No jobs does not mean no money moving; the loop shows the whole path. Everyone receives the floor as credits each month and spends them on what they value, and much of that spending reaches people. Above the floor, everything is contribution, and contribution is paid through four channels. A different party decides in each.
| Channel | Who pays | Who decides | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| Exchange | people, from their own credits and income | the people paying | artists, athletes, cooks, therapists, craftspeople |
| Commission | local and domain funds, from a share of the automation return beyond the floor | the people affected | elder care, mentoring, coastal stewardship, local research |
| Office | the public | the public chooses who serves; an independent body sets the pay | legislators, judges, public stewards |
| Venture | the market | the market | founders, inventors, builders |
No single body decides what contribution is worth, and there is no central contribution score. Payers, affected communities, and the public each decide within their own channel.
Exchange
Exchange is closest to today. Fans pay to watch humans play, because the worth of the game lies partly in who is playing. Buyers and patrons pay the artist. Skill matters, and so do connections. Connections will always matter; what keeps them from being the only door is reputation that stays tied to the domain where it was earned, platforms people can route around, and pay for helping others become capable.
Attention concentrates, and a few performers will earn enormous sums. That sits above the floor, so no one’s survival depends on it, and it is allowed. The limit is on turning that wealth into authority over anything else, which the framework already treats as standing leaking across domains.
Commission
Commission pays for work people value but no individual will buy. The funds are many and local, never one central pot, so the parents fund the youth coach and the coastal town pays the dune keeper. A fixed share goes to work no one has tried yet: the emergence share.
Care comes first, measured like the floor. Independent bodies measure how much care is needed and what it costs to provide it well, including fair pay for caregivers. Commission funding for care is sized to meet that need. It is a standard, not a budget fight. Other common work, such as stewardship, local research, and mentoring, gets a further share of the automation return, decided democratically on a long cycle within limits set at the constitutional level, so it is never slashed in a lean year. Funds are distributed by population and need, never by local wealth: a poor town’s care meets the same floor as a rich town’s.
When care is short. Money cannot conjure human presence, so the care floor acts on a measured gap, in order:
- Publish the care gap: waiting times, unmet hours, caregiver burnout.
- Raise pay until people come. The care floor is sized to meet need at whatever pay attracts enough caregivers.
- Free human time. Machines take the lifting, cleaning, and monitoring so caregivers spend their time on presence. That is support, not substitution.
- Pay families who give care, through the care adjustment, which the person cared for directs. Family care is recognized at a flat rate with no hour logs, and care given freely is never recorded or counted.
- Grow the number of caregivers through training paths open to anyone.
- Protect caregivers with respite and limits on hours, so the gap is never filled by wearing them out.
- Never compel care. Forced presence is not presence.
- If care is still short, allocate it openly by need and urgency, under published rules anyone can contest, never by worth.
Office
Office pays a stipend tied to the median income for comparable skilled work. Serving costs a capable person nothing, and it can make no one rich. Every office at the same level pays the same amount, set by an independent body; no one votes on their own pay.
In office: no gifts, no paid side work in the domain they govern, and private holdings managed at arm’s length. After office: a cooling-off period with no paid roles, board seats, lobbying, or fees tied to the domain they governed. The framework already forbids wealth from buying authority. This forbids authority from becoming wealth. The only reason left to seek office is the work itself. How the same rules apply to every official decision is set out in when favors are for sale.
Venture
Founders and inventors who take initiative and risk keep a fair return. Returns, yes; sovereignty, no.
Ownership returns follow where the money came from. Productive capacity has two parts. The common share is the automation return that funds the floor credits and the commission funds. Private holdings, such as companies, buildings, and stakes, pay returns to their holders. Capital someone earned through contribution and then risked earns a fair return, which extends the venture channel to investors (investing and playing the market). Inherited capital earns returns only within the heir’s lifetime allowance. Every return above the floor traces back to money someone earned or to a bounded inheritance.
Employment sits inside the channels
Firms still hire people, for work valued because a human does it. A firm pools channel money and pays people from it: a restaurant earns through exchange and pays its cooks, a care organization funded by commission pays its nurses, and founders and investors take venture returns. Wages inside a firm are negotiated freely, and the floor makes the negotiation fair. No one has to take a job to survive, so exploitative work struggles to find people.
Three flows above the floor
Above the floor, three different things move. Keeping them apart prevents a common confusion:
| Flow | What it is | How it is allocated |
|---|---|---|
| Resources to do the work | the operating room, the compute, the studio | by what the work requires |
| Contribution income | personal pay | the four channels |
| Scarce goods | a one-of-a-kind house, a stretch of coast, a rare gem | rules for scarce goods |
A surgeon is allocated an operating room because surgery requires one. The surgeon’s pay comes through a channel. The two are never the same decision.
What contribution looks like
In a world of AI and robots, contribution is whatever people value because a human does it, plus whatever only a human can answer for. The framework already lists human companionship, specialist attention, and time among the goods no abundance makes infinite. Wherever people want a human specifically, that human’s time stays scarce and commands pay.
The framework already names the kinds:
- Answering for a decision. The responsibility address asks who must explain a decision afterward. A machine can carry out a decision but cannot be the one held accountable for it.
- Starting things. The initiation rate tracks how much of life still begins with a person saying “I want to try this.” Machines can generate options; the wanting comes from people.
- Presence and care. Being with someone.
- Process and performance. Process over output: people pay to watch humans play, hear humans sing, and eat food a person made, because who did it is part of the worth.
- Making others capable. Catalytic contribution: teaching, coaching, mentoring, long underpaid.
- Tending. Maintenance as contribution: keeping things sound and faithful.
- Noticing. The distributed sensory system: each person sees from a position no one else holds and can report when a rule or system has stopped matching reality.
Two conditions keep this hopeful. People must be able to tell what a human made: if machine companions, art, and teaching can pass as human, demand for human contribution collapses, so signal provenance, the chain behind “a person made this,” becomes economic infrastructure. And contribution must never become the measure of a life. The floor exists so that playing, making, and resting do not have to pay. If contribution starts to feel compulsory, the old job bargain has been rebuilt under a new name.