The founding question

If you could acquire anything for free, such as; food, clothing, accommodation, needful things etc, with the only limitation being that everything must also be climate friendly – would you also work for free?

Imagine if everyone could have everything for free. Not just you, but your neighbour, people you know and people you do not know. Children and old people. Even the homeless people. Imagine how easy life would be if it were all for free.

With the "climate friendly" aspect, it means that the food you eat must be sustainable. The clothes you wear must be produced in a manner that is sustainable. All your waste must be sustainably renewable or sustainably disposed of. The transportation you use must be environmentally friendly.

There is no other added catch…

So far, I have asked hundreds of people. I have asked people of different ethnic backgrounds, of varying religious beliefs, of varying age and from both sexes. I have asked working class people, I have asked white collar people, I have asked blue collar people, people of the cloth, people that are young and people that are old. Of all the people I have asked, so far, 5 would not work. The remaining 99% would work for free!

Why? Why do people still want to work for free? Well, I asked everyone this too. And most answered very similarly. People need to feel needed. People need to feel they are contributing. People need social contact. The standard reply was – “well, what else am I going to do?” This also reminds me of a passage from the book “Dr Glass” by Hjalmar Söderberg (1905). Roughly translated “One wants to be loved, in lack thereof adored, in lack thereof feared, in lack thereof hated and despised. One wants to invoke people with any kind of feeling. The sole shivers to the emptiness and wants human contact at any cost”. I believe this is the reason why the clearly financially independent and secure keep working, even when they do not have to. We, as a species, need this. This, I believe, is also the reason behind the saying that money will not make you happy.