More of life available to live
Imagine a neighbourhood where a repaired water network saves hours of carrying, shared equipment makes a project affordable, and useful knowledge can be reused freely. Better resource coordination can increase what people are able to do, even before anyone imagines an entirely new economic system.
Begin with the life an arrangement makes possible
Jacque Fresco’s influence here begins with a generous question: what could people’s lives become if settlements, technology and resources were organised around human needs? The Venus Project develops this as a proposed resource-based society with extensive technical coordination. It is a vision, not a demonstrated solution to every governance problem. We can still take its invitation seriously. Imagine a housing block with dependable heating, repairable appliances and a shared workshop. Residents could spend less time replacing broken things and more time learning, caring or making something they enjoy. That is a concrete direction for design, even when people disagree about the wider economic programme.
A livelihood includes what you can use
The Institute for the Future’s Universal Basic Assets framework includes private assets, public infrastructure and open resources such as shared knowledge. It widens the discussion beyond a recurring cash payment without proposing that everybody automatically owns an equal share of everything. Applied to our imagined neighbourhood, that suggests asking about usable access: a workshop key, an affordable connection, a place to learn, a secure home. A dividend can supplement income, but its purchasing power depends on what is available. A service can provide lasting value without issuing an individual dividend. Exploring these differences opens more ways to improve security, rather than forcing every benefit into one financial mechanism.
Put the physical account on the table
Now consider a river supplying households, farms and industry while sustaining its ecosystem. Begin with available water, seasonal uncertainty and the demands placed on it. A participatory model should make an impossible allocation visible: a larger number of tokens, a unanimous vote or an impressive dashboard cannot create additional flow. Within those limits there are choices. A community might protect a minimum household supply, reserve water for ecological function and negotiate the remaining uses. Those priorities are proposed rules, not conclusions delivered by hydrology. Showing unmet demand alongside allocations allows people to see both the benefits and the costs of each arrangement.
Expand the possibilities before dividing the shortage
Meadows invites attention to information, system rules and goals, as well as numerical targets. This encourages a broader question than who receives the next unit of water. In our hypothetical basin, repairing leaks, reusing suitable water or changing a water-intensive process could reduce competing demands. Each option requires evidence, investment and a realistic timescale; none should be credited with savings before they occur. The valuable shift is from treating scarcity as a permanent argument between fixed claimants to investigating how the situation could improve. People may find areas of shared interest even while disagreeing about the present allocation.
Inside the Commission
A basin account can reveal that total withdrawals exceed renewable supply. It cannot, by itself, determine the legitimate priority between a household, a farm, a factory and a future ecosystem. Better data informs that choice and exposes impossible promises; the definition of needs, acceptable harm and fair distribution still carries judgments. The fictional Commission conceals those judgments inside service boundaries and inherited targets. Its failure is not excessive attention to resources. It is removing the people who can challenge how the objective was chosen.
Let a connected city also be a cooperative city
DECODE’s Barcelona and Amsterdam pilots explored data sharing under residents’ control. One Barcelona pilot involved environmental sensing and support for participants to gather and analyse information. These bounded experiments offer a practical counterpart to the image of a comprehensively sensed city. In our proposed basin, residents could help identify leaks or periods of poor access while setting conditions on the use of their information. A resident’s account should remain admissible without requiring a sensor in every home. Published methods, privacy protections and a route to dispute measurements make shared information more useful because people have reasons to trust and improve it.
Keep the future open to improvement
The allocation laboratory keeps a visible water budget while you change priorities and available supply, so the consequences remain clear. Outside that simplified exercise, a useful next step would be to compare proposed investments: what could improve access, over what period, with whose labour and at whose expense? Begin with a school, housing association or neighbourhood inventory of something people already share. Identify one avoidable shortage and one feasible improvement. Resource thinking becomes hopeful when it joins fair allocation today with the possibility of better provision tomorrow. A community can protect essentials, learn from experience and increase its capacity to care for the place it inhabits.
Which needs can a fairer allocation meet now, and which practical changes could make more possible tomorrow?
One river. Four claims.
Allocate a chosen water supply among competing needs and inspect unmet demand. Compare priorities, then try a drier period while keeping the physical total honest.
Open this experiment