Our present moneysystem is a contageous dangerous sick nervous system of cities and our post urban society. It is the money system that prevents us to remain within the tolerancies of our ecosystems. The current monetary system has two characteristics that are not normally seen. Firstly, it is a mathematical echo chamber that is completely disconnected from the real world, and secondly, the use of money is a systemic shifting of responsibility. Today's monetary system is therefore a major cause of the destruction of the Earth's habitability by us as a human race. Measures to protect this habitability currently have to be financed from taxes that come from an economy based on this monetary system. This is absurd. The financial sector has the opportunity to do something about it. However, it takes little or no notice of this responsibility. Of course, the habitability of the earth is to be given a higher ethical value than gold and money. But then it is also a moral duty to curb their destructive role. A new monetary order based on real values is possible. How, is described in my book "Nature as the Standard of Value. Three measures for creating a monetary system that protects our livelihoods" (Published Dec. 2024 in German, I am still looking for an English publisher.)
https://value-for-money.org/en/
As a sinologist, I started my career in the financial world and later became a financial correspondent for the Dutch press in Bonn. After eleven years in the financial world, I joined a large German DAX-listed company to help it go public internationally. There I rose to the management level with responsibility for quality management. Since 2006, I have been researching how cities can achieve sustainability in real-world laboratories from Beijing to Hamburg.
In 2014, oekom Verlag published the book "Wurzeln für die lebende Stadt" ('Roots for the Living City’). This book is available as an open science document.
From 2014 onwards I have setup, directed and/or supervised four living labs in and between urban quarters. One in Berlin and three in the city of Hamburg. The results where published in 2023 in the German scientific reader „(Re-) Konstruktion von lokaler Urbanität“ (W.-D. Bukow et al. (Hrsg.)) in the article with the translated title ‘Small towns and quarters as the smallest units of an urban society, their fundamental role in ensuring sustainability and resilience with personal responsibility and self-efficacy’
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-658-39635-0
One of the results of this research is the observation, that our money system is a dangerous sick nervous system of cities. For a bit more information please look at:
https://value-for-money.org/en/
For more information about me, see: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harristiddens.
