How do we maximize the well-being of everybody within planetary boundaries?

Jon Sundell

Author

For the past fifteen years, Jon Sundell has been designing the ideal political and economic system with a simple goal: to maximize human well-being. By approaching the challenge from the perspective of natural and formal sciences, the only limits of the proposal are set by physical reality. The result is a thoroughly original vision that differs from all systems and ideologies that have come before. Coexist lays out Jon’s vision in clear and simple terms that can be understood by everybody with a high school education.

Born and raised in Helsinki, Finland, Jon is a inventor, systems thinker and author.

A level playing field

If you and everybody else would have to play the game of life with one set of rules, what rules would produce the best outcome for everybody?

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Democracy

How can we make better decisions in large organisations? How can we distribute power to citizens while still ensuring that decisions are made by experts? Increasing our collective intelligence plays a vital role in our quest to maximize human well-being. Digital democracy gives us a whole range of new tools for better self-governance.

Markets

How do we financially incentivize people to act in the interest of their communities? How do we impose a fine for antisocial behavior? Perhaps the best way to maximize human well-being is by building a pro-social marketplace that rewards the creation of well-being for others. Without this fundamental change, we will continue to reward selfish behavior that undermines our collective well-being.

Monetary system

In a just society, how should money be created and for whom? What fundamental source of value should our money be based on? In our quest to create an abundant world on a finite planet, the way we conceive of our monetary system will have an enormous impact on the level of well-being we can guarantee everybody.

Cultural evolution

What if the solutions we seek to our existential problems cannot be found within the current economic or political system? What if science is our best and only way out of our predicament? To solve our problems, we need a managed process of cultural evolution. Our political and economic institutions are merely tools and it is time we replaced them with better ones.