In an ecologised financial democracy, every act that harms or heals the planet would be recorded in a public ecological ledger. Pollution and extraction would register as debts to the Eco-Central Bank, while care, repair, and regeneration would generate credits. Such a system would transform money into a measure of shared responsibility, aligning finance with the cycles of life itself. The Eco-M1 currency would circulate through acts of maintenance and renewal, making care – not extraction – the foundation of value.

Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) such as the digital euro could redefine how money is created and circulated. Designed as public infrastructure, they offer a chance to embed democracy at the heart of finance. Instead of serving private intermediaries, CBDCs could grant citizens direct access to secure, transparent, and accountable monetary systems. If built with participation and inclusion in mind, digital central banking could turn monetary governance into a shared civic institution – a space where finance serves the public, not private power.

In Latin America, amid growing precariousness and existential uncertainty, financial products targeting young men are proliferating. These platforms promote a model of masculinity centered on financial risk-taking. In Argentina, this is happening in the context of acute inflation and as part of an anti-feminist backlash actively mobilised by the far-right government. We need to imagine how to counter the way this crisis – accelerated by the pandemic – is being turned into a market opportunity that sells investment tools by reaffirming a masculinity grounded in risk-taking, self-optimisation, and anti-feminism.

Today’s global monetary system revolves around the dollar and has from its inception been geared towards enabling fossil fuel supply and trade. It is vulnerable as it is an expensive way to transact payments that locks countries into dependence on the US. A truly multilateral cross-border payment system offers new opportunities to decarbonise financial flows.

Ageing populations are often framed as fiscal burdens, yet financial markets profit from turning life expectancy into a tradeable asset. Pension funds and insurers now speculate on time itself. But longevity could instead become a shared good – supported by financial architectures that circulate care and time collectively. Imagine systems that reward the extension of healthy life as a collective achievement, not a private gain. By aligning finance with the rhythms of living, we could transform longevity from a source of profit into a common resource.

The early crypto community imagined money as a digital commodity. Yet its deeper potential lies in creating peer-to-peer credit systems that treat money as a promise between equals. A truly decentralised central bank could function as a vast network of mutual IOUs – circulating trust rather than extracting profit. By seeing money as a shared infrastructure of cooperation, not speculation, we could turn finance into a living web of reciprocal credit that strengthens communities instead of dividing them.

Economic value begins with imagination, with how we decide what is worth sustaining.Today, governments rely on value-for-money metrics that turn services, communities, and places into investible assets. Yet state-led models like China’s demonstrate that investment can be justified by long-term collective benefit rather than short-term financial return. This is not about claiming those systems are better or worse, but about recognising that alternative conceptions of value exist. Bringing this perspective into the debate expands our political and economic imagination.

In a world obsessed with productivity, even our care has been commodified – branded as wellness and sold back to us. Yet beneath this, networks of mutual aid already thrive: neighbours sharing tools, friends pooling funds, strangers offering time. These quiet exchanges could form the basis of a spontaneous care-based economy. Recognising and supporting their informal circuits of generosity could turn “hustle” culture on its head, redefining value through care, reciprocity, and community rather than competition.

Financial assets have become detached from real economic life, growing faster than wages and work. To redistribute wealth meaningfully, we must challenge the inflation of asset values that underpins inequality. Deflating assets – lowering their inflated worth – would erode speculative privilege and loosen private property’s ideological grip. By reducing the financialisation of everyday life, we could redirect value towards shared infrastructures of care, housing, and sustainability. Collective wealth, not capital accumulation, would become the new foundation of prosperity.

Capitalism compounds the cumulative benefits of past injustice – an increasing ability to gain from pre-existing disparities is the specific form of historical injustice that capitalism adds to all the others. So how do we now reconcile the demand for justice with the irreversibility of time? We can't undo the past by starting over; and we can't lock in the benefits of past injustice as though acknowledging this is itself a new beginning. No, we must seek ways to harvest and redistribute the future value of past injustice so that all that bad history will not have been a waste.

Pension funds hold vast collective power, yet their investments often reinforce the very inequalities that threaten our future. A democratic reimagining of pension management would align investments with social and ecological wellbeing, not just financial returns. By linking contributions to green and sustainable projects, pension funds could act as engines of social transformation. This shift would also challenge the dominance of large asset managers, positioning pension institutions as a countervailing power in service of people and the planet.

Money touches every aspect of daily life, yet the institutions that manage it remain largely private. Treating banks as public utilities would re-anchor finance in the everyday realities of citizens. Public banking could democratise credit, fund local resilience, and ensure that financial systems serve collective needs rather than speculative gains. This shift would open a broad social dialogue on public money, challenging the dominance of private and shadow banking while restoring finance’s original purpose: to sustain, not exploit, the common good.

Silicon Valley social media platforms amplify disinformation, covertly funded climate denialism, bigotry, and mass toxicity. Cyberbullying has become a technique of authoritarian politics. As billionaire tech moguls consolidate influence, their platforms promise everyone a ‘voice’, but one filtered through a financialised reputation system that foments conflict. A different approach would treat platforms as public infrastructure. It would prioritise the repair of social ecologies, and recognise online reputation as a key terrain for shaping more democratic digital worlds.