HME / RICH
a new monetary and economic system

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 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 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 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 – they work within the existing institutional framework, with familiar concepts and without systemic disruption.

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.

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 RICH is meant to underpin economically. Alexander Caspar turns this into a concrete model: the Associative Economy without price competition.

Threefolding without HMW/RICH: a cultural inner vision on the soil of the old debt-money system – without the outer framework. HMW/RICH without the Threefolding perspective: a systemic outer framework without the inner human vision. Together: a complete system blueprint – inner and outer.