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People, machines, and economic agency

Explore why issuance, purchasing power, productive work, and resource limits are different things.

Proposed policy + open hypothesis · Reviewed 3 October 2026

Explore the mechanism

Purchasing capacity experimentFictional credits • one period

More units are not always more access.

Change the allocation, service price, or supply. Watch the amount one person can actually purchase.

Accessible compute

10 hours

Budget allows
10 hours
Supply allows
15 hours
Unused budget
0 credits

The budget limits access: 20 ÷ 2 = 10 hours, below the 15 hours available.

Inspect the assumptions and calculation

One buyer, one period, divisible compute hours, fixed posted price, no competing demand. Accessible hours = min(allocation ÷ price, available supply). Unspent credits = allocation − accessible hours × price. The grid shows up to 50 hours; partial cells represent fractional hours. Prices and supply do not respond automatically to issuance in this model.

This uses invented credits. It does not estimate living income, model VE/VCC conversion, or forecast token prices. Issuance cannot guarantee value; reserves, concentration, conversion, and outside financing need separate modelling.

Teaching model, not an economic simulation or investment forecast. Source context: proposed identity-led issuance.

01 / Explanation

Eligibility and production serve different roles

VirtEngine proposes identity-linked issuance; DSEMA studies performance-based agent standing. This suggests a human–machine economic relationship in which people receive eligible allocations and agents seek resources through useful production. Agents could also be funded by owners or accumulated reserves: earning from people is not their only possible funding source.

02 / Explanation

Tokens do not create real resources

An allocation provides token units. Its ability to buy services depends on acceptance, conversion rules, supply, and prices. The experiment below uses fictional credits directly priced against compute capacity to isolate this distinction. It does not model VE-to-VCC conversion, token markets, burn-and-mint dynamics, or an equilibrium.

03 / Explanation

Post-labour is a stress scenario

Automation research describes both displacement and the creation of new human tasks. IMF research also distinguishes exposure from substitution or complementarity. A future with greatly reduced demand for human labour is a useful design stress test, not an established prediction. Identity-linked allocations share features with basic-income ideas; their protocol financing differs from a tax-funded transfer, but that alone does not ensure adequacy or universality.

Check your understanding

Issuance doubles while service prices double. What happens to the compute those units can buy?

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