Lietaer: Taxes versus contributions

And with the kind of issues that we're dealing with today, an ageing society, how will you take care of that? If you think in the conventional way, there are only two solution. Let's take the economic effects and the financial effects of ageing. The Anglo-Saxon solution, the Americans and the English, is we have a pie of a certain size, more people need to eat from it, fine, we cut the slices smaller and smaller. And maybe that way they die quicker, which is one way of solving the problem. The second solution, let’s call it the Germanic one, or the Scandinavian one, is a promise is a promise, let's go bankrupt. That's it. Tell me another solution. The third solution is the one the Japanese invented already. You create another medium of exchange that actually fills in some of the issues. And there's still a big role... In Japan, if an elderly person breaks her leg, they're being paid in national currency by the insurance, no problem, so it's like here. But they have a second option. That person can go home much faster, because in the neighbourhood there are other people, neighbours, that will help with their shopping, with the food preparation. That's not covered by national healthcare. There's a community that's ready to act. So it's a completely different game. That's what I see as a possibility. We have some huge possibilities. And these things are now technologically so easy. In other words... The payment issue, the future is going to be mobile phones. Everybody knows it. There are more mobile phones than bank accounts by a factor of three on the planet, so why should we not use the mobile phone as a payment system for doing those things? So the technology is there. We're ready to use it.