This 6-pillar curriculum teaches the basic literacy we need to be personally and financially successful and to do so in a manner in which together we evolve a culture that supports the emergence of an advanced human civilization.
“Reaching for the scars” is John’s theme this week — most people reach for the stars; the powers that be are reaching for our scars and inflicting fresh ones. Catherine and John walk the week’s stories: Iran setting the pace of the war while the U.S. draws down in Iraq, Bahrain, and Kuwait; the Selective Service war-gaming a draft; the summer Arctic route opening; Capital One closing the Trump Organization’s accounts; Marco Rubio’s visa threat and his AIPAC money; Karl Denninger’s hyperscaler bankruptcy warning; what the National School Lunch Program actually serves; nurse advocates from Remnant Healthcare; and Solari’s new Programmable Money PDF.
I feel like I am watching a stream of little fake theater plots. In 2022 or 2023, Seymour Hersh discovered that Zelensky was purchasing diesel fuel from Putin and had skimmed hundreds of millions off the invoices… in addition to taking the older model weapons the US was giving him, and selling them on the Dark Web (with Americans participating).
I can’t stop thinking that there are a bunch of global infrastructure firms sitting around in a corporate star chamber, deciding when the wars will start and stop based on models of future rebuild cost contracts. Rinse and repeat Iraq Reconstruction, and the $2 Billion pumped into the misogynistic Afghanistan Taliban by SIGAR (Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction; now offline) after Americans were told that our military had pulled out.
This could be completely not real, but “AI convergence” is a well published goal of the Transhumanists (now lead by Dr. James Giordano in his perch over at the DoD/DARPA):
“On August 12, 2026 during the eclipse when the sun is blocked, there might be an electromagnetic radiation (wi-fi at 26.5 Gigahertz to activate graphene – for 7 minutes via Starlink satellite) based attack on humanity. It’s purpose is to cause the grapebne in our bodies to self-assemble into transceivers that connect to an AI interface that has already been built. If it happens, it will be a mass forced transhumanism event.
Converging humans with AI is a stated, printed, public goal of the Transhumanists running US DoD/DARPA, the Israeli government, and more. The goal is to create a compliant Human 2.0 “borg” race of servants for the Global Financial Elite. People will be matched up to their digital twin that was built with their “smart” phone digital exhaust, in the “Sentient World Simulation” that has already been built by Alphabet, Meta, Palantir, AWS, et al., for the US DoD – and is living on ever more data centers…
I am starting to learn about how to exit the USA, Inc. system and become a private citizen/American National with the help of Embassy of Light. What a tour of revisionist history. The National Archive [https://founders.archives.gov/help/contact] no longer provide links from their editorials about key documents, to the original documents themselves. When asked why, they said limitations in time and money. How much does it cost to link to a .pdf?
I realized that I have not understood the “Islam invasion” issue…
I also did not understand the “Disclosure” issue either, until I found the documentary collection at: http://www.awakenandunite.com
I joined InPowerMovement.org to learn the “Notice of Liability” process and see if I can get a few of the local psychopaths to retire. This recent podcast with Cal Washington in Belgium was a real aha moment for me:
YouTube link for public sharing:
Monsieur Jellen (an attorney who speaks Latin and is not trusted by some of the NL fightback I have met on blogs), interviews Cal Washington in Grand Cafe Moai, Maasmechelen, Belgium July 17, 2026 https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=K0SZBRCDIxs
The other thing going on over at InPowerMovement revolves around what happens when someone tries to stop the issuance of a Birth Certificate for a newborn:
06/29/26 BLOG POST ABOUT LAW MERCHANT #43 – USDEBTCLOCK.ORG WAYBACK MACHINE INCLUDED:
The federal budget won’t be balanced unless we claw back the now $55 Trillion stolen from it directly by the parasitic, fraudulent and not “federal” Reserve CENTRAL Bank. Go to Solari.com and purchase a copy of “Follow the Missing Money” Vol. 1 and 2 for a run down on the first $21 Trillion stolen from us directly. That will show you how it is done.
I’m behind on my Solari podcasts, but I saw an interview where Cathereine Austin Fitts states that the satanists/global financial elites have worked that number up to $55 Trillion since the start of the C19 scamdemic ($6.5 Trillion stolen in 2020 alone), and the now on-going C19 injection global democide.
“Fixing” Medicare and Social Security are always trotted out as the way to fix “the debt.” And no doubt – stopping the theft of Social Security trust funds would go a long way to restoring the public trust of those who are dependent on SS. But let’s face it, with central banksters using the DoD, HUD, and many other federal agencies to steal budgetary funding from, putting those two programs up as the first point to address is just more of the same misdirection away from the fact that we the people are being stolen from directly. Does anyone really believe that it cost $186 million dollars to paint the bottom of the Reflecting Pool?
Now, take a look at the USDebtClock.org. What exactly is in that $112 Trillion “Unfunded Debt” category that showed up, after Govinda Tidball removed his child from having a Birth Certificate. Mr. Tidball got into a fight with the Texas Bureau of Vital Statistics, when the hospital where his son was born issued a Birth Certificate against his stated and contracted (everyone there signed off on it) wishes. He took the precaution of establishing an Etherium/Polygon crypto account and loaded copies of the documentation behind the fight onto the Etherium Block Chain where the AI could munch it. This caused the AI programs calculating the financial stats for the US government, to have to account for the loss of the value of that one child’s future labor. The AI also understood from the fight against the Birth Certificate issuance, that this future labor value was to be obtained by issuing a Birth Certificate under false pretenses and against the wishes of the Tidball family. This caused the AI to have to create a new “unfunded” debt category to accomodate ALL of the people in the USA who have been fraudulently enrolled into a debt slavery system as collateral for all future debts of the USA, Inc. (circa 1871) – with the issuance of a Birth Certificate and no explanation or understanding of what the Birth Certificate really means legally.
And I don’t put any credence into the “defense/war” figure on the usdebtclock.org – not with the primary theft portal being the US DoD. When we see that number jump we will know the AI has reached the core of the Global Financial Elite and their central bankster sock puppet’s plan.
And anyone who wants to learn about the primary destination of all that stolen money – the Secret Space Program, go to: http://www.awakenandunite.com and start watching the disclosure videos. Until I watched these videos, I really didn’t get the issue of Disclosure, but I do now.
There is no problem we can’t solve here on Earth, and thousands of people have paid a very high price for this technology to exist at all. Remember, building all of this cost a lot of money, but building it all in secret – caused it to cost a LOT more (quote from Catherine Austin Fitts).
06/04/23 Added. A BBC / Adam Curtis production that must have snuck in before BBC really sank into the censorship pit.
Larry Fink at 01:14:00 https://archive.org/details/youtube-thLgkQBFTPw
Larry looks absolutely manic in this clip.
John Perkins didn’t open his mouth until he made his nut. The only useful thing was his outing of Jeffrey Sachs.
We just got 5G via wires and pole mounted junction boxes, in spite of the information I provided to the County Commissioners 4 years ago and my campaign against it. I still need to understand how this latest version of 5G infrastructure actually works… but the ambient EMR levels in Rutherfordton, NC are now 60,000 microwatts/sq meter – when 1,000 microwatts is the threshold for carcinogenicity. This installation is on top of Duke Energy’s smart meters here in 2017 and the C19 injection stripping out the P53 anti-cancer gene from all of our cells starting in 2021.
Everyone needs to find out how many cancer patients are on their streets. I’m going door to door to set up 8 household freedom cells, and make sure nobody objects to my residential private community garden. Most of my original freedom cell died from C19 injection contamination.
I have been to Nicaraguan where John Perkins talks of the devastation from toxic fruit company methods. 20 years ago the center of Managua was full of make shift tarp tents where sick people who worked for the fruit companies were protesting demanding help from their cancers.
I am traveling now around NC, VA, PA, TN, WV. Mostly on all the parkways, skyways on motorcycle. We use wired helmet radios to communicate, and travel with a emf meter. In the middle of nowhere we will experience nasty radio interference, and high meter readings in places you feel would be naturally insulated.
I have not gone door to door, but have wide exposure to the general public. Everyone is sick. Cancer, many young people (35-55) with heart issue, many type2 diabetics and on and on. The saddest is they all seem to have given in. Mention alternatives and these sick people move quickly to defend their poisoners. Suggest turning off their microwave radio and they gasp, look at you funny, and blurt out stupid shit like “I couldn’t live without my phone”. I am losing hope for those people.
Some will make it. Many will not. Focus on networking and helping the ones who will make it and who will help you. Pray for everyone.
Dear Cathrin,
About How to Identify the Independent, Pro-Decentralization Team and Keep Conflicts of Interest at Arm’s Length. While reading, I kept thinking back to the distinction between the Rhineland and Anglo-Saxon models.
What I have always found particularly valuable about that distinction is that, to me, it never merely described two different economic or organizational models. It made two different cultures visible: different ideas about value, responsibility, continuity, the human being, and the role of enterprise.
It allowed you to ask yourself a fundamental question: Which culture do I actually want to be part of?
I recognize that same strength in your distinction between the Centralizing Universe and the Decentralizing Universe. But CU/DU, in my view, describes a reality that is much more relevant to the world we live in today.
Your description of a “virtuous value circle,” in which someone can function economically independently because a broad base of people genuinely derives value from their work, resonates strongly with the reciprocity I also recognize at the heart of Rhineland thinking.
But CU/DU adds something essential.
It looks not only at how an organization is structured or for whom it creates value, but also at the structures of power and dependency behind it.
Who finances whom?
Who depends on whom?
Where does the money flow?
What loyalties arise as a result?
And who can ultimately pull that invisible “leash” when interests collide?
Economic independence then becomes much more than a financial matter. It becomes a prerequisite for being able to act according to your own values and conscience.
But this is precisely where I feel there is another layer missing from the model, one that is becoming increasingly important in our technological society:
Access.
Before we can ask someone which culture they want to be part of, we also need to ask whether that person actually has access to the conditions necessary to make that choice.
Access to work. To income. To customers. To capital. To education. To housing. To healthcare. To healthy food and water. To basic facilities. To information. And increasingly: access to reach and visibility.
Technology has fundamentally changed that last dimension.
Where access was once primarily determined by recognizable gatekeepers — employers, banks, institutions, publishers, governments — an increasing share of it is now mediated by digital infrastructures, platforms, algorithms, and automated selection and distribution systems.
As a result, gatekeepers do not necessarily have to deny someone access outright. Distribution, discoverability, selection, creditworthiness, or reach can all influence the degree of economic and social access someone actually has.
Access itself thereby becomes a form of power. And this has a consequence that concerns me deeply. A person can be capable, principled, productive, and willing to function independently, yet continually encounter barriers that are barely visible. Limited access can lead to reduced reach. Reduced reach to fewer opportunities. Fewer opportunities to less income. And less income, ultimately, to less economic independence. But at the end of that chain, what we mainly see is an individual who has failed to become successful.
We then risk confusing the outcome with that person’s capacity. When perhaps the problem was not their capacity, effort, or integrity at all, but their access.
So alongside your important question: who finances whom?, I would add another:
Who controls access? Who determines who becomes visible? Who gains access to work, customers, financing, knowledge, infrastructure, and reach? And how can we distinguish between someone who is unable to participate and someone who has simply not been given sufficient access to participate?
You yourself identify people who are excluded from the CU because of their ethics, or because their skills do not fit the “slots” the system currently requires. You also observe that this latter group is growing. But it is precisely this group that raises another question for me.
What happens to people who possess many of the qualities of the DU, but who have never had the resources, networks, reach, or basic economic security necessary to actually build their economic independence?
Your successful DU consists, in part, of people who were able to take knowledge, skills, and resources with them from the CU and subsequently become independent.
But what happens to the person who never could — or never wanted to — reach such a position within the CU?
If someone must first become successful within a centralizing system in order to accumulate enough money, networks, knowledge, and reach to then leave that system, access to the DU paradoxically remains partly dependent on the CU.
That is why I believe a genuine Decentralizing Universe needs more than an alternative economic ecosystem. It also needs a basic infrastructure for human autonomy.
And this is precisely where, for me, the idea of a basic income becomes meaningful.
Not as a replacement for work. Not as a replacement for employment-related rights. Not as a mechanism for making everyone economically equal. And certainly not as a system that makes people dependent on a single central authority for their entire existence.
Because I believe there is also such a thing as the wrong kind of basic income.
If a universal basic income is used to dismantle existing labor rights, social protections, or other societal rights, while an increasing number of essential conditions of life become dependent on that single central payment, it does not create greater autonomy. It creates a new dependency.
Within the logic of your own CU/DU framework, such a basic income could ultimately even become a powerful centralizing instrument.
After all, whoever provides the basis of your entire existence — and can change the conditions under which you receive it — acquires enormous power. But that is fundamentally different from the kind of basic income I mean.
I am thinking of a bounded but sufficient basic income as a foundation for human autonomy, alongside which employment-related and societal rights continue to exist.
By “bounded,” I emphatically do not mean so low that a person can barely survive.
The foundation must be sufficient to live a genuinely dignified and independent life: to have a home, eat healthy food, move around and travel, study, and participate in society.
Not luxury, but freedom.
Everything a person wants to build beyond that foundation would then arise from what they themselves create and contribute within the culture they choose: through working, entrepreneurship, production, care, research, design, creation, investment, or collaboration.
A basic income then takes on an entirely different function. It does not organize people’s lives. It creates the minimum space within which people can organize their own lives. And that, to me, seems essential to genuine decentralization.
Because freedom does not simply mean that no one formally prohibits you from doing something.
Freedom also means being economically able to say “no.”
No to an employer who demands something that violates your conscience.
No to an organization you no longer wish to be part of.
No to a relationship of dependency that undermines your autonomy.
At the same time, enough of a foundation must remain for someone to begin again: to learn, to create something, start a business, find different work, or build a new community and new economic relationships or even to travel and experience other cultures in order to broaden one’s horizons.
The ability to leave the CU should therefore not, in my view, depend on someone first having become successful enough within the CU to afford leaving it. That would not constitute genuine freedom of choice. This is why I believe CU/DU can be more than a powerful contemporary deepening of the cultural distinction once made visible by the Rhineland and Anglo-Saxon models.
It opens up another fundamental question: How do we decentralize not only power and money, but access to autonomy itself?
Rhineland versus Anglo-Saxon helped us ask: Which economic and organizational culture do I want to be part of?*
CU/DU adds: Which culture of power and dependency do I want to be part of?
But in our current technological society, I believe we need to add a third question:
Do I — and do others — actually have the ability to make that choice?
Because without a real foundation and genuine access, freedom remains largely theoretical.
Perhaps this is also the dividing line between two fundamentally different concepts of basic income. One can make people more dependent on a centralized system.
The other can provide the minimum economic independence necessary to ensure that people are not forced to remain part of such a system.
A foundation provides the freedom to choose.
Access provides the opportunity to participate.
And what people create beyond that foundation gives them the space to grow within the culture they have chosen.
For me, this is where the Decentralizing Universe could truly begin as a new model for the 21st century: not only with those who have already succeeded in becoming economically independent, but with the conscious protection of the conditions that give every human being a genuine opportunity to build that independence.
This reminded me of something Albert Schweitzer wrote, on Confucius “teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”.
The nations of Africa could teach you how to fish. What they lack is access to cheap capital and to markets.
Anytime I hear “teach a man to fish”, I suspect a scam.
A basic income from government will come with a full on control grid. Access or basic support is ideally offered by family and community. Historically, I have found family to be the most successful, but sometimes community can work. It is a rare person who can make it without support from at least one quarter. But some do.
Dear Catherine, my apologies — I just noticed that I wrote your name incorrectly in my previous message. I’m very sorry about that, Catherine!
No problem! At all!
Catherine – I am a former ICU nurse and I just finished listening to the Program about the Nurse advocates- Remnant health care. That was excellent and so true and informative for people. Thank you – Lynn
I am so glad you liked it. Inspired me to finally sign up!
News Flash!
University of Michigan will charge you a lot of money for an education that is SOOOO valuable, they won’t even give you grades! Is this for real?
I used a pseudonym for my latest book because my publisher forced me to given the possibility of blowback from people I couldn’t prove were no longer living. So there are reasons, like mine or like protecting your children as Catherine mentioned. It didn’t make me happy because I couldn’t even link my prior works to the last one, and I would have been happy to put my name on it because it genuinely took a controversial stand that I was 100% behind. I had such fights with the legal department! They wanted me to do even more than I agreed to. I had an entire monastery praying for a positive outcome.
I feel like I am watching a stream of little fake theater plots. In 2022 or 2023, Seymour Hersh discovered that Zelensky was purchasing diesel fuel from Putin and had skimmed hundreds of millions off the invoices… in addition to taking the older model weapons the US was giving him, and selling them on the Dark Web (with Americans participating).
I can’t stop thinking that there are a bunch of global infrastructure firms sitting around in a corporate star chamber, deciding when the wars will start and stop based on models of future rebuild cost contracts. Rinse and repeat Iraq Reconstruction, and the $2 Billion pumped into the misogynistic Afghanistan Taliban by SIGAR (Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction; now offline) after Americans were told that our military had pulled out.
This could be completely not real, but “AI convergence” is a well published goal of the Transhumanists (now lead by Dr. James Giordano in his perch over at the DoD/DARPA):
“On August 12, 2026 during the eclipse when the sun is blocked, there might be an electromagnetic radiation (wi-fi at 26.5 Gigahertz to activate graphene – for 7 minutes via Starlink satellite) based attack on humanity. It’s purpose is to cause the grapebne in our bodies to self-assemble into transceivers that connect to an AI interface that has already been built. If it happens, it will be a mass forced transhumanism event.
Converging humans with AI is a stated, printed, public goal of the Transhumanists running US DoD/DARPA, the Israeli government, and more. The goal is to create a compliant Human 2.0 “borg” race of servants for the Global Financial Elite. People will be matched up to their digital twin that was built with their “smart” phone digital exhaust, in the “Sentient World Simulation” that has already been built by Alphabet, Meta, Palantir, AWS, et al., for the US DoD – and is living on ever more data centers…
01/20/26 THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL ELITE (GFE) PLAN COMES TOGETHER. GET READY FOR THE 2026 SOLAR ECLIPSE 08/10/2026 TO 08/12/2026 HUMAN TO TRANSHUMAN HYBRIDIZATION ACTIVATION. La Quinta Columna: The Global Transhumanist Hybridization Agenda https://lys-dor.com/2026/01/18/ricardo-delgado-martin-presente-lagenda-dhybridation-globale-prevue-pour-2026/
I am starting to learn about how to exit the USA, Inc. system and become a private citizen/American National with the help of Embassy of Light. What a tour of revisionist history. The National Archive [https://founders.archives.gov/help/contact] no longer provide links from their editorials about key documents, to the original documents themselves. When asked why, they said limitations in time and money. How much does it cost to link to a .pdf?
Last night I watched:
Remember the Alamo: Don’t Sharia My Texas.
https://alamo.lifechristian.tv/watch?session_id=cs_live_b1MDZPhtz9NrRTnM8BREZ0x9BgkqZgBjXbSb0tAb5EMKOIOaqg96kYqLcb
I realized that I have not understood the “Islam invasion” issue…
I also did not understand the “Disclosure” issue either, until I found the documentary collection at: http://www.awakenandunite.com
I joined InPowerMovement.org to learn the “Notice of Liability” process and see if I can get a few of the local psychopaths to retire. This recent podcast with Cal Washington in Belgium was a real aha moment for me:
YouTube link for public sharing:
Monsieur Jellen (an attorney who speaks Latin and is not trusted by some of the NL fightback I have met on blogs), interviews Cal Washington in Grand Cafe Moai, Maasmechelen, Belgium July 17, 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=K0SZBRCDIxs
The other thing going on over at InPowerMovement revolves around what happens when someone tries to stop the issuance of a Birth Certificate for a newborn:
06/29/26 BLOG POST ABOUT LAW MERCHANT #43 – USDEBTCLOCK.ORG WAYBACK MACHINE INCLUDED:
The federal budget won’t be balanced unless we claw back the now $55 Trillion stolen from it directly by the parasitic, fraudulent and not “federal” Reserve CENTRAL Bank. Go to Solari.com and purchase a copy of “Follow the Missing Money” Vol. 1 and 2 for a run down on the first $21 Trillion stolen from us directly. That will show you how it is done.
I’m behind on my Solari podcasts, but I saw an interview where Cathereine Austin Fitts states that the satanists/global financial elites have worked that number up to $55 Trillion since the start of the C19 scamdemic ($6.5 Trillion stolen in 2020 alone), and the now on-going C19 injection global democide.
“Fixing” Medicare and Social Security are always trotted out as the way to fix “the debt.” And no doubt – stopping the theft of Social Security trust funds would go a long way to restoring the public trust of those who are dependent on SS. But let’s face it, with central banksters using the DoD, HUD, and many other federal agencies to steal budgetary funding from, putting those two programs up as the first point to address is just more of the same misdirection away from the fact that we the people are being stolen from directly. Does anyone really believe that it cost $186 million dollars to paint the bottom of the Reflecting Pool?
Now, take a look at the USDebtClock.org. What exactly is in that $112 Trillion “Unfunded Debt” category that showed up, after Govinda Tidball removed his child from having a Birth Certificate. Mr. Tidball got into a fight with the Texas Bureau of Vital Statistics, when the hospital where his son was born issued a Birth Certificate against his stated and contracted (everyone there signed off on it) wishes. He took the precaution of establishing an Etherium/Polygon crypto account and loaded copies of the documentation behind the fight onto the Etherium Block Chain where the AI could munch it. This caused the AI programs calculating the financial stats for the US government, to have to account for the loss of the value of that one child’s future labor. The AI also understood from the fight against the Birth Certificate issuance, that this future labor value was to be obtained by issuing a Birth Certificate under false pretenses and against the wishes of the Tidball family. This caused the AI to have to create a new “unfunded” debt category to accomodate ALL of the people in the USA who have been fraudulently enrolled into a debt slavery system as collateral for all future debts of the USA, Inc. (circa 1871) – with the issuance of a Birth Certificate and no explanation or understanding of what the Birth Certificate really means legally.
Take a look at the Wayback Machine. This category isn’t there in 2019:
https://web.archive.org/web/20190502230528/https://www.usdebtclock.org/
And I don’t put any credence into the “defense/war” figure on the usdebtclock.org – not with the primary theft portal being the US DoD. When we see that number jump we will know the AI has reached the core of the Global Financial Elite and their central bankster sock puppet’s plan.
And anyone who wants to learn about the primary destination of all that stolen money – the Secret Space Program, go to: http://www.awakenandunite.com and start watching the disclosure videos. Until I watched these videos, I really didn’t get the issue of Disclosure, but I do now.
There is no problem we can’t solve here on Earth, and thousands of people have paid a very high price for this technology to exist at all. Remember, building all of this cost a lot of money, but building it all in secret – caused it to cost a LOT more (quote from Catherine Austin Fitts).
06/04/23 Added. A BBC / Adam Curtis production that must have snuck in before BBC really sank into the censorship pit.
Larry Fink at 01:14:00
https://archive.org/details/youtube-thLgkQBFTPw
Larry looks absolutely manic in this clip.
John Perkins didn’t open his mouth until he made his nut. The only useful thing was his outing of Jeffrey Sachs.
We just got 5G via wires and pole mounted junction boxes, in spite of the information I provided to the County Commissioners 4 years ago and my campaign against it. I still need to understand how this latest version of 5G infrastructure actually works… but the ambient EMR levels in Rutherfordton, NC are now 60,000 microwatts/sq meter – when 1,000 microwatts is the threshold for carcinogenicity. This installation is on top of Duke Energy’s smart meters here in 2017 and the C19 injection stripping out the P53 anti-cancer gene from all of our cells starting in 2021.
Everyone needs to find out how many cancer patients are on their streets. I’m going door to door to set up 8 household freedom cells, and make sure nobody objects to my residential private community garden. Most of my original freedom cell died from C19 injection contamination.
I have been to Nicaraguan where John Perkins talks of the devastation from toxic fruit company methods. 20 years ago the center of Managua was full of make shift tarp tents where sick people who worked for the fruit companies were protesting demanding help from their cancers.
I am traveling now around NC, VA, PA, TN, WV. Mostly on all the parkways, skyways on motorcycle. We use wired helmet radios to communicate, and travel with a emf meter. In the middle of nowhere we will experience nasty radio interference, and high meter readings in places you feel would be naturally insulated.
I have not gone door to door, but have wide exposure to the general public. Everyone is sick. Cancer, many young people (35-55) with heart issue, many type2 diabetics and on and on. The saddest is they all seem to have given in. Mention alternatives and these sick people move quickly to defend their poisoners. Suggest turning off their microwave radio and they gasp, look at you funny, and blurt out stupid shit like “I couldn’t live without my phone”. I am losing hope for those people.
Some will make it. Many will not. Focus on networking and helping the ones who will make it and who will help you. Pray for everyone.
Dear Cathrin,
About How to Identify the Independent, Pro-Decentralization Team and Keep Conflicts of Interest at Arm’s Length. While reading, I kept thinking back to the distinction between the Rhineland and Anglo-Saxon models.
What I have always found particularly valuable about that distinction is that, to me, it never merely described two different economic or organizational models. It made two different cultures visible: different ideas about value, responsibility, continuity, the human being, and the role of enterprise.
It allowed you to ask yourself a fundamental question: Which culture do I actually want to be part of?
I recognize that same strength in your distinction between the Centralizing Universe and the Decentralizing Universe. But CU/DU, in my view, describes a reality that is much more relevant to the world we live in today.
Your description of a “virtuous value circle,” in which someone can function economically independently because a broad base of people genuinely derives value from their work, resonates strongly with the reciprocity I also recognize at the heart of Rhineland thinking.
But CU/DU adds something essential.
It looks not only at how an organization is structured or for whom it creates value, but also at the structures of power and dependency behind it.
Who finances whom?
Who depends on whom?
Where does the money flow?
What loyalties arise as a result?
And who can ultimately pull that invisible “leash” when interests collide?
Economic independence then becomes much more than a financial matter. It becomes a prerequisite for being able to act according to your own values and conscience.
But this is precisely where I feel there is another layer missing from the model, one that is becoming increasingly important in our technological society:
Access.
Before we can ask someone which culture they want to be part of, we also need to ask whether that person actually has access to the conditions necessary to make that choice.
Access to work. To income. To customers. To capital. To education. To housing. To healthcare. To healthy food and water. To basic facilities. To information. And increasingly: access to reach and visibility.
Technology has fundamentally changed that last dimension.
Where access was once primarily determined by recognizable gatekeepers — employers, banks, institutions, publishers, governments — an increasing share of it is now mediated by digital infrastructures, platforms, algorithms, and automated selection and distribution systems.
As a result, gatekeepers do not necessarily have to deny someone access outright. Distribution, discoverability, selection, creditworthiness, or reach can all influence the degree of economic and social access someone actually has.
Access itself thereby becomes a form of power. And this has a consequence that concerns me deeply. A person can be capable, principled, productive, and willing to function independently, yet continually encounter barriers that are barely visible. Limited access can lead to reduced reach. Reduced reach to fewer opportunities. Fewer opportunities to less income. And less income, ultimately, to less economic independence. But at the end of that chain, what we mainly see is an individual who has failed to become successful.
We then risk confusing the outcome with that person’s capacity. When perhaps the problem was not their capacity, effort, or integrity at all, but their access.
So alongside your important question: who finances whom?, I would add another:
Who controls access? Who determines who becomes visible? Who gains access to work, customers, financing, knowledge, infrastructure, and reach? And how can we distinguish between someone who is unable to participate and someone who has simply not been given sufficient access to participate?
You yourself identify people who are excluded from the CU because of their ethics, or because their skills do not fit the “slots” the system currently requires. You also observe that this latter group is growing. But it is precisely this group that raises another question for me.
What happens to people who possess many of the qualities of the DU, but who have never had the resources, networks, reach, or basic economic security necessary to actually build their economic independence?
Your successful DU consists, in part, of people who were able to take knowledge, skills, and resources with them from the CU and subsequently become independent.
But what happens to the person who never could — or never wanted to — reach such a position within the CU?
If someone must first become successful within a centralizing system in order to accumulate enough money, networks, knowledge, and reach to then leave that system, access to the DU paradoxically remains partly dependent on the CU.
That is why I believe a genuine Decentralizing Universe needs more than an alternative economic ecosystem. It also needs a basic infrastructure for human autonomy.
And this is precisely where, for me, the idea of a basic income becomes meaningful.
Not as a replacement for work. Not as a replacement for employment-related rights. Not as a mechanism for making everyone economically equal. And certainly not as a system that makes people dependent on a single central authority for their entire existence.
Because I believe there is also such a thing as the wrong kind of basic income.
If a universal basic income is used to dismantle existing labor rights, social protections, or other societal rights, while an increasing number of essential conditions of life become dependent on that single central payment, it does not create greater autonomy. It creates a new dependency.
Within the logic of your own CU/DU framework, such a basic income could ultimately even become a powerful centralizing instrument.
After all, whoever provides the basis of your entire existence — and can change the conditions under which you receive it — acquires enormous power. But that is fundamentally different from the kind of basic income I mean.
I am thinking of a bounded but sufficient basic income as a foundation for human autonomy, alongside which employment-related and societal rights continue to exist.
By “bounded,” I emphatically do not mean so low that a person can barely survive.
The foundation must be sufficient to live a genuinely dignified and independent life: to have a home, eat healthy food, move around and travel, study, and participate in society.
Not luxury, but freedom.
Everything a person wants to build beyond that foundation would then arise from what they themselves create and contribute within the culture they choose: through working, entrepreneurship, production, care, research, design, creation, investment, or collaboration.
A basic income then takes on an entirely different function. It does not organize people’s lives. It creates the minimum space within which people can organize their own lives. And that, to me, seems essential to genuine decentralization.
Because freedom does not simply mean that no one formally prohibits you from doing something.
Freedom also means being economically able to say “no.”
No to an employer who demands something that violates your conscience.
No to an organization you no longer wish to be part of.
No to a relationship of dependency that undermines your autonomy.
At the same time, enough of a foundation must remain for someone to begin again: to learn, to create something, start a business, find different work, or build a new community and new economic relationships or even to travel and experience other cultures in order to broaden one’s horizons.
The ability to leave the CU should therefore not, in my view, depend on someone first having become successful enough within the CU to afford leaving it. That would not constitute genuine freedom of choice. This is why I believe CU/DU can be more than a powerful contemporary deepening of the cultural distinction once made visible by the Rhineland and Anglo-Saxon models.
It opens up another fundamental question: How do we decentralize not only power and money, but access to autonomy itself?
Rhineland versus Anglo-Saxon helped us ask: Which economic and organizational culture do I want to be part of?*
CU/DU adds: Which culture of power and dependency do I want to be part of?
But in our current technological society, I believe we need to add a third question:
Do I — and do others — actually have the ability to make that choice?
Because without a real foundation and genuine access, freedom remains largely theoretical.
Perhaps this is also the dividing line between two fundamentally different concepts of basic income. One can make people more dependent on a centralized system.
The other can provide the minimum economic independence necessary to ensure that people are not forced to remain part of such a system.
A foundation provides the freedom to choose.
Access provides the opportunity to participate.
And what people create beyond that foundation gives them the space to grow within the culture they have chosen.
For me, this is where the Decentralizing Universe could truly begin as a new model for the 21st century: not only with those who have already succeeded in becoming economically independent, but with the conscious protection of the conditions that give every human being a genuine opportunity to build that independence.
This reminded me of something Albert Schweitzer wrote, on Confucius “teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”.
The nations of Africa could teach you how to fish. What they lack is access to cheap capital and to markets.
Anytime I hear “teach a man to fish”, I suspect a scam.
A basic income from government will come with a full on control grid. Access or basic support is ideally offered by family and community. Historically, I have found family to be the most successful, but sometimes community can work. It is a rare person who can make it without support from at least one quarter. But some do.
Dear Catherine, my apologies — I just noticed that I wrote your name incorrectly in my previous message. I’m very sorry about that, Catherine!
No problem! At all!
Catherine – I am a former ICU nurse and I just finished listening to the Program about the Nurse advocates- Remnant health care. That was excellent and so true and informative for people. Thank you – Lynn
I am so glad you liked it. Inspired me to finally sign up!
News Flash!
University of Michigan will charge you a lot of money for an education that is SOOOO valuable, they won’t even give you grades! Is this for real?
https://www.foxnews.com/media/university-michigan-plans-shield-2027-freshman-letter-grades-from-transcripts-new-mental-health-plan
I used a pseudonym for my latest book because my publisher forced me to given the possibility of blowback from people I couldn’t prove were no longer living. So there are reasons, like mine or like protecting your children as Catherine mentioned. It didn’t make me happy because I couldn’t even link my prior works to the last one, and I would have been happy to put my name on it because it genuinely took a controversial stand that I was 100% behind. I had such fights with the legal department! They wanted me to do even more than I agreed to. I had an entire monastery praying for a positive outcome.
Wow.