Most conversations about building a new economy begin with a familiar question: how do we move beyond endless economic growth?
For Professor Anitra Nelson, that’s only the beginning.
After decades of research into ecological economics, degrowth and post-capitalist futures, Nelson argues that if we’re serious about creating a just and sustainable society, we need to ask an even more fundamental question: what if money itself is part of the problem?
It’s an idea that sounds radical at first. Yet, as she explains in her latest conversation on Voices of the New Economy, questioning money opens the door to reimagining everything from poverty and work to democracy and community.
When Growth Isn’t Solving Poverty
For generations, governments and international institutions have largely operated on a simple assumption: grow the economy and poverty will gradually disappear.
The logic is familiar. More investment creates more jobs. More jobs generate higher incomes. Higher incomes improve living standards.
Yet despite decades of economic growth, billions of people still struggle to meet their basic needs. At the same time, ecological crises continue to deepen, and wealth has become increasingly concentrated among a relatively small number of people.
Nelson argues that this isn’t an unfortunate side effect of the current economic system—it reflects how the system is designed. Capitalism, she says, revolves around the principle of money making more money. Investment seeks continual financial returns, creating structural pressure for perpetual growth, regardless of ecological limits or whether people’s fundamental needs are being met.
What Is Money Really Measuring?
One of the questions that has driven Nelson’s research throughout her career is deceptively simple.
What exactly does money measure?
Markets assign prices to everything from housing and food to forests and healthcare. Yet many of the things we value most—healthy ecosystems, caring relationships, cultural knowledge, community trust—cannot be adequately captured by monetary value.
Ecological economics emerged partly from this realisation. Rather than treating the economy as separate from nature, ecological economists recognise that all economic activity depends upon living systems with finite ecological limits.
If the economy exists to meet human needs within those limits, then measuring success purely through financial growth becomes increasingly difficult to justify.
A World Beyond Money?
Perhaps Nelson’s most provocative idea is that a genuinely post-capitalist society may eventually need to move beyond money altogether.
She acknowledges that this sounds confronting. Most of us have never experienced a society organised any other way.
Yet communities already exist that rely far less on money than mainstream society. Nelson points to Twin Oaks, an intentional community in the United States where members collectively organise work, share resources, meet most of their everyday needs together and use only small amounts of money for goods they cannot produce themselves.
The significance isn’t simply that people use less money.
It’s that they collectively decide what counts as valuable work, share responsibilities across the community and organise production around meeting needs rather than generating profit.
Rather than asking whether a task is financially rewarding, the question becomes whether it contributes to the wellbeing of the community.
A New Economy for Eradicating Poverty
Alongside her work on non-monetary futures, Nelson has recently contributed to an ambitious international initiative that could reshape how governments think about poverty.
The New Economies for Eradicating Poverty (NEEP) initiative, led by former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights Olivier De Schutter, begins by challenging another deeply embedded assumption.
Poverty is not simply the absence of income.
Research informing the initiative found that many people experiencing poverty describe something much deeper: a loss of power, dignity, agency and belonging. Poverty often means feeling excluded from decisions that affect your life and being unable to influence the systems around you.
If that’s true, then increasing GDP alone cannot eradicate poverty.
Instead, NEEP proposes a comprehensive roadmap built around democratic participation, economic democracy, universal basic services, workplace empowerment, stronger public institutions and ecological sustainability.
The aim is not simply to increase incomes, but to build economies that genuinely enable people to flourish.
Meeting Human Needs Within Planetary Boundaries
One of the strengths of the NEEP framework is that it refuses to treat social justice and environmental sustainability as competing priorities.
Too often public debate frames these goals as a trade-off: either we protect the environment or we reduce poverty.
Nelson argues this is a false choice.
An economy organised around meeting everyone’s needs rather than maximising consumption would naturally reduce unnecessary production while improving people’s quality of life. Cooperative housing, shared services, workplace democracy, stronger public services and local food systems can simultaneously reduce environmental pressures while increasing social wellbeing.
Instead of producing ever-growing quantities of luxury goods, societies could focus on ensuring everyone has secure housing, nutritious food, meaningful work, healthcare and thriving communities.
Hope Through Imagination
Perhaps the most inspiring part of Nelson’s perspective isn’t any particular policy proposal.
It’s her refusal to accept that today’s economic arrangements are inevitable.
Economic systems are human creations. They have changed throughout history, and they can change again.
Whether readers ultimately agree with a future beyond money or not, Nelson’s work invites us to think more deeply about the purpose of the economy itself.
Is it designed to maximise financial returns?
Or is it meant to help people live good lives while caring for the living systems that make those lives possible?
As ecological and social challenges continue to intensify, those questions may become increasingly difficult to avoid.
Perhaps imagining entirely different futures isn’t unrealistic after all. It may be one of the most practical things we can do.
