The Binary Trap-part 6: The Earth Plus 5%

Why Everyone's Broke in an Abundant World

>Find Part 1 of The Binary Trap Here<

"Spaceship earth is still operated by railway conductors, just as NASA is managed by men with Newtonian goals." — Marshall McLuhan

Here's a question that should keep you awake at night: Why does everyone feel broke in the most abundant civilization in human history?

We live on a planet that produces enough food to feed 10 billion people. We have technology that can connect anyone to anyone instantly. We have machines that can manufacture almost anything we need. Yet somehow, despite all this abundance, most people spend their lives worried about money.

Governments claim they're "out of money" for healthcare and education while sitting on the most resource-rich planet in the known universe.

This isn't a mystery. It's a feature, not a bug, of how our money system actually works. And once you understand it, you'll see why everyone arguing about economics and politics is missing the point entirely.

The Simplest Story Ever Told

An Australian writer named Larry Hannigan once wrote a simple story that explains our entire economic system (find original the document here). It goes like this:

A goldsmith named Fabian offers to solve a village's bartering problems by creating a new thing called "money." He'll make gold coins, but since he's providing this service, people will need to pay him back 105 coins for every 100 they borrow. Just 5% interest - seems fair, right?

Here's the catch that nobody notices: Fabian only creates 100 coins, but demands 105 back.

Where are the extra 5 supposed to come from? They don't exist. They were never created. Yet somehow, everyone is supposed to find them to pay back their loans.

This is the foundation of our entire economic system. Every dollar in circulation was loaned into existence by a bank, and every dollar comes with interest attached that was never created. We're all playing musical chairs with money, and there are mathematically fewer chairs than players.

The Math That Breaks Everything

Let's make this concrete. When you take out a $100,000 mortgage at 5% interest, you sign papers promising to pay back approximately $193,000 over 30 years. But here's what they don't tell you: the bank didn't loan you money that someone else deposited. They created that $100,000 out of thin air by typing numbers into a computer.

The $100,000 principal now exists in the economy. But the $93,000 in interest you owe? That was never created. It doesn't exist anywhere in the money supply.

Multiply this by every loan in the economy - mortgages, business loans, credit cards, car loans, student loans, government debt - and you realize that the entire system requires more money to be paid back than was ever created.

It's mathematically impossible for everyone to be out of debt at the same time.

This is why we need a "growing economy." Not because we need more stuff, but because we need more money to service the compound interest on money that never existed in the first place.

The Binary Consciousness Connection

Remember how we talked about binary thinking - the either/or programming that digital media hardwires into our brains? The debt-money system creates the perfect psychological environment for binary consciousness to flourish.

When you're worried about money - which most people are, most of the time - your brain defaults to survival mode. Survival mode is pure binary thinking: safe/dangerous, enough/not enough, us/them, winner/loser.

You can't think about abundance when you're programmed to experience scarcity.

This isn't an accident. We've created an economic system based on scarcity and competition on a planet of abundance and cooperation. The system literally requires most people to experience financial stress to function properly.

Why Nobody Talks About This

Here's where it gets interesting. How is it possible that something this obvious - that the whole system is based on lending money that doesn't exist and demanding back money that was never created - isn't common knowledge?

Because the people who understand the system either benefit from it or depend on it. As economist Michael Hudson notes, the financial sector has become the economy's primary parasite, extracting wealth rather than creating it.

Economic "experts" spend years learning complex theories about markets and efficiency while somehow never mentioning that the money supply itself is based on an impossible mathematical premise. It's like studying advanced physics while pretending gravity doesn't exist.

Politicians argue endlessly about tax rates and spending priorities while never questioning why governments need to borrow money that banks create out of nothing, then pay interest on it to the same banks forever.

The media focuses on inflation, unemployment, and market fluctuations - all symptoms of the debt-money system - while treating the system itself as invisible background reality.

But here's what Robert Anton Wilson would ask: Who benefits from this complexity being considered too sophisticated for regular people to understand?

The Abundance Hiding in Plain Sight

Here's what becomes obvious once you see the scam: We don't have an abundance problem, we have an accounting problem.

If there's work to be done, materials available, and people willing to work, why do we need to find money? Money isn't a thing - it's an accounting system. A way of keeping track of who did what for whom.

The only reason we can't build bridges, fix infrastructure, educate kids, or take care of sick people is because someone, somewhere, decided we're "out of money." But money is just numbers in computers. We're not going to run out of numbers.

When Australia needed to finance World War I, the head of the Commonwealth Bank, Sir Denison Miller, created £700 million out of nothing. When asked if that same amount was available for peaceful purposes, he said "Yes." Of course it was. You don't run out of accounting entries any more than you run out of inches when you measure something.

During the 2008 financial crisis, the Federal Reserve created $16 trillion out of thin air to bail out banks worldwide. Nobody asked where the money came from. They just created it because it was needed.

But when it comes to healthcare, education, or infrastructure, suddenly we're "out of money."

What You Can Do About It

So what does this mean for you, living in this system right now?

Understand the Game You're Playing: Every dollar you earn represents someone else going into debt. Every dollar you save is someone else's liability. Every dollar you pay in interest disappears from the economy forever, creating the need for someone else to borrow more just to keep the system running.

Stop Thinking the Economy is About Efficiency: It's about control. The system is working exactly as designed - to concentrate wealth and keep most people in a state of economic anxiety. Once you see this, you stop expecting it to make sense and start making strategic decisions.

Get Out of Debt However You Can: Not because debt is morally wrong, but because every payment you make to the banking system strengthens a system that's designed to extract wealth from productive people. Every dollar you don't pay in interest is a dollar that stays in the productive economy.

Support Alternatives to Debt-Money: Local currencies, credit unions, mutual aid networks, gift economies, bartering systems - anything that allows people to exchange value without enriching the debt-money system.

Stop Believing Scarcity Propaganda: When politicians say "we can't afford" healthcare, education, or infrastructure, what they really mean is "we choose not to account for this properly." The resources are there. The people are there. The need is there. We're just using an accounting system that makes abundance look like scarcity.

Recognize This as Part of the Consciousness Phase Transition: The debt-money system is one of the control mechanisms that keeps humanity trapped in binary, scarcity-based thinking. Understanding how it works is part of developing the post-binary consciousness that represents humanity's next evolutionary step.

The Deeper Pattern

The Earth plus 5% isn't just about money - it's about the mathematics of impossible systems. We've created a debt-money system that requires infinite growth on a finite planet. We've built a political system where the people who create the problems are the only ones allowed to solve them. We've developed an information system that profits from confusion and division.

All of these systems have the same structure: they promise something that's mathematically impossible, then blame individuals for the inevitable failures.

But here's the thing about phase transitions: impossible systems don't reform gradually. They collapse suddenly when enough people stop pretending they make sense.

The question isn't whether this system will end - it's whether we'll consciously create something better or just let it crash and burn.

That choice starts with seeing clearly what we're actually dealing with. Not a natural economy, but an artificial scarcity machine designed to keep us competing for something that could be abundant if we just changed the accounting.

The Earth plus 5% is a perfect metaphor for our entire moment in history: demanding more than exists, then acting surprised when the math doesn't work.

The solution isn't finding the missing 5%. It's recognizing that whoever designed the math owns the game.

And maybe it's time to stop playing.

---

"Money is just the poor man's credit card." — Marshall McLuhan

---

What's Happening: The debt-money system creates artificial scarcity on an abundant planet by requiring more money to be paid back than was ever created.

What You Can Do: Understand the impossible mathematics, get out of debt when possible, and support abundance-based alternatives to the current system.

Coming Next: "Phase Transitions: From Physics to Consciousness Evolution" - the science of transformation.

>Go to Part 7 of The Binary Trap<

---

---

Written in collaboration with Claude