Weaponized Harm Prevention

The End of Mafia Money

When the early Romans offered protection services for fees—demanded, of course, in Greek coins—they missed a crucial opportunity. They didn’t amass enough centralized strength and wealth to stave off destruction. So when the Gauls descended and razed Rome in 390 BCE, the message was clear: protection requires more than muscle. It requires control of value itself.

After regrouping from the trauma, Rome began to reshape its economic foundation. Around 269 BCE, they seized the Greek mints and relocated them to a sacred site—the temple of Juno Monetta, the Roman goddess of warning and protector of funds. Her name, Monetta, gives us the word "money" today (a tradition we all are part of today).

Rome now minted coins bearing her image, just as modern notes carry “In God We Trust.” With their own economy, they no longer had to accept Greek coins. They had created a closed loop.

Now, Roman taxes had to be paid in Roman money. And that meant local people had to either work for the Romans or sell goods and services to them to acquire it. Rome achieved a remarkable economic sleight of hand:

1. They charged (& enforced) taxes for protection.

2. They forced economic dependency by making their own coin the only way to pay these taxes.

This was not just protection—it was economic entrapment. A template for what would later be known as tribute, hut taxes, and eventually, monetary policy today.

Rome spread this system across the Mediterranean like wildfire. Their offer to new territories was simple: Pay us for protection—in our coins—or suffer the consequences. Soon, every village, port, and market was compelled to play by Roman monetary rules.

This was the birth of what we might call “mafia money.”

"When the mafia controls the medium of exchange, everything becomes a protection racket."

The coins—tokens once redeemable for military protection—evolved into the only legal medium of exchange. Rome enforced as much as they could at the time that every transaction required ‘money’. This wasn't just taxation; it was economic imperialism disguised as public service.

And it didn’t stop with Rome.

A Global Tradition of Coercion

Even after the Roman Empire crumbled under its own weight, the blueprint survived. The feudal lords of medieval Europe adopted it, as did the imperialists of the British Empire.

In British-occupied Kenya, for instance, the Hut Tax forced local populations to earn British pounds by working in colonial plantations. A person’s very right to exist in their hut now required payment in the colonizer’s money.

What resulted was a form of wage slavery enforced not by the lash alone, but by normalized economic necessity. The medium of exchange became the shackles.

This ancient playbook—of using currency as a tool of control—has evolved into the ‘monetary’ systems of modern nation-states. And the names may have changed, but the logic remains nearly identical. An ancient Roman would easily recognize their monetary tradition still alive and well today.

Today’s Financial Empires

Fast forward to the present, and the echoes of Juno Monetta can be heard in the marble hallways of financial giants. Take BlackRock: one of the largest asset managers on the planet—and a significant military contractor—now actively cornering the market on Bitcoin. A decentralized dream now being slowly monopolized.

It's an arms race all over again—this time, to dominate the new medium of exchange.

This isn’t about peace or cooperation. It’s a continuation of a long tradition: Weaponized Harm Prevention. Under the guise of protection, we are sold dependency.

“If you want peace, prepare for war,” said the Romans. But what they really meant was: If you want peace, make sure you own the currency you’ll need to survive it.

Where are the checks and balances in such a system? What could possibly keep this militarized currency regime in check?

Collapse seems inevitable.

And as history teaches us, after every collapse, someone will try—yet again—to invent or control a new form of money.

---

A Different Path: From Money to Meaning

Years ago, when I began creating community currencies, my goal was simple: Could local communities take charge of their own medium of exchange? Could we inoculate them from the harm of extraction and monopoly?

But over time, another question emerged:

What if money itself is the problem?

This inquiry led me deep into ancestral knowledge systems, ancient practices of Kenya, and even into the soil—to study the coordination protocols of fungal networks.

In those networks, I found something remarkable: a living system of trust and value exchange that didn’t require centralized tokens. What fungi do underground is what communities once did: pool resources and commitments, value long-term reciprocity, and manage limited resources with care and memory.

These aren’t fantasies. They’re protocols. Simple, ancient, resilient—and alive.

At Grassroots Economics, we’ve developed frameworks around these protocols—what we call Commitment Pooling—that reflect the same functions:

• Curation: Choosing what is of value.

• Valuation: Understanding what things are worth to each other.

• Limitation: Recognizing what’s enough.

• Exchange: Facilitating flow, not control.

These are the same functions that living systems—from mycorrhizal fungi to rotational labor groups—have used for millennia. They are not about control. They are about coordination.

---

The Role of Money: Seeding, Not Saving

Let me offer a crucial distinction:

Money (state currency) can be used to seed networks that don’t depend on money.

Read that again.

We’re not saying burn your money. We’re saying compost it. Seed it.

To those with resources—especially large amounts of money—this is your responsibility. You do not need to give it away and create dependency. You must seed ecosystems where trust, commitment, and mutual aid can grow.

If you hold capital today, your role is not to preserve the past—but to regenerate the future.

This isn’t only a message for the wealthy. Every one of us can begin seeding commons—through time, care, knowledge, skills, and intention.

Ubuntu, the Southern African philosophy of shared humanity, comes from Ubu-ntu—to become a person.
To become a people again, we must stop cycling through the madness of Monetta.

We must abandon the worship of weaponized harm prevention via money and return to what communities and ecosystems already know: how to thrive together without centralized control.

---

Join the Pollination Rebellion

It’s already happening.

From Kenya’s Mweria rotational labor systems to decentralized digital protocols, from neighborhood mutual aid to the commons of ancestral wisdom—we are rebuilding the mycelium of human coordination.

And guess what?

There’s no mafia at the center. No Juno Monetta. No tax collector demanding coins at sword point.

Just people. Coordinating. Trusting. Thriving.

We’re not creating a new money. We’re creating the end of money as we know it.

The tradition of dominance is long. But the tradition of reciprocity is older.

Let’s choose.

Let’s seed.

Let’s begin.