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Most people are unaware of the role usury plays in shaping not just their economic lives, but their very imagination. Usury, the charging of interest on money, was once banned by all major religions and considered the Sin of Sins, the progenitor of the seven deadly sins. Usurers were often executed. But over time, the usurers gained power over governments, largely through war debt. They did not conquer by force; they conquered by lending.
There used to be usury laws in this country to limit the amount of interest that could be charged. Texas had such a law as late as the 1980s. Those laws are gone now because the usurers have become so powerful that they dictate public policy. Studies like those by Gilens and Page have demonstrated conclusively that economic elites now determine policy outcomes, regardless of public opinion.
Our entire monetary system is built on usury. This is why the way in which money is created has been shrouded in mystery for so long. People assume the government creates it because they see the Treasury printing cash. They don’t realize that the Treasury sells that currency to the banks for their customers’ cash needs, and the government must borrow, with interest, all the money that taxes don’t cover. Money created as interest-bearing debt is a wealth extraction machine.
However, usury doesn’t just extract wealth. It extracts imagination too. Money is a cultural artifact, and it shapes how we think about power, resources, and change itself.
The Restorative Justice Framework: A Different Foundation
Before examining why coercion seems inevitable, it is important to name the alternative philosophy that guides this analysis: Restorative Justice.
Restorative Justice is not merely a criminal justice reform. It is a comprehensive framework for human relationships and social organization. Its core principles are:
Healing over punishment: The purpose of justice is to restore relationships and communities, not to exact retribution.
Accountability without coercion: Accountability means acknowledging harm and making amends, not submitting to force.
Consent over compulsion: Legitimate authority flows from the consent of those governed, not from the power to impose.
Localism and community self-determination: Decisions should be made at the lowest capable level, by those most affected.
Repairing systemic harm: Justice requires addressing the structural wounds of extraction, conquest, and dispossession.
Inclusion over exclusion: No one is left out of the circle of care and accountability.
Usury violates every one of these principles. It is punitive, coercive, hierarchical, extractive, and exclusionary. It systematically breaks relationships and communities.
The NEED Act and the Phoenix Compact are not just monetary reforms. They are the institutional expression of Restorative Justice principles applied to the economy. They seek to replace the punitive, extractive logic of debt-money with a system based on consent, abundance, and restoration.
Why Coercion Seems Inevitable
I have seen some great proposals for change lately that recognize that hopelessness is the movement’s central obstacle; that people need to see that they are the vast majority. This is sound organizing wisdom. Some emphasize local assemblies as sovereign decision-making bodies which resonates with restorative justice’s commitment to localism and community self-determination. The values, “mutual aid and fairness and truth”, are core restorative values.
I think this approach is powerful up to the point where it becomes coercive and exclusionary. That coercive turn is precisely where it breaks faith with restorative justice. Coercion, by definition, violates consent. It imposes the will of some over others. It creates new hierarchies and new forms of punishment. It is the opposite of restoration.
To be clear, not all such efforts are coercive. But the frequency with which coercion appears in proposals for change made me want to examine why people seem to think that change requires it. It is not irrational; it is just that change seems so difficult how else could it happen?
Here are the four psychological effects that make coercion seem “inevitable” in a usury-based system:
1. The Zero-Sum Scarcity Illusion
In a system where total debt (principal + interest) mathematically exceeds the total money supply created to service it, there is never enough money to pay off all debts. This creates a deep, subconscious belief that resources are fundamentally scarce and fixed.
If resources are scarce and fixed, then the only way for someone to gain is for someone else to lose.
Therefore, any change in the distribution of wealth or power must involve force. Someone must be deprived so that someone else can be provided for. So, when you propose Social Housing, debt-free money, or land-back, people instinctively ask: “Who is going to be forced to pay for this? Whose assets will be seized?”
This assumption that gain requires loss is baked into the math of usury.
Under the NEED Act, however, money is created debt-free for public purpose. You are not taking from Peter to pay for Paul’s house. You are creating new purchasing power to build Paul’s house alongside Peter’s existing wealth. The pie grows.
Restorative Justice teaches us that restoration does not require punishment. It requires repair. Debt-free money is the repair mechanism for the economic violence of usury. But because we have lived under scarcity-forcing-usury for centuries, our brains literally cannot compute this. We default to: “Someone must be coerced.”
2. The Normalization of Top-Down Hierarchy (Creditor over Debtor)
Debt is inherently coercive. A creditor holds legal power over a debtor. If you don’t pay, the sheriff shows up. This relationship is vertical, punitive, and backed by force. It is the foundational relationship of our entire economy.
Because we live under this daily, we internalize it as the natural order of human affairs. Power flows from the top down. Authority is imposed. Consent is irrelevant.
When we imagine “change,” our conditioned brains project this top-down structure onto the future. We assume that a new system must be imposed by new authorities. John Spritzler’s “Radical Democracy Plank” for the Greens or even the original Phoenix America feel “realistic” to people precisely because they replicate this top-down, coercive dynamic. We can’t imagine power flowing upward because we have never experienced it.
Restorative Justice inverts this. It insists that legitimate authority flows from the consent of the governed. It requires that those affected by decisions have a voice in making them. It is local, participatory, and voluntary.
My Phoenix Compact is an effort to give institutional form to this restorative principle. Power flows upward from local assemblies through voluntary federation. No community is compelled to join. No law is imposed without consent.
But to a brain conditioned by usury, this feels like anarchy, weakness, or fantasy because it lacks the coercive spine we’ve been taught to equate with “governance.” It asks us to trust the people, which is precisely what restorative justice demands.
3. The Illusion of Fixed Existing Assets
In a debt-money system, wealth is tied up in claims on future interest payments. Stocks, bonds, mortgages, and government debt are all claims on tomorrow’s labor, tomorrow’s rent, tomorrow’s taxes.
When anyone proposes systemic change, especially monetary reform, the entrenched elite feel (correctly) that their future interest streams are threatened. Never mind that such streams are unjust and immoral.
This creates a psychological standoff: “If we change the rules, they will fight us. Therefore, we must fight them first. We must coerce them to get our way.”
But the NEED Act doesn’t take away their existing claims. It doesn’t nationalize their bonds or confiscate their real estate. It simply says: “Going forward, new money will be created debt-free exclusively for public purpose, and we will phase out the private creation of debt-money.” It builds alongside the old system, not on top of it.
We do not seek to remove the rich from power, only to remove the power from the rich.
This is restorative, not punitive. It does not punish the wealthy; it simply stops subsidizing their privilege with public debt. It restores the balance.
Yet even that feels coercive to people because they can’t separate “loss of future privilege” from “coercive theft.” Their psychology is so locked into the debt-grid that they assume all change is a battle. Restorative Justice asks us to see it as a healing, a slow, patient process of repair.
4. The Desperation of “Growth or Die”
Usury demands perpetual exponential growth just to service the compounding interest. This creates a society that is always running on a treadmill, always desperate.
Desperate people accept authoritarian solutions. They accept coercion because “we don’t have time” for voluntary cooperation, for subsidiarity, for building consensus. The debt clock is ticking, the interest is compounding, and the crash is coming.
The NEED Act and the Phoenix Compact offer a way off the treadmill. By creating money debt-free, we no longer need perpetual growth to service interest. The economy can stabilize having eliminated the boom/bust cycle. Prices come down because they no longer contain compounded interest. We can focus on well-being rather than extraction.
But to a desperate mind, “slowing down to build consent” looks like suicide. Coercion looks “practical” because it’s fast. Voluntary federation looks “slow” because it is, but it builds something lasting, while coercion just produces a new elite.
Restorative Justice is patient. It understands that healing takes time. It does not demand instant results; it demands right process. The Phoenix Compact is designed to be built slowly, community by community, because that is the only way to build something that lasts.
Why the Phoenix Compact Is Possible Without Coercion
The Compact is not coercive because it rests on three things that the usury system destroyed and which the NEED Act restores, each of which is a direct expression of Restorative Justice principles:
Abundance, not Scarcity: With debt-free money, you can fund Social Housing, public transit, and ecological restoration without taking from anyone. The zero-sum illusion evaporates. You don’t need to force the rich to give up their assets; you just build a parallel system that doesn’t require their permission. This is restorative because it heals without punishing.
Consent, not Hierarchy: Because power flows upward from local assemblies, no community is compelled to join. This means the Compact can grow organically. It doesn’t need to conquer the old order; it can outlast it. This is slower, but it is also unstoppable because it doesn’t trigger the violent defensive reaction of the entrenched elite. This is restorative because it honors the consent of the governed.
Restoration, not Punishment: You aren’t threatening to jail bankers or confiscate corporate assets. You are simply saying: “The game will change going forward, and here is a voluntary system you can join if you want to build something better.” That is not coercion. That is offering an alternative. This is restorative because it focuses on building rather than destroying.
Coercion is a Projection
Here is the deepest layer of what I am seeing: When people insist that change must be coercive, they are projecting the violence of the current system onto the future.
The debt system is violent. Usury has been characterized as “an extraordinarily efficient form of violence by which one does the most damage with the least effort.” It dispossesses, forecloses, militarizes, and criminalizes. It extracts through force. Because we live inside this violence, we cannot imagine a system that doesn’t require force to establish.
Restorative Justice offers a different imagination. It says: violence is not the only way. Healing is possible. Consent is possible. Abundance is possible. The Phoenix Compact is grounded in these restorative principles.
It requires no initial act of violence. It just requires enough communities to say: “We choose this instead.”
That is not a fantasy. That is how lasting change has always been built.
Consider the abolition of slavery.
It was not achieved by a single act of conquest or parliamentary decree alone. It was achieved through a decades-long process of building alternative moral, economic, and political structures alongside the coercive pressure. The slave revolts, the Underground Railroad, the free Black communities, the abolitionist press, the economic arguments for free labor, these were parallel institutions that made the old system unsustainable. When the final crisis came, there was already a new society waiting to be born. The force of the Civil War broke the old order, but it was the alternatives already built that shaped what rose from it. The restorative work, repairing the harms of slavery, continues to this day and is a central goal of the Restorative Justice framework.
The same is true of the labor movement. It did not seize power by force. It built unions, mutual aid societies, cooperative enterprises, and political organizations, parallel structures that gave workers power without having to conquer the state. The victories came when those structures made the old system unworkable.
The civil rights movement built parallel institutions, churches, freedom schools, community organizations, alternative media, that sustained the movement through decades of struggle. The force of the state was met with the moral force of a community that had already built a new social reality.
In each case, the new society was not established by force. It was made possible by building alternatives that outlasted the old order.
But Isn’t Opposition to Coercion Just Defending the Status Quo?
This is the most common objection I hear. When I argue that change does not require coercion, people ask: “Are you just defending the status quo? Are you protecting the wealthy from having their assets seized?”
It is a fair question. We have been conditioned to believe that meaningful change requires force. We are told that the powerful will never give up their privilege voluntarily. We point to history, the Civil War, the labor movement, the suffragettes, the civil rights movement, and conclude that coercion is the only language the powerful understand.
I want to argue the opposite.
My opposition to coercion is not a defense of the status quo. It is a rejection of the status quo’s methodology. The status quo is already coercive. Debt is enforced by sheriffs. Evictions are enforced by police. The military protects corporate interests abroad. The system is built on force.
Using the methods of the oppressor simply produces a new oppressor. If we seize power by force, we become the new elite. We recreate the hierarchy. We inherit the trauma. We project the violence of the old system onto the future and call it change.
Consider the history people cite. The Civil War ended slavery, but it took a century of non-coercive organizing, the Underground Railroad, free Black communities, abolitionist press, mutual aid societies, to build the moral and social foundation that made emancipation possible. The force won the war. The parallel institutions won the peace.
The labor movement did not seize power by force. It built unions, mutual aid societies, cooperative enterprises, and political organizations, parallel structures that gave workers power without having to conquer the state. The victories came when those structures made the old system unworkable.
The civil rights movement built parallel institutions, churches, freedom schools, community organizations, alternative media, that sustained the movement through decades of struggle. The force of the state was met with the moral force of a community that had already built a new social reality.
In each case, the new society was not established by force. It was made possible by building alternatives that outlasted the old order.
What About “Sack the Cap”?
Someone might object: “You said you support ‘Sack the Cap’, and making the wealthy pay their full share of Social Security. Isn’t that coercion?”
Yes, it is. And I support it.
But there is a difference between democratic, legislative coercion and top-down revolutionary coercion.
“Sack the Cap” is a democratic act. It is a legislative adjustment to a tax code that operates within the existing framework. It is not seizing power. It is not overthrowing the system by force. It is a reform, a necessary and just one, but it is not a replacement.
The NEED Act is the replacement. It doesn’t just redistribute the proceeds of extraction. It stops the extraction at its source. It renders “Sack the Cap” partly irrelevant because it creates a funding mechanism that doesn’t depend on taxing the wealthy at all.
My opposition to coercion is not an opposition to democratic taxation. It is an opposition to revolutionary seizures, forced constitutional impositions, and the belief that the only path forward is to become the new oppressor.
The Core Distinction
Here is the distinction that matters:
Coercion as violence: I oppose seizing property, jailing bankers without due process, or forcing communities into a new constitution against their will. This is the methodology of the old order, not the foundation of the new.
Coercion as democratic legislation: I support laws passed through legitimate democratic processes, including tax reform, “Sack the Cap,” and other measures that redistribute wealth within the existing framework.
Coercion as building parallel systems: This is not coercion at all. It is simply saying: “We are building something better alongside the old system. You are welcome to join. If you don’t, you will eventually find yourself irrelevant.”
The Choice Is Not Between Coercion and Fantasy
The choice is not between coercion and doing nothing.
The choice is between:
Coercion, which is fast, violent, and produces a new elite within a generation.
Building, which is slow, patient, and produces something durable.
When you build alongside the old order, you don’t have to conquer it. You just have to outlast it. You don’t have to fight the wealthy. You just have to make their privilege irrelevant by building a system that doesn’t require their permission.
The Phoenix Compact is not a plan for revolution. It is a plan for liberation, a way to free ourselves from the psychological grip of usury, from the zero-sum illusion, from the assumption that someone must lose for someone to win
The Choice
Usury conditions us to think that only coercion works. It tells us that power must be taken by force because resources are fixed, authority must be top-down, and time is running out. But usury is a lie. And when you know the lie, you can stop believing it.
Restorative Justice offers a different path. It asks us to trust the people, to build consent, to heal rather than punish, to create abundance rather than fight over scarcity.
The choice is not between coercion and fantasy. The choice is between coercion and building; slowly, patiently, voluntarily, a new world alongside the old one, until the old one becomes irrelevant.
The Phoenix Compact is the constitutional expression of Restorative Justice principles, and the NEED Act as the monetary mechanism that makes it possible.
That is the work. That is the Phoenix Compact. That is the path forward. It is the institutional expression of Restorative Justice applied to the economy, to governance, and to our relationship with each other and the Earth.