The two party government model has been replaced, entirely. Countries are self-governed by networks of decentralised community leaders, who lead for a maximum of 3 x two year terms and who are judged on their abilities to deliver on the longterm community plans and metrics that look to the next 10 years at a minimum. Short-term thinking is as outdated as workaholism, and climate sceptics. It is frowned upon and disincentivized amongst community groups, in a way that only the peer pressure of whole civilizations can invite. 

Self-governed community groups operate on a national, local and community level . . . a complex adaptive system of community governing, shared objectives and common goals. This common collective leadership model is comprised of experts . . . in environment, in climate, in oceanography, in technology, anthropology, primary food production . . with a large proportion of each group made up of philosophers and futurists, who lead the discussions toward a long view. The Australian Governments’ 2020 decision to defund liberal arts degrees and discourage philosophy, critical thought and reasoning, is held up as one of the great failures of the old model of governing. It’s a dinner party joke at best, these days . . .

Fast food companies are as rare as cigarette manufacturers; community collectives have made it almost impossible to operate. Instead we see a return to local food chains and distribution, in line with the new community policies of 'just in time' and 'just enough'. Longevity has replaced the term 'health'; permanently. Everybody is 'healthy', it's no longer a hope or a goal, it's simply a fact. Community collectives demand it. There is no health insurance, that industry died years ago, along with car insurance. In fact all industries that prey on the vulnerabilities of people (and work against solving these crisis at a root level) are history. All toilets are fitted with life-flow analysers which identify critical longevity biomarkers and determine the contents of your just-in-time longevity shot or longshot for short. These are free and available to all, at every community station throughout the country. Like petrol used to be. 

The governing world futures bodies have stopped food trade between countries; which disrupted global markets for some time but recovery is imminent. Community collectives oversee food strategies at a local level now. Foodscapers have replaced landscapers as a leading light in each community. Each resident is given a primary growth plan according to the location of their housing plot, and food strategy has become one of the most important functions of community collectives . . determining what a community produces, how it will be maintained and distributed amongst community members. The best food plots are not governed by price or view from the land, but rather by the willingness, capability and expertise of the potential owner to manage that critical community resource, the lifeblood of the community. In the early 2030s there was food taxes not just on alcohol and nicotine, but antibiotic meats, food imports and sugar. That also fell away as communities turned inward and reshaped the monocrop culture of local farming and created new biodiversity laws, reinstating traditional practices of wildfire farming to regenerate the land. Meat is a distant memory, pushed out by both foodscapers and the early community collectives. Most eat vegetarian, although veganism is also on the rise.

Elders talk about the covid pandemic and the hoarding of foodstuffs as folklore. All food today, is just in time, and just enough. These are the community mantras which shape our ways of being. Community markets and food swaps are a primary connection point. Where intergenerational house members meet to gather what they need, and share what they have. Aged care has also fallen by the wayside, as housing development rules established in the 2040s ensure that no residential living plot holds less than 10 people, with community tax incentives beyond 10 inhabitants. Families live together, often with two or three generations of family members. Privacy has been reduced not because of data mining, but because many are living in closer proximity than ever before and it is impossible to secure life's necessities without participation in local community.

The once tall and proud cities have been replaced with intense greening and conscious community camps, which serve as central locations for passing communities to plug into. Housing is affordable and stable, but is for many, mobile. People move where the work is, which can depend as much on the seasons as it does on commerce. The role of Intentional Community Builder operating within a community group both online and off, is one of the most sought after positions in the community collective. The role overseas the interaction between community groups, the needs-identification, development and distributive management practices of intergenerational health, education and environmental nodes . . and the way in which the communities working within these nodes, enable more intentional ways of living, and connecting.

Work is still global and technology abundant, but progress is a dirty word. We talk about shared growth, deeper connections, civilian leadership and conscious community. After the global collapse of health systems in the developed world, combined with the skyrocketing death rate of many city workers throughout the 2040s, work has taken its rightful place as a structured contribution channel to community. No more, no less. Boundaries represent a sense of self and community value; a strength not a weakness. Work success is shared. In the 2020s humans accepted an absurd reliance on algorithmic search in a landscape of intense disinformation and synthetic media; which spawned an information provenance movement with authorship verification and authenticity at its core. The Web3 approach which reached maturation in 2025, leveraged blockchain to secure information provenance by promoting decentralization, immutability, transparency, and trust. Finally humans (nobody says "users" anymore . . that means something different now)  maintain ownership and privacy of their data while benefiting from a distributed and secure network. The web3 attribution protocols did more than share kudos and credit; their economic graphs facilitated a new economic network exchange of generous contribution, attribution and compensation. These new economic and social systems of information provenance moved beyond economic compensation for shared work or borrowed ideas, they allowed us to see where each other's ideas and work intersected (both human and AI-generated), and to build on those ideas in the most generous way possible. Publicly, and with acknowledgement. Which in turn started a new knowledge force in motion; foodscapers began to share crop data from their communities at a global level and we witnessed the demise of internet 'noise' as these attribution networks intentionally began to drive economic and reputational value to the creators of important or seminal works in each discipline or area. The resulting cultural impact was a global shift in attention, value and effort toward a new frame . . the endgame was a greater focus on knowledge and community-enablers creating high quality work, critical thinking contributions, which via web3 protocols, were advantaged by continued circulation and peer acknowledgement within a distributed network. By 2050 we see the fruits of that shift, in the emerging global collective and individual ledgers of deep human work. Proving the web3 truth that many resisted in 2024, that what’s good for the people (the creators of value) is good for the rest of us. Many initially called it socialism in community clothing, but that time has passed and people have moved on. Work is seen as an 'activity' not an identity, people measure each other through contribution and community capital. The 'P' word has become a reminder, of our historical failure to act. 

There is still no general AI; but rather AI-enabled workflows which are sophisticated and have replaced many of the mundane activities required to keep the engine going and the lights on. Employment has been split into two schools - a technology-enabled workforce and a community-enabling workforce and there is no hierarchy between the two. It has been widely acknowledged that with such variations in human ability and spirit, that both work streams require an enormous amount of skill, knowledge and ability. Both are equally valuable. We have finally accepted that technology is not neutral and each teachnology bears the fingerprint and worldviews of its creator. In response to this newfound acceptance, institutional bodies like the FDA in the United States and PBS in Australia, have been supplemented with branches of what is now called the THBAG in every country - The Technology Human Balance Assessment Group. These assessment collectives operate in every nation; and technology must pass through their risk-value-assessment before launching onto any open market. This group also oversees new technology patents, emerging systems of technology governance and responsibility. All students engage with both technology-enabled work and community-enabling work education streams, and specialise toward the end of their study. But lifelong learning and development is a part of life for all humans. The tech driven education streams have centralised their pedagogical content and support mechanisms after the 2042 global education reforms. Education leaders and facilitators have been split into coaches and masters of domain knowledge, which is shared amongst nations and available online to all. Community-enabling education happens in person, both within students' local communities and abroad. It's goal is to help students find their place in the world through purposeful work and radical community contribution. 

Money doesn't hold the same value it once did. It is a method for exchange, little more. Community members cannot pay their way out of community responsibility and involvement. Community contracts demand participation; from every member. To be part of a community, means to participate. A posture that found its early home in the web3 movement, and grew to become a guiding social contract. Where once older generations fought this intensely, proclaiming the end of global competitiveness and forward momentum (we dare not use the 'P' word); the time of commercial and ethical gaslighting has passed and minds are changed . . . High income (and taxes) is no longer required to protect ourselves against a politically-driven stagnating education and healthcare system, nor do we require a department of loneliness or aged care . . people have begun to recalibrate their ideas about what and how much is required to live a meaningful life. There is a new collective common now; its both local and global and it operates from a posture of contribution and connection. The people who are capable of more .  . do. Despite the burden. Because not everyone can. The ability to do more is no longer a responsibility or an obligation, it is a gift. A privilege. Which is why the old politics of power and social welfare faded easily into irrelevance. In the early 2030s, Razor's law began to emerge as a common posture, . . the wicked crisis of obesity, loneliness and climate began to remodel themselves as the complex systems of humanity began to spin in a new direction, at a new pace, iterating always. . away from history.

Identity belongs to community and cannot be separated from it. Just as you cannot take proximity out of community, nor can you separate a person entirely, from their sense of place. First Nations elders across the world emerged as global light . .  helping the world understand the critical importance of place. People no longer ask 'what do you do?', nor do they ask 'where do you live?' which holds the historical connotations of social class or market status. Now people ask . . . where are you from and who are you from? A person's community gives the most telling marker, as to the nature of their connection with the world and how they experience it. Questions on census about religion or marital status have been replaced with the identification of indigenous land and community network. There is a prevailing understanding that even if we move; we still belong to the place in which we were born and raised. The individualistic libertarian experiments like seasteading and commerce-driven global migration that spread momentarily in the 2030s are but a distant memory.

In this age at this time, we now know . . . that food cannot be separated from place. Just as place cannot be separated from people. We know that people matter, and that shared community and a collective sense of self, is the lifeblood of longevity and contentment. And progress is a dirty word.