principles.md (2595B)
1 # Principles 2 3 These principles are about the model behind the vocabulary. 4 5 1. The model must enable collaboration between different people in different organizations using different software on different platforms using different human and programming languages. 6 2. The model must be able to form global networks which can track the flows of resources (values) forwards and backwards. Or maybe it would be better to say "in any direction", but forwards means in the direction of value creation, and backwards means in the direction of return or compensation. 7 3. Corollary: the model must be able to support various fair methods of distribution of resources. The ability to find contributions to the network or the economy regardless of where and when in the network configuration those contributions occurred is key. 8 4. The model must also be able to support coordinating work between different people in different organizations. People who are not concerned with rewards may still want to coordinate work. 9 5. The model must be able to support circular economies, value flows where resources come full cycle to be fed into the same set or other processes. Recycling, re-use, and other ways to encourage resources not becoming waste, must be supported. Flows currently considered "externalities" should be able to be internalized in the model. 10 5. The model must be fractal. It must support global views of networks in aggregate as well as drilling down to lower and lower levels of detail. Those lower levels of detail, for example inside one organization, may require permissions. 11 6. The model must also work on the Knowledge, Plan and Observation levels, where the objects on each level are linked appropriately to the other levels. 12 7. The model must support non-business-as-usual organizational forms and economic relationships in addition to traditional business organizations and relationships. These organizational forms can be as varied as the people and groups who create them want. VF in particular embraces this experimentation towards next-economy / solidarity-economy / commons-based-economy / P2P-economy/etc. in this transitional time. 13 8. The model must support systems where all the people involved can get shares of the outcome to allocate as they wish. The shared outcome could be resources produced by the contributors, like food, or it could be income (reciprocal resources exchanged for resources produced). A group can choose to introduce various monetary currencies into their flows but can also do all the coordination and accounting without introducing such artifacts.