Thank you for the 80+ folks who came for this chill hangout—it was nice to see what came out and let the conversation flow.
Because this conversation was so wide-ranging, it’s a good contender to send through my AI system, Lizzy, so I’ll do that soon. In the meantime, here’s the full summary of the pathway and blueprint for transitioning off money that she delivered after my prompt (nee rant!).
🌟 Transitioning Off Money: A Pathway 🌟
1️⃣ Anchor in Relationship, Not Transaction
Before we can remove money, people need to remember how to trust. Money is a prosthetic for broken trust. So we begin by restoring local, transparent relationships of mutuality:
• neighborhood skill shares
• local food co-ops
• childcare circles
• community repair days
• health-sharing circles
👉 This rebuilds the sense that “we have each other,” not “we need to buy each other.”
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2️⃣ Revalue What Is Truly Valuable
Shift the metric of “worth” away from price and toward contribution, presence, and stewardship.
• honor caregiving
• honor art
• honor elders
• honor traditional knowledge
• restore social wealth as primary wealth
👉 If the community sees these as wealth, they will naturally flow resources to them — even outside money.
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3️⃣ Prototype Gift Economy Nodes
Create local or even online circles that explicitly remove price tags.
• community fridges
• free markets
• pay-what-you-can or no-pay healing circles
• no-questions-asked material exchanges
• creative “gift boards”
👉 These are training wheels for a moneyless society, letting people remember how to give and receive without a price.
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4️⃣ Use Money Strategically to Dismantle Money
In the meantime, yes, we still live in a moneyed world. Lorenzo is wise:
use money strategically to buy time, land, materials, legal defense — but keep investing it to build the next system.
• fund land trusts
• buy back water rights
• seed mutual aid
• protect land defenders
• develop tech for resource sharing
👉 “Use money to build the moneyless.”
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5️⃣ Normalize Abundance Thinking
Everywhere you go, talk about:
• sufficiency
• regenerative cycles
• infinite flow
• “there is enough”
• non-hoarding
👉 This is the spiritual piece. Money will dissolve faster when people no longer believe in lack. That takes cultural rewiring, but it is critical.
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6️⃣ Celebrate Defectors from Empire
Every time someone opts out of extraction — amplify them. Celebrate them. Tell their stories.
This creates social momentum and models the path for others.
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🌊 And then?
As enough nodes link up — local gift economies, resource commons, shared stewardship networks — the money story loses its hold. People will still trade value, but not money. They will trade trust. They will trade relationship. They will trade soul.
And that is unstoppable.
🌟 NOVA GAIA TRANSITION BLUEPRINT 🌟
“From money to a gift economy”
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1️⃣ Remembrance: Plant the Story
• share the message “Money is a story”
• teach its origins as debt, empire, colonialism
• revive older ways: potlatch, gifting circles, kin networks
• use podcasts, gatherings, even murals to retell the true story of human reciprocity
👉 the mind must change before the system does
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2️⃣ Prototype: Build Gift Nodes
• establish free fridges
• set up local barter / swap boards
• launch “pay what you can / pay nothing” skill shares
• hold regular gift circles
• experiment with community land cooperatives
👉 think of these as “transition pilots” that teach people to trust again
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3️⃣ Parallel Pathways: Use Money to Seed the Next
• funnel any current money into collective assets (land, water, seed banks, tools)
• buy legal protections for commons
• invest in open-source technologies for sharing
• fund community defense
• seed mutual aid pods
👉 you’re strategically using the dying system to build the new
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4️⃣ Restore Social Wealth
• value caregiving, parenting, tending, emotional labor
• track contributions instead of “wages”
• highlight these stories on every platform
• honor elders and youth equally
• create “social wealth” ceremonies to recognize contributions
👉 shift what is seen as wealth
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5️⃣ Train for Abundance
• offer workshops on “Sufficiency”
• teach regenerative thinking (nature always provides)
• facilitate trauma healing around scarcity
• name and celebrate enoughness
• demonstrate circular flows (like permaculture)
👉 no more lack programming — this is key for detaching from money
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6️⃣ Connect the Nodes
• link local groups into regional gift webs
• coordinate open-source software for sharing tools, skills, and resources
• hold cross-community assemblies to share learnings
• encourage overlapping membership between gift circles
👉 no one node can hold it alone — the net must weave
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7️⃣ Celebrate & Amplify
• tell the stories of who is defecting from money
• lift up voices of those thriving in gift-based systems
• host “money funerals” to mark milestones of letting go
• highlight the healers, farmers, artists modeling reciprocity
• invite influencers and artists to join the movement with real accountability
👉 make giving sexy, normal, unstoppable
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8️⃣ Step Back, Let It Breathe
• release control
• trust organic emergence
• keep the field clear of coercion or shame
• rest in the knowing: once people remember, they will never forget
👉 this is about the field doing its sorting, not you doing its forcing
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🌊 IN ESSENCE
✅ money is a prosthetic for trust
✅ we restore trust
✅ we restore relationship
✅ we restore abundance
✅ money naturally dissolves
Get full access to Dr Meghan Roekle at megroekle.substack.com/subscribe
