“ How can a new economic arrangement emerge in a non-coercive, democratic way? ”
The Integral Economy
Integral is a federated, post-monetary cooperative economy designed to coordinate human activity through transparent reciprocity, open design, cybernetic feedback, and participatory governance. It replaces the price system, corporate hierarchy, and political centralization with an integrated architecture modeled in the spirit of Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model.
It is not a static blueprint but an emergent seed—the more people engage it, the more capable it becomes. A small Integral community (“node”) could begin with only a handful of people performing simple mutual-aid functions in their town; or it could eventually coordinate millions regionally, taking on all the core functions of a complex modern society.
Integral emerges from this basic observation: a transitional socio-economic architecture built empirically from micro-patterns of human cooperation, unified through systems science and cybernetics.
Historical Precurors
Resource Based Economy (Fresco): Conceptualized by Jacque Fresco (The Venus Project), a Resource Based Economy (RBE) is a socio-economic system where all goods and services are available without the use of money, credit, barter, or debt. It posits that the Earth's resources are the common heritage of all humanity. RBE proposes replacing political decision-making with the intelligent management of resources via automated technology, aiming to surpass artificial scarcity through technical efficiency, thereby eliminating the structural causes of war, poverty, and crime.
Natural Law Resource Based Economy (Joseph): Peter Joseph expanded on Fresco's work by explicitly grounding the economic model in natural law and the scientific method. This framework emphasizes that economic sustainability is inextricably tied to physical laws (thermodynamics, ecological carrying capacity) rather than human-made market laws. It argues that a truly "economic" (efficient) system must mathematically calculate resource allocation based on technical efficiency and human need, functioning as a "global sanitary system" to optimize public health and ecological balance
The Global Redesign Institute (Joseph): Proposed within The Zeitgeist Movement Defined, this is a theoretical collaborative design interface and think tank meant to crowd-source the technical transition to a post-scarcity economy. It functions as a massive, open-source digital simulation—a "macro-industrial design" platform—where global data on resources and needs is aggregated to derive optimized social designs. By allowing users to virtually test and visualize how different technical configurations (like localizing food production or automating transport) would affect global efficiency and sustainability, it serves as the "design" engine for a transition, validating the feasibility of a Resource Based Economy before physical implementation.
Integral Economy (Joseph): Presented in Integral: An Introduction (2025), this is Joseph's evolution of the RBE concept into a practical transitional architecture. , Integral is a federated, post-monetary cooperative model designed to grow organically within the current system. It utilizes a digital back-end to coordinate non-market production and distribution through "transparent reciprocity," allowing small local nodes to network into larger regional systems without requiring a global revolution to initiate.
Project Cybersyn (Beer): Implemented in Chile (1971–1973) under Salvador Allende, Project Cybersyn was a pioneering attempt to manage a national economy using cybernetics rather than market prices or Soviet-style centralization. Designed by Stafford Beer, it created a decentralized "nervous system" for the economy, connecting factories to a central operations room (Opsroom) via telex machines to enable real-time decision-making. It aimed to balance local autonomy with national coordination, serving as the historical "proof of concept" for the viable system model and cybernetic economic planning.
History of Cybernetics
Viable Systems Model (Beer): Developed by cybernetician Stafford Beer, the Viable System Model (VSM) provides a blueprint for any organization to remain autonomous and adaptive ("viable") in a changing environment. It structures an organization into five recursive subsystems (Operations, Coordination, Control, Intelligence, Policy) that balance autonomy with cohesion. In the context of the Integral Economy, VSM offers the non-hierarchical "nervous system" required to coordinate complex economic activity democratically without succumbing to bureaucratic centralization.
Cybernetics (Wiener): Coined by Norbert Wiener in 1948, Cybernetics is the scientific study of "control and communication in the animal and the machine." It focuses on feedback loops—how systems use information about their past performance to correct future behavior (like a thermostat regulating temperature). In economic terms, it provides the theoretical basis for a self-regulating economy where real-time data on resource usage and demand automatically adjusts production, replacing the delayed and imprecise feedback of price signals.
Cybernetics (Plato): The term originates from the Greek kybernētēs ("steersman" or "pilot"). For Plato, this metaphor described the art of governance and navigation. Just as a pilot steers a ship through changing winds using skill and observation, a ruler steers the "ship of state" toward the good. In this context, it underscores that governance is not about the exercise of arbitrary power, but about the skilled navigation of a collective vessel toward a desired destination (stability and flourishing) using wisdom and constant correction.
The Thought of Fuller
The Design Science Revolution (Fuller): Coined by R. Buckminster Fuller, this concept calls for a fundamental shift from solving problems through political reform or ideology to solving them through anticipatory comprehensive design. It argues that social friction is often a symptom of environmental inefficiency. By applying scientific principles to the physical environment to achieve "ephemeralization" (doing much more with much less), humanity can design out the root causes of scarcity and conflict, rendering politics obsolete by solving the problems of survival at the technical level.
The World Game (Fuller): Often described as the "peaceful alternative to war games," this is a global logistics simulation proposed by Fuller. Its objective is to "make the world work, for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone." It treats the Earth as a single system, using data to model how global resources could be redistributed to meet all human needs, demonstrating that scarcity is a result of ignorance and poor distribution, not a lack of resources.
Critical Path (Fuller): Taken from the title of Fuller’s 1981 magnum opus, this refers to the vital evolutionary trajectory humanity must navigate to avoid extinction. Borrowing from project management (where the "critical path" is the sequence of stages determining the minimum time needed for an operation), Fuller mapped out the specific technological and social milestones required to transition civilization from a resource-burning, competitive system to a regenerative "Spaceship Earth." It emphasizes that we are in a "final exam" period where specific actions must be taken within a limited window to ensure survival.
Core Concepts
Systems Integration: In engineering and systems theory, this is the process of bringing together component subsystems into a single system that functions as one. In the context of the Integral Economy, it refers to the deliberate connecting of disparate economic functions—production, distribution, recycling, energy, and feedback—into a unified, interoperable network. Instead of isolated companies competing, the entire economic machinery is "integrated" to maximize total system efficiency and minimize waste, akin to how organs in a body function together for the health of the organism
Post-scarcity: This concept does not imply "infinite resources," but rather a state where the production of goods and services exceeds demand for essential needs, rendering the mechanisms of market exchange (trade, money, price) obsolete for those goods. It is achieved through high automation, renewable energy, and efficient design (emphasizing access over ownership). In a post-scarcity condition, goods become as freely available as water or information, shifting the human condition from survival-based competition to creative expression.
Post-Market & Post-Monetary Economics: This theoretical framework proposes replacing the mechanisms of exchange, trade, and price with technical calculation and systems design. It posits that modern technology allows for the direct management of production and distribution based on real-time demand and physical resource constraints, making the "invisible hand" of the market obsolete. Instead of optimizing for profit or market share, the system optimizes for technical efficiency, public health, and ecological balance, treating the economy as a unified industrial organism rather than a competitive game. Closely related to the post-market view, this concept advocates for a society that functions entirely without money, credit, or debt. It argues that money is an outdated tool for managing scarcity that acts as a barrier to distribution in an age of potential abundance. By removing the "price mechanism" and financial incentives, society transitions to a system of "strategic access" where goods and services are available to all without a price tag, coordinated by digital feedback loops rather than purchasing power.
The Five Great Transitions (TNHRM)
Here are the succinct explainers for The Five Great Transitions as outlined in The New Human Rights Movement (Joseph), which form the technical foundation of the Integral Economy.
Transition 1: Automation (Labor to Machine)
This transition advocates for the deliberate shift from human labor-for-income to machine automation wherever technically feasible. Unlike the market system, which structurally resists full automation to preserve jobs and purchasing power, this approach prioritizes technical efficiency to maximize productive capacity, reduce human drudgery, and increase safety. It aims to decouple human labor from survival, necessitating new distribution mechanisms like Universal Basic Income to compensate for the loss of traditional employment.
Transition 2: Access (Property to Strategic Access)
This shift moves society from a property/ownership model to a strategic access model. It posits that individual ownership of goods (like cars or tools) is inherently wasteful and inefficient compared to a system where goods are accessed as needed (e.g., sharing libraries). The goal is to maximize use-time efficiency—ensuring goods are used as much as possible rather than sitting dormant—thereby drastically reducing production pressure, resource overshoot, and waste while increasing the overall availability of goods for the population.
Transition 3: Open Source (Proprietary to Collaborative Commons)
This transition moves from proprietary research and data hoarding to a collaborative commons contribution model. By removing intellectual property barriers and profit motives that silo information, this shift allows for global, unobstructed collaboration on design and problem-solving. The goal is to maximize innovation by leveraging the "group mind" and "wisdom of crowds," ensuring that scientific and industrial advancements are shared freely and improved upon rapidly without artificial restriction.
Transition 4: Localization (Globalization to Networked Localization)
This shifts the industrial focus from globalization (outsourcing production for cost efficiency) to localization (producing goods as close to the point of consumption as possible). Facilitated by advanced technologies like 3D printing and vertical farming, this transition aims to maximize productive and distributive efficiency while minimizing the massive energy waste and pollution associated with global transport. It seeks to make communities as economically self-contained as possible, improving resilience and reducing reliance on distant, unstable supply chains.
Transition 5: Networked Digital Feedback (Fragmented to Integrated)
This transition replaces fragmented economic data reporting (price signals) with fully integrated, sensor-based digital systems (often called the Internet of Things). It involves creating a unified, real-time digital nervous system for the economy that tracks resources, production rates, demand, and recycling protocols. The goal is to maximize feedback efficacy, allowing for direct technical calculation of supply and demand to optimize total economic efficiency and sustainability, replacing the delayed and imprecise mechanism of the price system.