Mara’s flat cost nothing. It was part of the base, like the water, the bread, and the journey to work. The canoe cost value points, three months of her contribution, and she saved for it the way one saves for something one really wants. At the enterprise, the accounts lay open: what the enterprise needed in inputs, what it credited to those who worked there, how much went into the reserve, and how much into the region’s fund. No one grew rich from it. But no one was ever afraid of the end of the month.
Every social order, whether it says so or not, answers three economic questions: who owns what? How does value arise, and who receives it? And who decides what will be built tomorrow? Orders that had got everything else right have failed on these three questions. SOLIS does not answer them with one of the old recipes. It answers with an order that neither abolishes nor unleashes the market but limits it: basic provision as an entitlement, discretionary goods through a means of value that cannot turn into power, and capital that stays in many hands.
Property and the Commons
Property is among the most powerful and at the same time most contested concepts in human history. It has built and destroyed societies, brought forth inventions and fuelled wars, made freedom possible and legitimized oppression. Capitalism often regards property as freedom itself: whoever owns has power, security, and the ability to shape things. Socialism often collectivized property, on the assumption that private ownership promotes inequality and destroys community, and it frequently ended in bureaucratic rigidity, a lack of drive, and corruption in the administration. SOLIS does not trade one for the other. It seeks a new balance that uses the strengths of both principles and avoids their weaknesses: personal possessions remain inviolable, and the natural foundations of life are treated as a common good.
Personal possessions are protected in SOLIS because they are part of self-determination. One’s own house, one’s own clothes, one’s own tools, savings for a project of one’s own, books, keepsakes, and above all everything one has created oneself belong to the individual. They may own it, shape it, pass it on, and bequeath it. Possession in this sense fosters creativity, identity, and security. An artist keeps the full rights to her works, and a family keeps the right to live in the house it built and to pass it on to its children. You may be rich in ideas, in art, in projects, and in personal treasures. You may only not become rich by taking from others the air they breathe, the water they drink, and the soil they live on.
It is different with the great foundations of life: water, soil, air, sources of energy, and raw materials. They cannot belong to anyone privately, because no one created them, because they are the condition of everyone’s survival, and because their misuse strikes whole societies, ecosystems, and generations, not only individuals. In SOLIS, therefore, an enterprise cannot acquire a water source and deny the population access to it. No investor can buy up land to let it lie fallow for speculation while people cannot find housing. No one can treat the air as if it were a commodity.
These commons are managed collectively, and, following the order of power, by the assemblies and offices of the level concerned, advised by expertise and reviewed by the ethics councils. They are not state property, because this order knows no state that stands above the people. Their use is regulated so that no one is starved or exploited and so that future generations keep access too. This is served by open platforms that show how much water, energy, or land is used where. It is served by limits on extraction that set how much may be taken without harming the system, by sanctions against building monopolies and shadow markets, and by programmes that promote careful use. SOLIS thus resolves the false choice between unlimited private power, which destroys the collective, and total collective control, which stifles the individual. It grants freedom where it fosters creativity, invention, and identity, and collective management where survival and sustainability are at stake. From this grows balance, and from this grows trust. Individuals know that they have their space and their security, and at the same time that the foundations of life remain open to their children too.
Basic Provision and Value Points
For centuries, money was a central tool of humanity. It made trade possible and triggered crises, fuelled invention and plunged societies into poverty, promised freedom and created dependence. Under capitalism, money often becomes the measure of all things: whoever has it can buy influence, obtain security, and have a say over the rules. Socialism often suppressed or strictly controlled money and thereby frequently produced bureaucratic rigidity, shortages, and shadow markets. SOLIS does not simply replace money with a new means of exchange. It creates a dual order with a clear separation between basic provision and discretionary goods.
Basic Provision Is an Entitlement, Not a Payment
In SOLIS, every person has a guaranteed entitlement to the foundations of life: housing, energy, food, health care, education, and basic mobility. These are not market goods. They are not bought but provided. The assemblies of the levels plan the capacities needed for them, housing, waterworks, schools, clinics, and transport, and the enterprises that deliver them are funded from the community share, which will be discussed shortly. No one ever has to pay for basic provision. A young adult thus receives, without any service in return, the right to a basic flat, and a family receives staple foods as an entitlement, not for a fee. Basic provision is a base, not a luxury: simple, reliable, and the same for everyone. This secures the floor below which no person can fall, regardless of their employment record.
A base is of equal value everywhere, but it is not the same everywhere. No two basic flats are identical, and one looks onto the park while the other looks onto the street. Where goods of basic provision differ, a rule decides and not a connection: first need, that is, the size of the household and the distance to work, school, and care, then the order of registration, and where several people have an equal claim, the lot. Waiting times are public. If they grow, that is an instruction to the offices to build and to the monitoring of fundamental rights to report it. Whoever wants more than the base, the bigger flat or the better location, exchanges value points for it, because that is where discretionary goods begin.
Value Points for Discretionary Goods
For everything that goes beyond basic provision, the bigger flat, the journey, the musical instrument, the tools for one’s own project, there are value points. They are tied to the person and bear no interest. They arise solely from real contribution, from work, care, raising children, invention, and voluntary service, measured by hours, qualification, and the needs of the community. They cannot be hoarded or traded speculatively, and their relative value reflects social usefulness, sustainability, and scarcity. An engineer receives value points for her work on an energy plant, a care worker for the daily care of people, an artist for her work, a father for the years in which he raises his children. What is decisive is what distinguishes such a means from money: it cannot turn into capital that multiplies itself and translates into power. The value point is a river, not a lake.
How Prices Arise without a Central Plan
Here stands the hardest question for any economic order that pushes back the market, and SOLIS does not avoid it. A price is a piece of information. In a market, it arises from countless decentralized decisions and shows what is scarce and what is needed. An order that abolishes the market faces the question of how, without this signal, it intends to determine what things are worth, and history has shown that no central authority can calculate what a market computes. SOLIS does not claim this omniscience. It does not replace the market with a central plan. It limits the market.
For discretionary goods, the relative prices in value points are not decreed from above. They arise from decentralized signals, in three layers. The first layer is the signals themselves: suppliers and consumers report supply and demand, and relative prices move with actual scarcity and actual demand. Thus the information function of prices is preserved, which pure planning loses. The second layer is fixed limits. Ecological costs are compulsorily included in every price, so that a flight across continents costs more points than a train journey and a harmful product more than a gentle alternative. At the same time, no one can narrow a market or build a monopoly, and every product carries an open product sheet that states its materials, energy, burden, and origin. The third layer is feedback. The entire system is transparent and open to review. Where the signals lead to unjust or unsustainable results, a correction loop takes effect that combines data and deliberation: the ongoing monitoring of scarcity and ecological burden on the one hand, and review by the ethics councils on the other. What is corrected are the limits, not individual prices by decree.
This solution is an approximation, not a perfect calculation, and it presents itself as such. It accepts a certain imprecision in allocation, because that is the price of avoiding both dead ends: omniscient planning, which is impossible, and the unleashed market, which becomes unjust. The design of the value point ensures that even where a price remains imprecise, it cannot become a lever for accumulation and power, because it cannot be hoarded, cannot be speculated with, and is tied to real contribution.
Saving without Concentration of Power
That value points cannot be hoarded is aimed at oligarchy, not at provision for the future. Between accumulation that translates into power over others and moderate saving for a project of one’s own there is a difference that the order respects. Value points therefore remain available for personal purposes over reasonable periods of time, for the house, the journey, the workshop, the year of a fresh start. Their limit and their expiry take effect only beyond the threshold at which savings would become a lever over the lives of others. The same threshold applies at the end of life. Whatever value points a person leaves behind go to their relatives up to this threshold, and anything beyond it goes into the community share. Thus the means prevents the concentration of power without taking from individuals the ability to plan, and without dynasties forming over generations.
The Community Share
How does an order without money pay for its schools, clinics, and waterworks? From the same river that carries everything else. Every credit of value points passes a share into the community funds of the levels: a fixed basic share on every contribution and a rising share above a threshold. Whoever receives a lot contributes proportionally more. That is not a punishment. It is the recognition that every income rests on the community, on its infrastructure, its education, its health, and its peace. From this community share, the enterprises of basic provision are funded, the basic pension is paid, the funds are filled, and the offices are maintained. It takes the place of taxation, and it differs from taxation in two ways. It is simple, because it arises at the source and no one has to declare it, avoid it, or collect it. And it is visible, because the review body discloses where every share goes. Whoever contributes sees what becomes of it.
Where the Points Come from and How Many There Are
This leaves the question that every order with its own means of value must answer: who creates the points, and who decides how many there are? In SOLIS, a credit to a personal account has two possible sources. Either an enterprise pays it out of what it has taken in for its discretionary goods. Then the point merely changes hands, and nothing new comes into being. Or a community fund pays it: for work in basic provision, for care, raising children, and voluntary work, for the service of those chosen by lot, for the projects of the funds. Only here do new points arise, and they arise solely against a registered contribution, never against nothing, never on credit, and never with interest. The community bank that creates them is itself ringed: partly chosen by lot, with changing membership, and scrutinized by the review body. No body can create points for itself.
The number of points in circulation must match what can be produced in discretionary goods. If there are too many, all prices rise at once, not only those of scarce things. If there are too few, goods remain unsold although people need them. Both can be read from a public figure, the general price level of discretionary goods, which the review body publishes continuously. The quantity is steered by three levers, all of them in the open: the basic value that one hour of contribution earns, the level of the community share, and the threshold above which points expire. The national assembly sets them, advised by the Council of the Wise and reviewed by the ethics councils, and it may change them only slowly and within a fixed range, so that no one becomes poorer overnight. What expires beyond the threshold, and what the ecological surcharge adds to harmful goods, dampens the system by itself, without anyone having to intervene. The quantity of points is thus no secret science. It is a public figure, and any change to it must be justified.
The Interface with the Outside World
SOLIS does not live in isolation and therefore needs regulated transitions to the world of conventional currencies. A border exchange allows value points to be exchanged for foreign currencies. So that the inner nature of the value point, no accumulation and no speculation, is not undermined from outside, however, this border is a controlled membrane and not an open gate for arbitrage. Exchange by individuals is limited. It covers legitimate external needs such as travel or imports, but it does not allow points to be siphoned off into foreign assets. An outflow on a large scale, which would turn value points into foreign capital and import power back from it, is visible and capped. The same applies in the other direction. Whoever moves in from another order brings their rights with them, but not their power, because foreign wealth can be exchanged into value points only to the same extent as for anyone else and otherwise remains what it is: outside. A buffer fund keeps the exchange rate within a stable range and protects against external shocks and speculation, and the supply chains on which survival depends are secured at home or through several partners, so that no one can starve the order from outside. An enterprise that exports technology receives value points that can be exchanged at the border exchange within these rules. The very purpose of the border is to keep the inner order protected against the detour through foreign currency. The membrane lets value pass for real needs and seals the leak through which someone could escape the rule against accumulation.
Transparency and Security
All transfers run through community banks, which serve secure processing, transparency, and control against abuse, and no profit. The data are held on tamper-proof infrastructure. To the outside, the accounts are pseudonymous, and they can be linked to a person only by court order. Society sees the aggregate figures, not the life of the individual. Large allocations are subject to the four-eyes principle, patterns of collusion and sham services are detected and published, and whoever uncovers abuse is protected. In this way the economic order dissolves the dependence on money while keeping the benefits of regulated markets. No one has to fear being unable to meet their basic needs. No one can build a monopoly over air, water, or food. No invention fails any longer for lack of capital. Entitlements for survival and value points for shaping one’s life: therein lie the balance, the trust, and the stability of this order.
Enterprises, Capital, and Innovation
Enterprises without the Power of Capital
Companies still exist in SOLIS, because they drive dynamism, skill, and specialization. This work calls them enterprises, because they undertake and run something rather than own something. An enterprise is a community of people who produce or provide something together. It keeps an enterprise account in value points, through which it takes in what it receives for the discretionary goods it supplies and pays out what it needs in inputs. From the rest, it pays for the contributions of its members. Whatever remains beyond that it may keep as a reserve for replacement and risk, up to a limit measured by its needs. Whatever exceeds that limit too flows to the members and into the community share. An enterprise can therefore do well and grow from its skill, but it cannot become wealth that buys up other enterprises, nor power that writes the rules. What it needs for investment and cannot cover from its reserve, it obtains from the funds. There is no capital market.
The people in the enterprise are participants, not commodities. They have a say over its management and the rules of their work, and the management is an office held for a term like any other. The success of an enterprise is measured not only by what is left over at the end but equally by its stability, its contribution to the community, its ecological balance, and its responsibility, and a public, transparent rating system makes these dimensions visible. An enterprise that pays its members fairly, uses gentle materials, and strengthens the local community is rated more highly than one that only cuts costs, and it more easily receives what it needs from the funds. The aim is an economy that creates real value instead of shifting numbers around: for the people who work in it, for the communities it supplies, for the nature it uses, and for the future it helps to shape. It is not about maximizing growth as such. It is about letting the right things grow: health, education, creativity, sustainability, and justice.
The Meshed Allocation of Capital
Here lies hidden a question of power that no economic order may pass over. The value point is pure circulation. It flows, but it does not accumulate. This banishes accumulation as a source of private overwhelming power, but it has not disappeared. It has moved. Large projects require large means, and the decision about which project receives them is the most consequential economic decision of all. It now lies with the funds, which are fed from the community share and from the returns of successful projects. So that no new top arises here, the allocation of capital is not placed in one hand but meshed: many funds side by side, regional, specialist, and citizen-led, each built according to the order of power, partly chosen by lot, with changing membership, and accountable. What is decisive is the redundancy of routes. Whoever wants to realize an idea can turn to several independent funds, so that a no is never the no of the system. It is only the no of one door. A fixed share of the means is reserved for the dissenter who challenges the prevailing consensus. Thus the force that builds the future stays distributed and does not become a throne.
Innovation without a Capital Barrier
Research and development must not fail for lack of capital. The funds provide infrastructure, materials, laboratory time, and teams. Personal effort is paid in value points, and ideas and inventions become freely accessible after a reasonable period, while the inventor receives recognition and a return in value points from the proven benefit. A scientist who develops a new recycling process draws resources from the fund, his team is supported, and he himself is honoured for his contribution, without the invention being locked behind a patent that denies the public access. Projects pass through open milestones at which they prove themselves or end. What fails, fails early and instructively instead of late and expensively.
Work and Contribution
In most of today’s systems, work is closely bound up with fear: the fear of not earning enough, of not being needed, of falling behind, or of becoming ill and burnt out and thus worthless. We have built societies in which work is above all a means of survival. The result is people who stay in jobs they do not love, a creativity that suffocates under daily toil, and inventions that are left lying because they yield nothing in the short term. SOLIS understands work differently: not as a compulsion to survive, but as an expression of creativity, contribution, and meaning.
Because the foundations of life are guaranteed in SOLIS, no one has to work in order to survive. That does not mean that no one works any more. It means the opposite. People get involved because they see meaning in it, want to contribute something and develop themselves, and because everything that goes beyond the base arises from contribution. A young mother teaches part-time because she enjoys passing on knowledge, not for fear of otherwise losing her security. An older engineer works on an energy plant because he wants to do something meaningful, not out of worry about the rent. Whoever contributes nothing does not lose basic provision, because it is tied to dignity and not to performance. But they live on the base and not above it, and a community that makes contribution visible needs no coercion in order to expect it.
This leaves a question that every order without need must answer: who does the work that no one likes to do? First, the machine. Routine work as well as dangerous, heavy, and dull tasks are automated, so that people can concentrate on what machines cannot do: creativity, empathy, judgment, complex problem-solving, and social and emotional work. And where a person must still do it, the value point speaks. Work in a bottleneck, at night, in the cold, with dirt or danger earns more points per hour, because the needs of the community are one of the factors by which contribution is measured. What today is dismissed with the lowest wage because the poorest have to do it is paid highly in SOLIS because everyone needs it. So that automation does not make people superfluous, the funds support further training, retraining, and the fostering of talent, and innovation is open to everyone, not only to large enterprises. A pupil with an idea for a plastic-free packaging material gets access to an innovation centre without depending on wealthy parents or investors.
In an economy in which machines and artificial intelligence take over more and more of the necessary work, an old question arises anew: what do people work for, and by what is a successful life measured? SOLIS separates contribution from compulsion. What automation takes away in toil it gives back in time, for care, education, creation, and community. And the standard of success shifts. The successful person is not the richest, but the one who creates something lasting for the community. The dignity of work depends not on its yield but on its meaning.
Distributive Justice
Almost every political debate speaks of justice, and yet everyone understands something different by it: some absolute equality, others absolute freedom, still others a fair balance. In SOLIS, distributive justice does not mean that everyone receives exactly the same. It means three things: that everyone has enough for a dignified, secure, and fulfilled life, that whoever contributes especially much may enjoy more, as long as they do not live at the expense of others, and that extreme inequalities that divide society do not arise in the first place. This path follows from a double insight. Radical equality often stifles achievement and invention. Radical inequality poisons societies, destroys trust, and feeds violence.
The foundation is that no one has to fear for bare survival. Access to food, clean water, medical care, safe housing, education, and participation is secured, as a fundamental right and not as alms. A single mother does not have to worry whether she can feed and care for her children, and an old person does not fall into nothing. This is the condition of every further freedom, because whoever is fighting to survive cannot think freely, be creative, and develop.
Above this foundation, SOLIS recognizes that people differ in talent, drive, and capacity. Whoever contributes a lot, takes on responsibility, or drives inventions forward may also enjoy more: the bigger house, the longer journey, more means for their own project, more recognition. The only thing that matters is that this does not rest on exploitation. One may be prosperous because one has created something, not because one has oppressed or cheated others. Rewarded, therefore, are the scientist with a medical invention, the enterprise that creates fair work and durable products, and the artist who enriches culture. Not rewarded are the speculator who makes money from money without creating value, the enterprise that shifts its damage onto the public, and the elite that defines itself solely through power and seclusion. In SOLIS this distinction is not a moral appeal but built into the means of value itself. Money cannot be made from money where there is no interest and no speculation.
So that the extremes do not arise in the first place, the order needs no redistribution after the fact, because its balancing mechanisms work at the source. The community share makes whoever receives more contribute proportionally more. The threshold of accumulation prevents savings from turning into power. The rule on inheritance prevents inequality from being inherited across generations. The means collected do not seep away into opaque coffers. They are invested visibly and verifiably in education, health, invention, and community. Innovation bonuses give whoever supplies ideas of long-term benefit not only recognition but also the means to realize them. Thus the order combines the security that people need in order to live without fear with the dynamism that societies need in order to move forward. It is not about demonizing prosperity. It is about linking it with responsibility and preventing extreme poverty, because it paralyses the whole of society, not only those affected. Where people experience the system as fair, trust arises, and trust is the glue without which the economy, politics, and community break apart.
Security in Old Age
How a society treats old age shows whether it values its people or drops them. In many existing systems, provision for old age is marked by fear: the fear of not having enough in old age, of ending in poverty despite a lifetime of work, or of becoming a burden on the community. Conventional pension systems come under pressure from demographic shifts, uncertain funding, and a life’s achievement that is not fairly recognized. SOLIS, by contrast, guarantees dignity in old age as a right and not as alms. No one falls below a fixed level of dignity, whoever has contributed receives more in a traceable way, and the system remains stable even through demographic change.
This security rests on three pillars. The first is the basic pension: the entitlements to housing, energy, health care, and food apply in old age as in every other stage of life and secure a dignified life for everyone regardless of their employment record. The second is earned points. They are not a second money but the memory of a life’s achievement. Every year of work, care, raising children, and voluntary service is credited as earned points according to hours, qualification, and need, and from their sum an ongoing payment in value points is calculated in old age, funded from the community share of the younger generations. The third is a productive fund, a collective, broadly diversified fund that invests in enterprises, infrastructure, and energy plants and whose returns from their real use, not from interest, flow to older people as value points. Because this security never rests on a single source, it holds even when one source weakens.
What is decisive is that a life’s achievement counts in every form. Caring for relatives and raising children are fully credited, as a valuable contribution and not as a gap in one’s life story. A mother who invests years in raising children collects points just as someone in paid work does. A factor for qualification and bottlenecks honours especially needed activities, while an annual cap protects against self-exploitation. A sustainability factor gently evens out demographic fluctuations instead of surprising whole age groups, and the productive fund is broadly diversified and designed to act counter-cyclically.
The order is also flexible and humane. A gradual entry into old age, for instance between 62 and 70, allows individual paths with a fairness factor. Whoever wants to contribute for longer is honoured for it, and whoever has to stop earlier does not fall into the void. In cases of reduced capacity to work, notional credits provide security, and surviving dependants are protected through the transfer of fund shares. The transition from the existing system is also designed fairly. Acquired pension rights are converted into earned points, a long phase in which both systems run side by side ensures a gentle changeover, and older age groups receive guaranteed minimums. Thus SOLIS takes the fear out of old age: no poverty in old age despite a lifetime of work, no penalty for care and raising children, no collapse from demographic imbalances.
The Circular Economy and Energy
The conventional economy follows a destructive rhythm: take, use, throw away. Raw materials are extracted, processed into products, consumed, and in the end disposed of as waste. This linear system has left behind exhausted soils, polluted seas, toxic landfills, and destroyed ecosystems, and it has accelerated climate change. SOLIS breaks with this logic. The rules by which its economy runs in a circle belong here. The limits of the planet and the healing of the living world, which they serve, are set out in the following chapter.
In a circular economy, resources are not consumed. They circulate. Products are durable, repairable, modular, and recyclable, and planned obsolescence is prohibited. A device has standardized modules, so that when the battery weakens only the battery is replaced and not the whole device, and at the end of its life the individual parts return to the cycle. Residues serve as inputs to other processes, and enterprises are connected so that the residues of some become the raw materials of others. These rules do not stand beside the price but within it. Because ecological costs are included in every price in value points and every product carries its product sheet, the gentle option is cheaper than the harmful one, and the cycle is the default setting of economic activity, not the exception. The energy that drives all of this comes from sources that do not consume the planet. Its order, decentralized and resilient, is described in the chapter on the planet. Thus SOLIS breaks with the idea that the economy is a zero-sum game in which nature loses what the economy gains.
Global Economic Cooperation
We live in a world connected by the economy. No country and no region stands alone any more. Raw materials, goods, data, and ideas flow across borders, and that can be a blessing or a curse. So far the curse has prevailed: free trade that maximizes profits but destroys communities, supply chains that rest on exploitation and environmental destruction, and geopolitical power games in which the economy is misused as a means of pressure. SOLIS also thinks of the economy globally. But it thinks of it as a cooperative network that benefits everyone and not only the strongest, and not as a raid.
Trade relations rest on fairness, sustainability, and respect. Agreements are not power games between giants but arrangements based on clear ethical principles: fair pay, ecological responsibility, respect for cultural particularities, and long-term partnership instead of short-term appropriation. An enterprise from a rich region may therefore not simply extract cheap raw materials from a poorer one without compensating the local communities and meeting ecological standards. The contracts must disclose how investment is made locally, which standards apply, and how both sides gain. Weaker regions are strengthened instead of being kept in dependence. In place of aid that entrenches dependence come the transfer of technology and knowledge, fair financing of infrastructure that builds local resilience, and partnerships on an equal footing in which local voices share in the decisions. Thus a region develops its own sustainable energy systems with the support of global networks, but without gagging contracts that plunge it into eternal debt.
For this to succeed, SOLIS builds on concrete mechanisms. Open trading platforms make contracts and results visible and disclose conflicts of interest. Ethics councils for economic questions do not merely advise on major projects and agreements, they review them. Joint innovation funds, into which everyone pays according to their economic strength, share their results with everyone. How the world of many orders holds together as a whole without a ruler arising above it is set out in the chapter on the world order. Here the principle suffices: a networked world economy in which cooperation is stronger than competition, in which rules apply to everyone and not only to the weak, and in which invention is understood as a shared treasure. The world is too closely interwoven and too vulnerable to carry on the old patterns.