DRIVER 1 - THE MONETARY SYSTEM
 

The monetary system is often treated as a neutral tool — a technical mechanism for facilitating exchange. In practice, it is one of the most powerful organising forces in modern society. How money is created, allocated, and priced shapes what activities are possible, profitable, or visible — and which are not.

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Most people experience money as something earned, spent, or saved. Far fewer are encouraged to understand it as a structural force that actively shapes economic behaviour, social priorities, and ecological outcomes. Yet the design of the monetary system quietly determines what kinds of futures are financed — and which are systematically excluded.

 

Why the monetary system matters systemically

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In contemporary economies, the majority of money is created through debt. This ties economic activity to continual expansion: money enters the system as an obligation that must be repaid with interest, creating pressure for ongoing growth regardless of ecological or social limits.

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As a result:

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• Activities that generate short-term financial returns are favoured

• Long-term care, maintenance, and regeneration are undervalued

• Ecological damage is treated as an externality

• Financial abstraction becomes detached from real wealth creation
   

Over time, this produces an economy that is highly efficient at growing financial claims, but increasingly misaligned with the conditions that support human and ecological wellbeing.

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From real wealth to abstract value

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One of the most consequential effects of the monetary system is its tendency to substitute financial proxies for real wealth.

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Real wealth consists of things like:

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• Healthy ecosystems

• Social trust and cohesion

• Meaningful work

• Physical and mental health

• Stable communities

• Time, care, and attention
   

The monetary system, however, primarily measures:
 

• Price

• Profit

• Return on investment

• Growth in financial aggregates
   

When these measures diverge from lived reality, systems begin to optimise for the wrong outcomes. Activities that degrade real wealth can still appear successful, while those that sustain it struggle for funding or legitimacy.

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Why good intentions are not enough

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Many policy reforms and sustainability initiatives assume that better regulation, improved incentives, or ethical commitments will correct these distortions. While such efforts can help at the margins, they rarely address the deeper structural issue: a monetary system that systematically rewards extraction, acceleration, and short-termism.

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This helps explain why:

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• Environmental protection is continually subordinated to economic “necessity”

• Long-term risks are discounted

• Preventive action is undervalued

• Crises are addressed reactively rather than structurally

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How this driver reinforces the others

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The monetary system does not operate in isolation. It:

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• Amplifies industrial machine logic by rewarding scale, efficiency, and throughput

• Fuels consumption and cultural narrative by expanding purchasing power through credit

• Constrains governance and policy, as states become dependent on growth to maintain fiscal stability
   

Together, these feedback loops make it difficult to question growth itself, even as its consequences become increasingly visible.

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Why this driver must be addressed upstream

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Addressing the monetary system is not about eliminating markets or rejecting economic activity. It is about recognising that money is not neutral — it encodes values, priorities, and assumptions about what matters.

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If those assumptions remain unexamined, efforts to address ecological breakdown and social inequality will continue to be undermined by the very system meant to support them.

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Working at this level is uncomfortable precisely because it challenges what is usually taken for granted. But without doing so, responses remain trapped at the level of symptoms.​​​​​​​​​​​​​