Moneyless.org is a social and experimental online project by Robino and Guaka about money and the disposal of that. The goal is to provide more creative ways to reduce the influence of money on daily life. It's also a project to have fun, to express our creativity and do something cool. Moneyless.org was originally started as the Dutch website Geldloos.nl and now covers 7 languages, including Spanish.
The idea to start a website that is centered around not using money, comes straight from the experience of Robin while living without using money consciously, while traveling and while living in the nomadic-community house (nomadbase) Casa Robino in Amsterdam.
No money
Having no money makes life in our society hard. At first sight at least. It can be solution as well. It's challenging you to come up with new ways to satisfy your needs. Although having no money is often experienced as negative it can also be a positive thing.
Our society is based on the money economy: all transactions are monetary. But does it apply to everything? No! The most beautiful things in life are free. And above all: there are alternative ways to get food, even if you don't have money. And even if you are pregnant without money you can raise your baby in a nice and beautiful way.
Many people immediately think about borrowing money when their money is all spent. Some even borrow money without any regular income. Everyone can make their own choice, but here on Moneyless you will mainly find a lot of tips about how to get around for free.
Another alternative is bartering. There are many people who live without money, who made a conscious choice to give up cash and other forms of currency. They consciously don't have money, some even live stateless. Some satisfy their needs by exchanging services, others prefer to think of doing it pay-it-forward style. Often this is an inspiration to people who involuntarily don't have money. In other words: how to be rich without money.
If living without money is too radical for you, you can also use the tips on this website to save some money.
Life beyond money
Moneyless.org is especially about ways to live with less or even completely without money. With Moneyless we want to draw attention to alternative ways to organize society and the economy in a bottom-up, sometimes peer-to-peer way. Ways that are especially based on sharing and giving, not necessarily on money and profit. Apart from that there's also attention to bartering.
Of course Moneyless just didn't appear out of thin air. From his studies of political science and journalism Robin has learned a lot of about topics such as the role of money and power structures in society. He's also always been interested in social transformation, politics and economy. This is also how he met Guaka in 2003, on Indymedia, IRC and Wikipedia. Guaka has been active in building websites such as CouchSurfing, Hitchwiki and Trashwiki. We both think a world without money is possible as soon as we organize ourselves in a way that makes money superfluous.
Money corrupts? Or how we embrace the paradoxes of life
Nevertheless the dynamic duo is not radically opposed against the use of money. On the contrary, we understand why money is around and why we're so dependent on it. The lack of dogmatism is apparent from the acceptance of advertising on this website. We use also this website to actually make money in order to sustain our subversion attempts on a wider scale.
For example, through search engine optimization we also consciously attract people who do not have money, people who think they need money in order to live or even people who are looking for ways to borrow money.
With Moneyless we want to show these visitors that there are also different ways to solve money problems, much better than quickly borrowing money. For example by consuming less, saving money and by changing one's mindset. Though, if people are still seduced and want to borrow money, we will get a bit of money for this.
So far, this has been supporting our families financially while being able to spread post-consumer propaganda. The bigger plan is to feed the money back into cool projects such as the lovely Wikis. If our plan works out very well, we want to use some of this money to support more projects that we love and that are aimed at bringing about more freedom from money.
It might sound like a paradox. Making money for Moneyless.org. For a while I've lived and especially traveled without money. I like saving money and I really hate advertising. Still, on Kasper's advice I've chosen for this. Consider it a subversion.
Through search engines a lot more visitors arrive at Moneyless. They're looking for ways to save, borrow and earn online money, or to become rich without money. Thanks to a good search engine optimization strategy they also arrive at Moneyless.org and with that they get in touch with other types of articles, as well as ways to kick the money addiction. At the same time this commercial stuff also creates some extra income for Moneyless. With this extra income there's more time to write and to create more subversive products.
Main topics
Since 2015 we're slowly moving towards dividing the website into the following different topics:
Be free
Finally Moneyless is also a tool for people who want to act and live more consciously. But what are the things you can do as a person to be freer? Money is something you definitely do not need. Freedom lives in yourself. It comes from the inside. Even when we think money provides us freedom, we're most often just caught by money.
Whichever way things in society have been conditioned, including our own existence, in the end we make our own choices. And whenever you make a choice, you choose something. If you want a freer life, Moneyless can provide you many tips to help you with your choices.
You're welcome to write to us. If you're not a spammer we'll probably get back to you at some point in the future.
Write for Moneyless
You are very welcome to write for Moneyless.
