#3 Fix the economy

Align productivity, energy costs, and innovation incentives for sustainable growth.

Mission workspace

Explore the architecture

Electricity-market design space

There is no single way to design an electricity market. Every proposal embodies choices about timing, control, pricing, participation, network representation, scarcity, fairness and investment. Explore the decisions below before assessing how candidate solutions combine them into complete architectures.

8 design decisions32 design options6 categories

Design category

Architecture and control

2 decisions

Policy operating model

Select one

Should policy be set by fixed rules, discretion, or measured feedback?

Compares fixed rules, ad hoc discretionary intervention, closed-loop feedback control and fully predictive/adaptive control.

Design options

4 options

Fixed policy rules

Rates and thresholds are set and left largely unchanged regardless of observed outcomes.

Discretionary intervention

Policy changes when decision-makers judge it necessary, without a systematic measurement-and-response loop.

Feedback control

Desired outcomes are compared with measured outcomes and policy signals are adjusted to reduce the resulting error, subject to stability and rate constraints.

Predictive / adaptive control

Policy is chosen by forecasting trajectories under candidate interventions over a horizon (model predictive control) and re-planning as the model and data improve.

Role of markets

Select one

How should production and allocation decisions be made within the economy?

Compares central planning, heavily directed markets, decentralised markets operating within democratically chosen constraints, and laissez-faire.

Design options

4 options

Central planning

The state decides what is produced, in what quantity, by whom.

Heavily directed markets

Markets exist but the state closely manages prices, quantities or market entry across most sectors.

Decentralised markets within constraints

The state sets objectives, constraints and incentive signals; households, businesses and investors continue to make decentralised production, consumption and investment decisions within them.

Laissez-faire

Markets operate with minimal state-imposed objectives, constraints or incentive signals.

Design category

Objectives

1 decision

Primary objective of economic policy

Select one

What should economic policy fundamentally optimise for?

Compares single-metric objectives (growth, fiscal balance, a wellbeing index) against a multi-objective, constrained system-performance view.

Design options

4 options

GDP growth

Policy is judged primarily by growth in aggregate monetary output.

Fiscal sustainability

Policy is judged primarily by government debt and deficit trajectories.

Wellbeing

Policy is judged primarily against a single composite wellbeing index.

Multi-objective system performance

Policy is judged against an explicit vector of wellbeing, economic freedom, productive capacity, resilience and environmental outcomes, subject to physical and social constraints, without collapsing them into one scalar.

Design category

Taxation and spending

2 decisions

Primary taxation philosophy

Select one

What should the tax base primarily fall on?

Compares taxing income/activity, consumption, wealth/assets, negative physical outcomes, or a deliberate mix.

Design options

5 options

Income / activity-based

Tax falls primarily on employment, income and productive business activity.

Consumption-based

Tax falls primarily on spending, largely independent of what is bought or its physical consequences.

Wealth / asset-based

Tax falls primarily on accumulated wealth and assets.

Negative-outcome-based

Tax falls primarily on physical outcomes society wants less of, such as virgin resource extraction, pollution and unrecoverable waste.

Mixed

Revenue continues to come from several bases, with the mix deliberately shifted over time.

Public spending evaluation

Select one

How should public expenditure be judged?

Compares evaluating spend by budget utilisation, by outputs delivered, by measured outcomes, or by public value produced per unit of resource.

Design options

4 options

Budget utilisation

Spending is judged mainly by whether allocated budgets were spent.

Outputs

Spending is judged by activity delivered (appointments held, cases processed, units built).

Measured outcomes

Spending is judged by the resulting change in the wellbeing metrics it was intended to move.

Public value per resource

Spending is judged by measured outcome improvement per unit of total resource cost, including administration, so causal accountability and efficiency are assessed together.

Design category

Environment

1 decision

Environmental policy mechanism

Select one

What mechanism should link environmental objectives to economic behaviour?

Compares prescriptive regulation, fixed environmental taxation, carbon pricing, adaptive outcome-based signals, or a mix.

Design options

5 options

Prescriptive regulation

Government specifies permitted processes, materials or technologies directly.

Fixed environmental taxation

A tax rate on an environmentally relevant base is set and left largely unchanged.

Carbon pricing

A price is attached specifically to carbon emissions, via tax or a trading scheme.

Adaptive outcome-based signals

Fiscal signals on product- and material-level physical characteristics are adjusted over time in response to the gap between desired and observed physical outcomes.

Mixed

Regulation, fixed taxation and adaptive signals are combined, with weight shifting over time.

Design category

Digital infrastructure

1 decision

Digital state architecture

Select one

How should the digital systems underpinning economic policy be organised?

Compares disconnected departmental silos, one centralised database, and federated interoperable infrastructure with defined interfaces.

Design options

3 options

Departmental silos

Each department or agency operates separate, largely disconnected systems and repeatedly collects the same information.

Centralised database

A single central store holds most economically relevant data about individuals and businesses.

Federated / interoperable infrastructure

Separate systems for identity, payments, taxation, product information, business registration, public expenditure, infrastructure and environmental data interoperate through common standards and controlled-access interfaces, with no single point holding everything.

Design category

Governance and safeguards

1 decision

Privacy

Select one

How should privacy be treated in the design?

Compares treating privacy as a secondary consideration, a regulatory/compliance requirement applied afterwards, or an architectural constraint designed in from the start.

Design options

3 options

Secondary consideration

Data is collected wherever useful; privacy is addressed only if it becomes a problem.

Regulatory / compliance requirement

Systems are built first, then brought into compliance with data-protection law.

Architectural constraint

Data minimisation, purpose limitation, access control and, where possible, aggregation or verification-without-disclosure are designed into the system from the outset, alongside the measurement it needs to function.

See how solutions navigate the design space

Candidate solutions combine these individual choices into complete market architectures. Continue to the Solutions tab to review the proposals currently being assessed.

View candidate solutions