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Adaptive Economic Operating System

A feedback-controlled market economy designed around human wellbeing, productive freedom, circular resource use and measurable public value.

Solution section

Circular Product Lifecycles

The branching paths a product can take after use, and why circularity can be a capitalist incentive rather than a request to consume less.

Circular product lifecycles

A product's life can be represented as a branching path rather than a straight line to landfill:

Raw Materials→Manufacture→Product→Use→{Continued useRepairReuseRefurbishmentRemanufactureComponent recoveryRecyclingWaste\text{Raw Materials} \rightarrow \text{Manufacture} \rightarrow \text{Product} \rightarrow \text{Use} \rightarrow \begin{cases} \text{Continued use} \\ \text{Repair} \\ \text{Reuse} \\ \text{Refurbishment} \\ \text{Remanufacture} \\ \text{Component recovery} \\ \text{Recycling} \\ \text{Waste} \end{cases}

These pathways are economically and physically different: repairing an appliance can deliver essentially the same household service as manufacturing a replacement, for a fraction of the virgin resource input. Economic value and material throughput are therefore not the same quantity, and an economy could in principle deliver more useful service from fewer virgin resources.

This is presented as a claim to test, not a certainty. The distinguishing design idea is that circularity should be pursued as part of ordinary capitalist incentive, not primarily as a request for people to consume less, and not through central allocation of materials. If the tax and information architecture rewards durability, repairability, recycled content and effective recovery, businesses can profit from durability, repair, reuse, remanufacturing, sharing and better design just as readily as from higher throughput — the state changes the economic environment firms optimise within; it does not instruct any firm how to respond to it.