In the last few years, I have been in correspondence and conversation with Josh Sidman and others following the work of Silvio Gesell. Josh, in conjunction with the Henry George School of Social Science, has organised a two hour conversation with me on 6 May 2025 at 6pm GMT (1pm New York time).
Josh Sidman sits down for a conversation with Clive Menzies. Join them live via Zoom and be part of the discussion!
Clive Menzies explores the human condition at www.outersite.org, sharing insights from years of engagement with distributed, autonomous, codependent self-organisation (DACSO). This journey took coherent shape with the Critical Thinking project (2012–2019) and continues through collaborations with diverse groups and individuals. Clive’s current focus is on rethinking value as the foundation of organisation and aligning life with the universe’s fundamental principle: love. Living and working alongside like-minded individuals who share a deep spiritual connection to conscious energy makes this way of life not just effortless, but profoundly fulfilling.
Date: Tuesday, May 6, 2025
Time: 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM ET
Location: ONLINE via Zoom
The recording is now available on Odysee and below:
Following the discussion, Alex Nikolov, with whom I work and had joined the conversation towards the end, fed back a couple of powerful observations:
- The Industrial Revolution, which unfolded over two centuries, increased productivity by hundreds of times. In contrast, the last 50 years have seen the emergence of transformative tools—such as the internet, artificial intelligence, and self-organisation—that enable us to generate, process, and distribute knowledge at scales of billions of data points per second. This leap is not merely one of productivity; it marks a profound shift in how we collaborate, organise, and solve problems collectively.
Had Silvio Gesell and his contemporaries had access to such capabilities, how might their thinking have evolved? Would this radically enhanced understanding of information flow and decentralised systems have reshaped Gesell’s already revolutionary ideas? Or would he have remained tethered to the logic of one-to-one monetary exchange—a proxy for value rather than a genuine reflection of it? In today’s interconnected world, where value creation increasingly transcends traditional economic mechanisms, it is worth questioning whether money, as we know it, remains a necessary foundation—or merely a historical constraint. - Josh expressed the view that human nature is such that moving beyond simple one-to-one monetary exchange will take hundreds of years. Yet people are already sharing content—videos, articles, podcasts, and more—on platforms like YouTube and Substack, without any prior agreement on exchange. Instead, they receive a portion of the revenue generated by the platform, based on views or engagement. However, within the flawed structure of money, those who control its issuance and flow still capture the lion’s share of real value—the knowledge, creativity, and attributes of billions of people. As revealed by the Critical Thinking project, this value is ultimately accumulated by those at the top of the pyramid of wealth and power: those who control money itself.
Josh explained these are ongoing conversations. Alex and I look forward to exploring these perspectives further with the expanding audience.