The Humane Market Economy
a monetary and economic model for the benefit of all people

Peter Haisenko, born 1952 in Munich, spent 30 years as an international airline pilot before turning to writing and journalism on economics and contemporary history from 2004 onward. In 2007 he founded Anderwelt Verlag, and in 2013 the online magazine Anderweltonline.com.

Hubert von Brunn is a writer, columnist and coach. Studied Germanism, Amerikanism, Philosophy. After working as an editor, chief reporter and editor-in-chief at daily newspapers, he has worked independently as an author since the early 1990s.

Together they published the 2016 book „Die Humane Marktwirtschaft" ("The Humane Market Economy") with Anderwelt Verlag (click here to order print book version) (in German language only) – the theoretical foundation of the Humane Market Economy. More on the authors at Anderweltonline.com: Peter Haisenko · Hubert von Brunn.

Gabriel Waldeyer is the author of the HME extension "RICH" which takes care of the implementation in the EURO zone and describes himself: SAP Finance Freelancer · Monetary & Economic Reform Integrator · Navigating Collective, Individual & Systemic Needs · Common thread: integrative systems thinking, clarity, depth, precision, staying power. Gabriel Waldeyer (Homepage).

What falls away: Interest on deposits (savings interest), the compound-interest effect, the liquidity-premium share in interest (the reward for not spending money) and private money creation through interest-bearing credit.

Where the interest comes from: It is not privately created but comes from the common value store of the Monetative; banks intermediate its capital as loans. Interest income flows into the Monetative (social fund), not to private creditors.

Character: default-risk fee. The interest covers the default risk of loans and is no return for owning money.

Psychological signal: A noticeable, uniform rate is an essential incentive to actually repay a loan and not to refinance constantly, as is common today.

1. How are investment & innovation financed? Investment and innovation are not financed by a constantly growing private stock of credit money. Private and entrepreneurial surpluses that are not currently needed flow into the cooperative value store of the Monetative and are made available from there for productive investment, innovation and public tasks. Depositors' ownership and claims remain fully intact throughout. Financing is thus organised from funds already earned and pooled in the value store – rather than through ever-new private debt.

2. How is the economy stimulated – what are the performance incentives? Labour, entrepreneurial performance, ideas and real value creation are not burdened by income tax or social-security contributions. Whoever performs more, or successfully builds a company, can earn correspondingly more.

At the same time, a major part of today's incentive to earn income purely from ownership, interest, speculation and the automatic "money attracts money" effect disappears: private interest and compound-interest economics, along with debt-driven FIAT logic, come to an end. States, too, are no longer meant to be financed permanently through interest-bearing debt.

The guaranteed basic income here is not a comfortable full-provision income, but capped at a subsistence minimum. It creates a material floor without removing the incentive to earn a significantly higher income through work, entrepreneurship and innovation. The performance incentive is thus preserved both at the bottom and at the top: nobody has to take just any job out of existential need – but whoever wants to contribute and achieve more can also gain more.

Saving, too, is not meant to be abolished by this, but decoupled from today's return-driven saving. HMW/RICH's logic makes large passive asset returns and speculative gains structurally less attractive, while genuine saving remains entirely possible. As a target figure, HME/RICH is expected to see a markedly higher savings rate than today – against roughly 11% currently, a magnitude of around 48% is estimated as a possible long-term development. This figure, however, is a model assumption or estimate, not an empirically established forecast.

3. How does the value of money stay stable – free of asset and consumer-price inflation? This is where a central difference from today's FIAT and credit-money order lies.

According to Haisenko/von Brunn, inflation arises structurally above all because a debt-based monetary system constantly needs additional money, in particular to service interest and compound interest within the system. According to this argument, the money supply and the stock of debt therefore grow continuously – whether this implies a compelling growth or inflation mechanism is disputed in economics. The authors describe this construction as the fundamental reason for the long-term instability of the existing monetary system.

The Humane Market Economy adopts this diagnosis and therefore addresses the cause directly:

• no private money creation through interest-bearing credit
• no permanent expansion of the money supply to finance interest and compound interest
• no permanently growing state debt as the counterpart to the money supply
• the necessary money supply is fundamentally provided once, and debt-free (interest arises only on loans from the value store, uniform and stable)
• and the money supply needed in circulation therefore does not have to keep being increased.

Money is thus no longer "stabilised" by trying to retroactively adjust a constantly growing money supply to rising prices. The money supply itself is decoupled from the permanent debt dynamic.

The second decisive building block is the value store: money that is not meant to be spent immediately is not accumulated as an ever-more-interest-bearing monetary claim within the financial system, but transferred into the value store. There, its value is preserved, while the money simultaneously remains available again to finance the real economy. Haisenko/von Brunn explicitly describe the value store as a secure store of value, whose deposits are not devalued by inflation or monetary decay.

This also breaks the classic "money attracts money" mechanism: whoever owns wealth does not automatically gain ever more wealth through interest and compound interest. Speculation and passive returns thereby lose a major systemic lever. Wealth concentration and the associated Matthew effect are thus reduced not primarily through after-the-fact redistribution, but already at the monetary root cause.

Consumer prices continue to form under market conditions. If real productivity rises, products can even become cheaper – Haisenko/von Brunn sees no harmful deflation in this, but a genuine productivity gain from which the population can benefit directly.

In short: the Humane Market Economy does not try to produce monetary value stability through permanent management of the money supply, but through a different architecture: debt-free money instead of debt-driven money creation, no private compound-interest mechanism, a bounded circulating money supply, a value store for savings, and a coupling of the money supply to the real productive capacity of the economy.

🟣 Empirical status: The Humane Market Economy has not yet been tested in this form in any national economy at scale. The statements about effects on this page are therefore model and plausibility arguments, not empirically proven results. This is not a flaw to be hidden – it is the honest starting point of any reform that does not yet exist.

Indirect expropriation through asset revaluation: Assets that in the existing system carry no real-economy equivalent – overpriced real estate, unearned financial titles, crypto-currencies, speculative asset bubbles – are written down to real-economy criteria. This constitutes a de facto indirect expropriation, even if systemically justified and democratically legitimised. Anyone holding such assets today faces real losses.

Currency parities instead of market-determined exchange rates: HME/RICH relies on politically negotiated or centrally set currency parities rather than market-based exchange rate formation through supply and demand. This is the direct antithesis to Hayek's currency competition. One cannot therefore claim without qualification that HME/RICH is a system "without any logic of constraint" – it replaces market logic with a politically agreed order logic carrying its own steering mechanisms.

Complete restructuring of export markets: Introducing HME/RICH means a structural reorientation of export-oriented economies. The main current sales markets – the USA, UK and Japan as systemic deficit countries – would largely drop away as buyers. The economy must fundamentally reorient itself: greater weight on the Global South, on domestic demand and on the HME trading zone itself. For export-oriented economies such as Germany, this represents a profound structural shock.

Structural shift towards the domestic economy: HME/RICH leads to a fundamental reordering of international trade relations. Global exchange shifts away from a world economy dominated by reserve currencies and capital flows towards exchange relationships grounded in real economic performance. A structural consequence emerges, however: the economic stability of an economic zone depends significantly more on its own domestic output, since external demand and financing mechanisms (of the kind found in today's global imbalances between deficit and surplus countries) operate only in a limited way. Exports remain possible, but not as a permanent external stabilising valve for an otherwise under-utilised domestic market. The question is therefore how robust the domestic economy is under this stronger commitment to real internal value creation.

Slowed or blocked decision-making: A democratically constituted Monetative with citizen councils and sortition procedures can substantially slow monetary policy decisions. Complex technical matters require expertise; broad democratic votes can delay or block necessary measures – especially in crises requiring rapid action.

Possible pro-cyclical tendencies: HME/RICH fundamentally links the distribution of new monetary resources to real output previously delivered, ongoing contributions to the Monetative and the reserves of its opening balance sheet. From the perspective of MMT and Post-Keynesian approaches (see link below), the question arises whether this structure can also act with sufficient anti-cyclical force in severe recessions. While there, additional state expenditure is made possible independently of current revenues, HME/RICH relies on existing real values and reserves. The question to examine, therefore, is whether the opening balance sheet, the value-storage reserves and the further stabilisation elements of the system can also guarantee a sufficiently large economic room for manoeuvre under extraordinary crisis conditions.

Transition risks and system discontinuity: Switching from FIAT to HME/RICH is not a technical software update but a far-reaching restructuring of all financial institutions, bank balance sheets and monetary contracts. Transition phases generate uncertainty, potential banking crises and losses of confidence – with real social costs for the population.

Reorientation of the financial and insurance sector: A large number of jobs in banking, insurance, tax investigation, tax and legal advisory services and social insurance carriers are expected to no longer be needed in their current form. At the same time, however, demand arises for new experts – for example in the field of the Monetative and a newly structured social safety net. Particularly sought after will be specialist knowledge of existing systemic loopholes, in order to make future regulatory frameworks more robust and resistant to manipulation.

Inclusion of deficit countries or weak economies: Some economies (states) – mostly outside the European area – have virtually no savings rate or currently (through debt logic) consume more than their real productive volume and finance themselves through unbalanced trade deficits. It remains to be determined how a Monetative in such regions can be financially structured, e.g. through solidarity contributions from oligarchs or the super-wealthy who often exist in parallel in those countries.

Political feasibility: A constitutional two-thirds majority for a fundamentally new monetary system is an extraordinary hurdle in today's political landscape. Established financial interests, short electoral cycles and insufficient public understanding of monetary mechanics systematically obstruct deep reforms – and that must be taken seriously.

Consequence of system discontinuity: No system of this kind has ever been tried before, so there are no empirical reference points. It is sustained by the spirit of enlightenment, solidarity, the willingness to perform and the humanist values of a society, as well as the desire for a better life for all.

Since the end of the gold standard in 1971, the global financial system has undergone far-reaching change.

Rising indebtedness, asset price inflation and growing concentration of economic power continue to raise fundamental questions about stability, fairness and sustainability.

The interest / compound interest and Cantillon effect is one of the least discussed mechanisms behind growing inequality.

Europe could be an ideal pioneering space for this: an existing monetary union, democratic institutions, high savings rate, strong real economy – and the opportunity for an independent third way between dollar dominance and Chinese state capitalism.

Technically, an alternative monetary and financial system would in principle be implementable – without having to rebuild all institutions from scratch.

The real challenge lies less in technology than in society's and politics' understanding of today's monetary and financial structures.

Concretely, this would require political courage, broad public education and a two-thirds majority in parliament.

Prof. Silja Graupe speaks in this context of a monoculture of the mind within economics.

Dirk Ehnts, Aaron Sahr and Prof. Heiner Flassbeck show: sovereign money creation, stronger demand policy and demystifying "state bankruptcy" are not utopian – many of their instruments can be discussed and partly implemented within existing institutions – without systemic disruption; MMT as a complete system has, however, not been implemented anywhere in pure form.

This approach is more immediately connectable: it requires no constitutional majority, works with existing institutions (ECB, national parliaments, central banks) and is communicatively easier to convey than a complete monetary system change.

MMT and Post-Keynesianism address asset price inflation primarily through political steering and regulation, whereas HME/RICH locates the causes more fundamentally in the monetary and property system itself.

The four pillars: MMT – the state uses its monetary sovereignty for socially necessary tasks (such as education, infrastructure and healthcare), democratically controlled through citizen councils with sortition procedures and 8-year cycles. · Freigeld / Demurrage – a circulation impulse makes hoarding large fortunes economically unattractive and keeps money in the real economy. · ECO – a climate currency (SaveClimate.earth) that gives every product an ecological price tag and allocates each citizen an equal monthly resource budget. · TFE – time-based value determination with an equity factor of at most 20 between the lowest and highest incomes.

IGO goes significantly further than MMT / Post-Keynesianism: Pure MMT improves fiscal policy, but changes neither the construction of money nor the speculative dynamic nor the ecological blindness of the price system. IGO addresses all three dimensions additionally: Freigeld reduces wealth accumulation through hoarding, ECO anchors ecological truth in prices, TFE / Factor 20 caps income dispersion systemically. Unlike classical market models, IGO anchors the monetary order not primarily through capital and credit, but through two quantity anchors: available human lifetime (TFE) and planetary limits (ECO). The real economic feedback therefore occurs less through market-based scarcity prices and more through time, resource and equity parameters.

Money supply and economic output: time anchor instead of GDP coupling: IGO does not couple the money supply directly to gross domestic product or to classical market indicators. Instead, the monetary logic is based on the assumption that every unit of purchasing power disbursed must ultimately be backed by real human lifetime actually worked. Together with the limited ECO budget, a double quantity limit emerges from time and resources. Proponents see in this a more stable and ecological anchor than the current financial system. Critics question, however, whether these time and resource anchors can guarantee the same price stability in all domains as decentralised market prices. HME/RICH, by contrast, orientates the money supply more strongly to the circulation requirements of the real economy, pursuing a different approach to monetary stabilisation.

The 30 % levy in IGO: simplification, state financing and monetary withdrawal: IGO largely replaces the current tax and levy system with a uniform 30 % levy on nearly all inflows (wages, profits, rents, capital income, inheritances, etc.). According to the concept, this levy simultaneously serves the financing of public tasks, social security and the regulatory withdrawal of purchasing power. It is broader than a classical income tax, but significantly simpler in structure: a uniform rate on all income types above corresponding exemption thresholds. The contrast with HME/RICH is clear: there, the taxation of labour income is abolished entirely, while primarily unearned income (interest, speculation, ground rent) is taxed. IGO treats all inflows as equal in principle and relies on exemptions and the universal flat levy as its equity mechanism.

The decisive dividing line: IGO continues to create money within a state-legitimised FIAT framework. Money creation and substantial investment financing are relocated into public structures (state, climate bank, citizen councils). An explicit regulation of whether private commercial banks may continue to extend their own loans or create deposit money is not set out in detail in the current version of IGO (Version 7). This money creation is, however, bounded by the double guardrail of TFE (lifetime) and ECO (resource budget) and democratically controlled through citizen councils. HME/RICH, by contrast, eliminates the debt nature of money at the level of creation itself: the cooperatively and participatory-democratically organised Monetative, owned by all contributors, makes money available as a debt-free circulation infrastructure – not as a state claim and not as a bank loan. HME/RICH regards this difference as more fundamental than questions of velocity of circulation or monetary steering. With regard to international integration, IGO currently contains no developed foreign-trade architecture with currency parities, trade-balancing mechanisms or balancing tariffs, as envisaged in HME/RICH.

The three key questions for IGO: 1. Investment financing: not through private credit or a value store, but through sovereign monetary creation (MMT) – investment runs through public structures (the state, a climate bank), bounded by the double guardrail of TFE (lifetime) and ECO (resource budget) and democratically controlled by citizen councils. 2. Performance incentives: Freigeld's circulation impulse keeps money moving instead of being hoarded; the equity factor of 20 simultaneously caps income dispersion at the top. The uniform 30 % levy, however – unlike in HME/RICH – also applies to labour income, so the immediate performance incentive is generated more through citizen-council-legitimised redistribution than through targeted relief for work. 3. Value stability: as above – IGO does not couple the money supply to GDP or market indicators, but to a time and resource anchor (TFE + ECO). Proponents see this as structurally inflation-resistant backing; IGO's critics leave open whether this anchor delivers the same price stability across all sectors of the economy as decentralised market prices – and how the system would respond to deflation risk if real lifetime-performance falls (e.g. recession, ageing population).

Accounting-tight: Balance mechanics rests on the strict logic of double-entry bookkeeping: global net monetary wealth is always zero; in Buschbeck's view, global prosperity arises essentially from net investment. Buschbeck explicitly honors the "spirit of Gesell" – without adopting his circulation fee on cash, which he considers politically unenforceable.

Unlike HME/RICH, Buschbeck leaves money creation within the existing, interest-bearing bank-credit system – he changes only how credit is priced, not the debt nature of money itself. Social security, state financing and an international currency order are deliberately left out.

Hayek's Denationalisation of Money (1976) is the most radical market-liberal monetary reform: private competing currencies instead of the state monopoly. Bitcoin can be interpreted as a modern implementation of the idea of currency competition – and stands at the same time in contrast to the Cooperative Monetative in HMW/RICH. Both reject the state monopoly. Only one creates debt-free, democratic money.

Friedman's monetarism improves monetary-policy rules, but leaves the debt-money system completely intact. The compound-interest mechanism, asset-price inflation and privatised money creation remain structurally untouched.

Rudolf Steiner's three spheres – Cultural Life (Freedom), Rights Life (Equality), Economic Life (Brotherhood) – describe precisely the social order that HME/RICH is meant to underpin economically. Alexander Caspar turns this into a concrete model: the Associative Economy, in which prices are negotiated through cooperation rather than competition, and money is created debt-free through a social-quota mechanism rather than interest-bearing bank credit.

Threefolding without a low-threshold entry point: a fully worked-out but consciousness-dependent target model, whose path from today's mindset and property order leads through knowledge, inner development and only then the legal order. HMW/RICH without the Threefolding perspective: a walkable first step without a longer-term cultural vision for what comes after. Together: an achievable milestone today, plus a compass for the road beyond it.

The link: solidarity consciousness and a solidary monetary architecture. Both paths need both. The order of development: first cultural life – knowledge and training, already established for Caspar's work (among others through the trainings of Martin Matzat); second consciousness in economic life – individual personal development, e.g. overcoming trauma, because it has to come from within and not just be known; third rights life – legislature (rules), executive (institutions) and judiciary (jurisdiction on the basis of the new rules of society), also responsible for the military and foreign policy (security policy, defence of the currency area, enforcement of international agreements). → The link in detail