Qualified Money—A Better Financial System for the Future

Abstract

Over millennia, people have seen the financial system collapse again and again. It is, therefore, time to re-invent money and the financial system altogether in order to make them fit for the complex world of today. Here, it is described how the idea for a new socio-ecological finance system came about. Three main innovations are proposed: (1) a particular combination of cash and electronic money, which promotes electronic transactions, while preserving privacy, where it is justified and needed; (2) money that has additional qualifiers such as reputation, which may depend on the geographic region, the exchange history, or other variables; (3) multidimensional money, which is better suited to manage complex systems such as our economy, and enables (the design of) self-organizing systems with favorable properties, e.g., economic systems that promote a co-evolutionary processes toward a circular economy.