
ere nobody lives be…ng people, things, and abilities with each other is a daily, simple, constant economic task. People need places to live, so people have to be matched with houses. The economy is the way they get matched. In the current, money-based, market economy, money determines a match, and under this system the matching is often incomplete. There are plenty of empty houses where nobody lives because they’re being used merely as investment…
… alone. As the saying goes, it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. But that very difficulty proves Heidenreich’s main point: We have to imagine what may sound like wild possibilities now in order to steer the future before it’s upon us. Getting rid of money could lead to what he calls a “leftist utopia” of equal distribution — or it could enable mass surveillance and algorithmic control on a whole new scale. Faced with the second option, Heidenreich says, we have no choice but to try to envision the first.