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Moneyless Society:
The Next Economic Evolution
With Matthew Holten
By Samantha Skelton
Matthew Holten envisions a world where people could meet their needs without having to participate in a broken economic system that only benefits a select few.
He proposes that we can create a moneyless society, where people have access to all the necessities of life, and much more, by creating structures that would render our systems of commercial trade, banking, debt, and money, obsolete.
Matthew shares his vision in his new book, “Moneyless Society: The Next Economic Evolution.”
His book is not just an abstract theory. He shares practical tips and advice on how to transition to a moneyless society, such as creating community-based networks and using technology and cooperation to create abundance in our lives, to eliminate the need for the endless activity and inequality our current economy necessitates.
Through his book, Matthew is spreading awareness about the potential for a more equitable, sustainable, and just world. He believes that a moneyless society could not only address issues of climate change and economic inequality but also promote greater community connections and well-being.
Matthew’s ideas may be seen as radical, but they offer a hopeful vision of the future and a call to action for all of us to rethink our current economic system from the ground up.
Where did you grow up?
I was born in Santa Monica but I grew up in Texas. I had a bit of a tumultuous childhood, with a father that was a narcissist and a hoarder. It was hard to deal with the fact that collecting junk in the house was more important to him than I was, to a large degree.
It affected my mother and her mental health, too. She was in a car accident which led to her being on painkillers and eventually she became schizophrenic. When I was 15 she jumped off a bridge and committed suicide, and within a few months I ran away from home.
When I was eighteen, I had a daughter, as well, which made life a lot more difficult in many ways, and I had a very tough time continuing with any sort of education at that point while also trying to simply survive and be present in her life.
Where did life take you after you ran away from home?
I’ve moved more times than I can count. I’ve bounced between about ten different states in the last 30 years. I’ve couch-surfed, I’ve been homeless and lived out of my car for periods of time.
I’ve had over one-hundred jobs, including waiting tables for eight different restaurants, delivering pizza seven different times, and over twenty different sales and telemarketing positions.
I’ve dealt poker, taught piano lessons, sold insurance, cleaned aquariums, washed parking lots, tarred roofs, done landscaping, construction, provided tech support, been a personal trainer, and much more.
It was difficult for me to do well in nearly any position because I struggled to get the help I needed as far as addictions, trauma, and my emotional and mental health. Plus, I never received a solid education, so it made it that much more difficult to land a well-paying job.
The last grade I actually completed in regular school was the 8th grade. Beyond that I’m mostly self-taught. But I really had a hard time getting a solid footing in the world because I struggled to get the support I needed while growing up and then as an adult that trend just continued.
I knew I was looking for another way to live and that’s when I started to do research for a lot of the information that’s in my book, Moneyless Society: The Next Economic Evolution.
What was your impetus for starting to research and write the book?
The more I learned about these new ideas and potential ways of living, the more I felt compelled to spread the word, and I knew I wouldn’t be happy with myself until I had written this book and put this information out into the world.
It took me five years to finish it but I’m happy I did it. My son was also a huge inspiration for the book because I want him to have a decent life and a sustainable future. In that regard, climate change was also a huge driving force for me to get this book out there.
Climate change is very real, and it’s a scary thing. Honestly, I feel sorry for future generations and for what we’ve done to the planet. People in the future are really going to have a tough time, if our species even makes it at all, and I know that these changes could be a major factor in fighting climate change if they are Implemented properly.
How did you come to this place where you wanted to research what it would mean to live in a moneyless society?
For a while I wanted to check out and live off the grid in an eco-village, or to be a nomad, travel, go backpacking and see the world, etc. but I couldn’t do that because of my daughter.
I loved her and wanted to be a part of her life, so I tried my best to get a regular job and live a “normal” life in our society. But I still wanted that sense of community, and I knew I needed help and support to heal from my trauma.
Then I saw the movie Zeitgeist: Addendum and I learned about a model call a “Resource Based Economy” which is essentially very similar to the structures I talk about in my book.
I was hoping there was some sort of physical project where I could stay and help build this new way of life. I really wanted to live in a community that was focused on creating those systems, but lo and behold, there weren’t any in existence.
So that’s when I created the Moneyless Society website in 2013 and started researching the subject, with the intention of creating a community like that myself in the future.
I also later learned about Cooperatives and all their benefits. Cooperatives are equal ownership models that could help us transition to the type of society we advocate, and “worker cooperatives” are where the workers own part of the company, which would drastically help reduce inequality if they were implemented more often.
As an organization (we are a 501c3, also, now), we really feel like those business models are a great transition tool and can help us create the types of systems and structures that could provide abundance for everyone, because the governance and ownership is much more evenly distributed throughout the people who work at the company.
Can you give me an overview of what a moneyless society looks like?
It’s a system that does not require trade or money. There’s no currency. It’s about the entire economic system taking care of everyone, rather than everyone having to “work for a living” and competing with one another for practically everything.
We call this systemic reciprocity, as opposed to our current system, which relies on transactional/trade-based reciprocity. The economic system would take care of everyone, and trade or currency is no longer necessary.
People simply volunteer their time and effort to keep it going and make improvements, and everyone gets what they need, regardless of how much they work or what they do. It would be easy to maintain such a system once it’s in place.
The trick is building it to begin with, and I talk about that transition in my book, namely, by using the cooperative business structure. It’s a difficult concept for a lot of people to wrap their heads around, but when people investigate it further, they generally find it makes a lot of sense, both economically and sustainability-wise.
For instance, to illustrate the transitional phase we talk about a little, let’s say we started an agricultural cooperative of some kind.
Aside from feeding everyone in the cooperative, one of our biggest goals is to automate the heck out of it to eliminate a lot of the human labor that would be necessary, initially. And eventually, we find this happy medium between technology and human labor, when people don’t have to work that much to keep it functioning.
That would free up a ton of time for people to do what they want and simply enjoy life. It’s also a sustainability thing where we’re trying to localize production, minimize resource expenditure, and give people what they need without having to exchange their money, time, or labor for it.
It would also be a completely voluntary system so people can contribute how and when they want to, where they want to, in whatever way they want to, with no obligation to do so, but they still get their needs met.
That’s the eventual goal, although there will of course be in-between stages when these communities and cooperatives are initially formed.
The goals for these kinds of societies would stretch beyond food, clothing, housing, and simple necessities, but even into providing more complex social systems and institutions, such as healthcare, education, energy, larger-scale manufacturing, and all the goods and services we enjoy today, as well as access to many luxuries that a lot of people have difficulty finding the time to enjoy now, as well.
We’re talking about things like vacations, world-travel, boats, jet-skis, fitness facilities, events, big parties for entire communities, and more. This could all eventually be provided for free to all within these structures.
How would it benefit today’s society?
What we hope for in a moneyless society is that it will allow people to take care of themselves in more of a local and sustainable scale in the long run.
In my book I talk a lot about positive reinforcement or negative reinforcement and driving these feedback loops. Money is this barrier to happiness and security.
We get so focused on making money we forget what we really want…things like connection, security, relationships, time for leisure, novelty, interesting work, a sense of belonging, contribution, to feel valued, to experience new things in life, and much more.
Money simply gives us access to these things. And these are the things that really make life worth living. Not money.
What we really want to do is create communities in the present where people can see and partake in these systems. A “proof of concept,” or a sort of demonstration, really. Communities where people can see these values and changes in action. And, in realty, there are already places in existence that are heading in that direction, and working well, I might add - although most people have never heard of them.
Mondragon, the largest cooperative in the world, has 80,000 employees, their own grocery chain, and is a technological powerhouse that even boasts their own university.
They weathered the economic crisis of 2008-2009 wonderfully, simply shifting employees around where they were more needed, or taking voluntary pay cuts across the board, instead of mass-layoffs.
Marinaleda is a 2,500-person agricultural cooperative in Spain that works so well they don’t even have mortgages or a police force. And Rojava in Syria is a network of cooperatives that frequently bypasses the monetary and trade system altogether and simply gives people what they need, free of charge.
So, we know these types of systems and structures can work. We just need to build them and incorporate them in our lives. And that’s what we are planning on doing in the communities we will build in the not-so-distant future.
What can people do to create change in our current society in your opinion?
The first and best thing is to learn more about these systems and structures and then to start talking to other people about these ideas.
A lot of people don’t even know these kinds of communities and ways of living in society are possible. And when they are mentioned, they seem “pie-in-the-sky” and not even realistic. These ideas are so foreign to people that they are completely outside the window of conversation most of the time.
A great place to start is to read my book and learn what it’s about instead of guessing and going off into left-field or misinterpreting this stuff, as a lot of people do on a consistent basis.
We have a podcast that you can listen to, as well, although the book is the best place to get a complete overview of the topic, which is why I wrote it. Everything is in one place, as well as a list of projects and organizations that are working toward these goals.
Ideas like this need to become more prevalent and talked about. We could simply cooperate and provide everything we need, and so much more, for completely free, and we could do it in sustainable ways if we put our minds to it.
We just need to start having those conversations about exactly how that could happen in the first place, and educate people about it.
The next part is trying to do it in our own lives. That means finding people who are on the same page and then actually creating these cooperatives and mutual aid networks with your neighbors or in your local area or region.
If there’s an empty plot of land at the end of your street, maybe create a community garden, and then try to automate as much of it as possible. Create worker cooperatives that are focused on these goals.
We hope to make the current exploitative, resource-intensive systems obsolete. The goal is to obsolete money, obsolete the banking system, obsolete the need for insurance, taxes, paychecks, and more, by creating things that work better than those systems. And a lot of it starts on a locally.
It’s also about thinking about what kind of systems and structures would work for you and in your area, both personally and on a community-wide level. And if you have questions or want to learn more you can always reach out to us, as well.
We’re happy to have conversations with people who want to head this direction and help them figure out the best course of action for their particular situation.
For more information please visit https://MoneylessSociety.com.
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