Foundations of a Post-Currency Socioeconomic System

If currency-based systems structurally produce oligarchy, what does a viable alternative actually look like? This research develops a formal, empirically grounded framework for a socioeconomic system in which allocation is governed by need-based signaling, feedback-controlled production, and distributed coordination — without currency as a coordination mechanism.

The framework draws on anthropological evidence from egalitarian societies (San, Mbendjele, Agta), cybernetic systems theory, commons governance research, and distributed systems architecture. It demonstrates that non-price coordination is not only historically grounded but structurally definable, and introduces a scalable architecture — the New World Web — that enables real-time coordination at any population scale.

This work is presented in two versions, each covering the same system from different angles.

What the framework establishes

• Allocation without price: Need-based signaling with feedback-controlled production can achieve supply–demand convergence without currency as a coordination mechanism.
• Empirical grounding: The system's core properties — minimal accumulation, distributed access, active dominance suppression — correspond to structures observed in egalitarian societies that have been stable for millennia.
• Scalability: A polycentric modular architecture enables coordination at large population scales through federation of semi-autonomous units, not centralization.
• Failure resilience: The framework incorporates detection, containment, correction, and structural redesign mechanisms for demand distortion, governance capture, accumulation reintroduction, data corruption, and participation decline.
• Behavioral stability: Reinforcement dynamics in the system select for cooperative behavior, with structural constraints on accumulation and dominance that maintain egalitarian equilibrium.

Relationship to other research

This framework defines the destination — the structural architecture of a post-currency society. Theoligarchic capture model explains why the current system cannot be reformed into this alternative. Theattractor theory provides formal analysis showing that both oligarchic and egalitarian configurations are stable equilibria. And thecase against hierarchy synthesizes evidence from five domains showing that peer-based structures produce the greatest human and societal wellbeing.