systems that would return our capacity to embody and extend meaningful relationships and roles in a culture that has almost entirely replaced them with ‘functions’, and, along with this, a system where relationships and mutual care and interest augment the seeming power of cash.

The reason is simple: these two representations are ruining our humanity and our planet, and we must return to social and economic systems founded upon meaningful roles and mutual concern.

Many of the issues we face in our culture today, including crime, war, environmental catastrophe, racism and violence would be radically reduced if not eliminated by a return to something resembling the virtues inherent in our humanity… something that reveals just how wrongminded and corrupt our social and economic representations have become.”

— an anonymous informant