Today · Economic transition

Global economic shift in the age of AGI.

Build a sustainable, transparent economy where everyone can meet essential needs and people can create, work, and build businesses. Begin with institutions and technology available today, then expand cooperation across borders as communities demonstrate what works.

Keep local democratic control. Make shared resources, public spending, and economic gains accountable to people.

Explore the transition See the first 90 days

Mandate

Turn new technology into security and real choices for people.

The economic effects of AGI depend on public rules, not technology alone. Who owns the systems, who can negotiate, who pays taxes, who can compete, and who can learn will determine whether the gains are widely shared or controlled by a few.

This is a proposed program, not an operating economic system. Artificial general intelligence (AGI) means AI with broad intellectual capabilities. The first steps do not depend on its arrival, guaranteed abundance, or a new global currency.

Change pathway

Move from economic shock to shared agency.

01 · MeasureFind who is affectedDeliver: a public report on jobs, prices, and ownershipLead · Public analysts
02 · ProtectStart support earlyDeliver: benefits people keep between jobs and temporary income supportLead · Public institutions
03 · DistributeShare the gainsDeliver: ownership and public-revenue rulesLead · Communities + lawmakers
04 · AdaptOpen new pathsDeliver: access to education, computing power, funding, and customersLead · Schools + markets
05 · ReviewCheck and improveDeliver: public results and corrected policiesLead · Independent reviewers

Decision gateAdvance when household security rises without concentrating ownership or political power.

A repeatable change cycle: measure the shift, protect people, distribute value, expand opportunity, and correct course.

Basic security

Make essential services, benefits, and temporary income support available when work changes, without taking away personal choice.

Broad ownership

Help the public, workers, and communities own part of the systems that create wealth in an AGI economy.

Open opportunity

Keep computing power, education, funding, and customers within reach of new businesses and less-wealthy regions.

Government people can inspect

Show who receives public money, who influences policy, and where AI is used in public decisions.

Questions this branch owns

What must be solved now.

How should wealth created by AGI be measured, taxed, owned, and shared?
How do we protect dignity if paid employment is no longer central to daily life?
How do we stop wealthy regions from controlling the computing power and data of poorer ones?
How can businesses keep innovating without letting a few AI companies gain unchecked power over society?
Which warning signs should automatically start public support or a policy review?

Working outputs

Policies that can be tested before certainty arrives.

Public progress report

Track job losses and gains, output, ownership, affordability, regional access, and who receives the benefits.

Economic agreement

Set rights, protections, public duties, and fair-competition rules for an economy shaped by AGI.

Local trials

Test new approaches to benefits, ownership, education, and public services. Publish the results and allow changes to be reversed.

A practical path

Change in stages people can evaluate.

Start within existing countries, currencies, services, and democratic processes. Each stage requires funding, consent, independent review, and a way to preserve essential services if a trial fails. Time ranges are planning horizons from an authorized start, not predictions.

1. Establish the baseline

First 90 days: choose a willing community, measure unmet needs and physical capacity, publish a proposed budget, and invite residents, workers, businesses, and public agencies to shape a trial.

Advance when: responsibilities, funding, privacy protections, comparison measures, and stop conditions are published.

2. Run bounded local trials

Months 4–24: test an essentials program, worker transition support, or community energy project alongside existing services. Pay providers in ordinary currency.

Advance when: an independent evaluation finds better access and manageable costs, with a funded continuity plan and no unresolved serious rights violations.

3. Connect successful programs

Years 2–5: regions share reporting standards, pool purchasing, recognize benefits where agreements permit, and build mutual aid capacity.

Advance when: independent sites reproduce results and agreements specify settlement, appeals, liabilities, and exit arrangements.

4. Build wider cooperation

Years 5 onward, if justified: participating countries negotiate common environmental, transparency, and service standards while keeping democratic control.

Advance when: public authorization, sustainable funding, and service delivery survive economic and supply shocks. Participation can expand at different speeds.

Security and choice

Protect essentials while expanding real supply.

The proposed universal floor includes adequate nutrition, safe water and sanitation, secure shelter, basic energy, essential healthcare, and connectivity. Define it locally using household size, disability, climate, and delivery costs. Build toward universal coverage through funded steps; never describe a limited trial as a universal guarantee.

Protect the minimum entitlement from sale, collateral, employment conditions, political loyalty tests, and automated removal without appeal. Provide assisted and offline access. Publish eligibility and continuity arrangements for children, migrants, refugees, and people without documents; emergency needs require a separate access route.

Where supply is available, cash support can preserve choice. Where it is scarce, fund housing, grids, care staff, storage, and distribution. A larger payment or digital token cannot by itself produce a missing home, meal, or medical appointment.

During shortages, prioritize essential needs through published rules, draw on reserves and mutual aid, and provide human review. Future resource accounts may allow surplus exchanges only when delivery is verified; protected essentials remain outside speculative trading.

A funding bridge

Pay for the transition before promising the destination.

Retain existing revenue and benefit systems while trials test alternatives. Publish a budget for service delivery, maintenance, replacement, administration, debt obligations, and emergency reserves. Account for the existing programs that remain necessary.

Near term

Use authorized public budgets, funded grants, and contracted service payments. Record which funds are recurring, restricted, temporary, or still uncommitted.

Build shared assets

Test community ownership, worker ownership, and public investment with clearly negotiated returns. Evaluate land and resource revenues under local authority rather than imposing a universal corporate equity claim.

Test future revenues

Evaluate transparent infrastructure charges and prudently managed public endowments. Count fees after operating costs and dividend income only when available. Review how charges affect households and smaller firms.

Decision rule: reduce an existing tax only after replacement revenue and service capacity withstand published stress tests. Zero income tax remains a hypothesis to evaluate, not a prerequisite or a funding assumption. Borrowing can finance suitable long-lived assets but must include repayment and currency risks.

From rivalry to cooperation

Give countries reasons to cooperate.

National institutions remain responsible for rights, budgets, and continuity. The proposed shift is away from treating economic security as a competition between nations and toward shared benefits that can be verified: reliable energy, resilient supply chains, public research, and lower barriers to opportunity.

Start with concrete agreements: shared procurement, emergency supplies, research access, and common reporting. Each agreement names who pays, who delivers, and who resolves disputes.
Protect local authority: communities shape delivery, countries authorize commitments, and regional bodies coordinate only the responsibilities delegated to them.
Make participation fair: negotiate grants, technology sharing, and contributions reflecting capacity. Include poorer regions and Indigenous communities in decisions affecting their land and resources.
Plan for disagreement: retain diverse suppliers and reserves; specify payment settlement, currency exposure, disruption procedures, and exit terms that protect residents.

Existing debts, pensions, contracts, trade commitments, and public assets need explicit transition treatment. A project framework cannot override them; adoption requires the appropriate public and legal processes.

People and physical limits

Make progress sustainable for workers and the planet.

Support people through changing work

Test benefits people keep between jobs, temporary income support, paid training connected to real vacancies, worker participation, and support for new enterprises. Recognize care work and disability. Essential services must not depend on retraining or accepting a particular job.

Track earnings, job quality, hours, and reemployment. Treat AI adoption and job losses as measured outcomes rather than assuming all occupations will disappear.

Measure the full resource cost

Track total emissions, material use, water stress, land impacts, repair, and waste alongside costs. Include imported impacts and the energy, water, and equipment used by AI systems.

Set locally justified environmental limits, invest in efficiency and repair, and check whether increased consumption cancels savings. Cleaner production per unit is insufficient if total damage keeps rising.

Keep business formation simple and access to research, finance, and customers open. Preserve enforceable rules for competition, labor, consumer protection, safety, and pollution. Open-source projects should receive voluntary or contracted support consistent with their licenses, not mandatory charges for every use.

Transparent institutions

Make public power inspectable and personal life private.

Publish budgets, funding commitments, procurement awards and amendments, payments, ownership interests where appropriate, conflicts of interest, service outcomes, and independent audits. Explain missing data, uncertainty, and corrections in plain language.

Protect household records, medical information, and legitimate security details. Publish aggregated results with safeguards against identifying individuals. A public ledger is an accountability tool, not a requirement to expose every personal transaction.

Local resource organizations—the proposed value guilds—need resident and worker representation, published fees, conflict rules, independent review, and accessible complaints. Neither wealth nor token holdings should purchase control over basic rights. Public endowment voting can allocate discretionary funds after core service obligations are funded.

AI may forecast demand and flag anomalies. Named people and institutions remain accountable for decisions. Publish methods and error rates; provide appeals, manual correction, backup records, and recovery tests. Neither a blockchain nor perfect network uptime is required.

Initial project backlog

Make the first 90 days concrete.

These are proposed work packages. No partner, trial funding, or service delivery is claimed as secured.

Days 1–30 — listen and measure. Identify a willing location and accountable sponsor; consult residents, workers, service providers, and businesses. Establish the needs baseline and map legal authority, existing benefits, and physical bottlenecks.
Days 31–60 — design and cost. Choose one bounded trial. Publish its full budget, funding commitments, rights charter, environmental measures, privacy plan, evaluation method, and provider continuity arrangements.
Days 61–90 — review and decide. Invite public challenge, commission independent review, rehearse a shortage and an outage, and publish a go, revise, or stop decision. Launch only after authorization and funding are confirmed.

Publish the same scorecard throughout: unmet essential needs, household costs, service reliability, worker outcomes, funding coverage, ownership concentration, total environmental impacts, and complaint resolution. Set thresholds before launch and report results by relevant groups without exposing individuals.

A breach of rights, unavailable funding, or unsafe delivery pauses expansion and activates the continuity plan. A successful trial improves outcomes against a published comparison without shifting costs or environmental harm to another community.

Evidence and open questions

Build on evidence and test the proposals.

ILO 2025 occupational exposure research: exposure to generative AI is not equivalent to job loss; the study identifies job transformation as the more likely overall outcome.
IMF Fiscal Transparency Code: a reference for reporting, budgeting, fiscal risks, and resource revenues.
UNEP Global Resources Outlook 2024: evidence on resource pressures and pathways toward sustainable consumption and production.
World Bank adaptive social protection framework: programs, information, finance, and institutions all matter for shock preparedness.
Open Contracting Data Standard: an existing model for publishing information through the public contracting process.

These sources inform the work; they do not validate this proposed economic architecture. Funding sufficiency, political adoption, cross-border fairness, and resource exchanges remain questions for local evidence and independent evaluation.