Key Terms in Plain Language

Some ideas on this site come from economics, systems science and psychology, and a few are terms the author coined because nothing else fit. Here each one is explained in a single plain sentence. Wherever you see a word with a dotted underline elsewhere on the site, you can point at it to see its meaning, or follow it here.

absentee ownership: Absentee ownership is owning a home, farm or business you do not live in or work in yourself, and collecting money from the people who do.
agent-based model / Monte Carlo / calibration / hindcast: These are simulation methods: an agent-based model simulates many individual people acting by simple rules; Monte Carlo means running a model many times with random variation; calibration means tuning it to real data; a hindcast checks whether it can "predict" the past correctly.
asset lock: An asset lock is a written rule that a group's shared property must stay with the group, or go to a similar group, so that no single member can take it if they leave or the group closes.
attractor (oligarchic / egalitarian): An attractor is a state that a system keeps sliding back toward, the way a ball rolls back to the bottom of a bowl; here, either a society ruled by a few or a fairly equal one.
care circle: A care circle is a few families who take turns looking after each other's children, elderly relatives or disabled members.
citizens' assembly: A citizens' assembly is a randomly chosen group of ordinary people who study an issue together and recommend what to do.
collective action problem: A collective action problem is a situation where everyone would gain if all cooperated, but each person on their own is tempted to hold back and wait for others.
commodification: Commodification is turning something that was not for sale, such as water, care or land, into a product people must pay for.
commons: A commons is something a community owns and looks after together, such as land, water, tools or knowledge, under rules the users make themselves.
commons governance / commons-based peer production: Commons governance is how a community makes and enforces the rules for something it shares; commons-based peer production is when volunteers build something together and share it freely, like Wikipedia.
community land trust (CLT): A community land trust is a local non-profit that owns land on behalf of the community for good, so homes on it stay affordable and cannot be sold for profit.
cooperative (co-op): A cooperative is a business or group owned and run by its own members (its workers, users or residents), who share the decisions and the benefits.
credit union / CDFI: A credit union is a bank owned by its own customers. A CDFI (Community Development Financial Institution) is a lender set up to serve communities that ordinary banks neglect.
Currency Dependency Ratio (CDR): The Currency Dependency Ratio is the share of a household's basic needs that it still has to pay for with money.
currency-based (economy/system): A currency-based economy is any system where you must have money to get food, housing, healthcare and other basics.
emergent / emergence: Emergence is when a big pattern arises on its own from many small actions, without anyone planning it, the way traffic jams form.
enclosure: Enclosure is the fencing off or taking over of land or resources that a community used to share, turning them into someone's private property.
equilibrium: An equilibrium is a balance point where the forces pushing a system in different directions cancel out, so it stays put until something disturbs it.
Essential Provision Coverage: Essential Provision Coverage counts which basic needs (meals, homes, hours of care, clinic visits) a community now meets reliably without anyone paying.
externality / externalities: An externality is a cost (like pollution) or a benefit that falls on people who were not part of the deal that caused it.
extraction / extractive: Extraction is when people at the top take money or value from others' work, homes or land without giving back anything of matching worth.
federation / federate: A federation is a group of local communities that agree to work together and share resources, while each one keeps control of its own affairs and can leave.
feedback loop / self-reinforcing: A feedback loop is a cycle in which a result feeds back into its own cause, so it keeps growing (or keeps shrinking) by itself.
financialization: Financialization is when more and more of the economy (including homes) is run to make money for investors rather than to meet people's needs.
free rider / free-riding: A free rider is someone who takes from a shared system without doing their part.
game theory / prisoner's dilemma: Game theory is the study of how people make choices when the result depends on what others choose too.
Gini coefficient / Gini index: The Gini number measures how unequal incomes or wealth are: 0 means everyone has the same and 100 means one person has everything, so lower is more equal.
institutional capture / capture: "Capture" is when a small group of rich or powerful people quietly takes control of courts, regulators, media or government, so that these serve that group instead of the public.
intentional community: An intentional community is a group of people who choose to live near each other or together and share some of their homes, work, money or decisions.
limited-equity cooperative: A limited-equity cooperative is a housing co-op where residents own their homes together, but when they leave they can sell their share only for a capped price, so the homes stay affordable.
lock-in: Lock-in is when a system becomes so entrenched that changing it gets harder and harder, even when most people would prefer something else.
median: The median is the middle value: half of people have more and half have less.
mesh network: A mesh network is a community-built internet in which each household's device passes signals to its neighbours, so it works without a big telecom company.
meta-analysis / peer-reviewed: A peer-reviewed study has been checked by other experts before publication; a meta-analysis combines the results of many studies to get a more reliable answer.
modern feudalism / modern feudal lords: “Modern feudalism” is the author’s name for today’s situation, in which a few owners control the homes, land and jobs that everyone else depends on, much as medieval lords controlled the land their peasants lived on.
multiplicative dynamics: Multiplicative dynamics means that gains grow in proportion to what you already have, so a big pile grows faster than a small one, as with interest.
mutual aid: Mutual aid is neighbours helping each other directly with food, childcare, rides or repairs, as equals and without payment.
mutual credit: Mutual credit is a shared record in which members can give and receive goods or work now and balance it later, with no bank and no interest.
neoliberal / neoliberalism: Neoliberalism is the set of policies, common since about 1980, of cutting public services, selling public assets to private companies and loosening rules on business.
node / local node: A local node is a small group of community projects in one area that coordinate with each other, for example by sharing paperwork, volunteers and referrals, without merging into one organization.
oligarchic capture: Oligarchic capture is the process by which a small, wealthy group gradually takes control of a country's economy and government.
Ostrom / Ostrom's design principles: Elinor Ostrom was a Nobel-winning researcher who studied hundreds of communities and found eight common rules that let people share land, water or fish for centuries without running them out.
paradigm / paradigm shift: A paradigm is a whole way of seeing how the world works; a paradigm shift is when a society switches to a new one.
Pareto distribution / power law: A Pareto (or "power law") distribution is a pattern in which a tiny number of people hold a huge share of something, such as the richest 1% holding a large share of all wealth.
participatory budgeting: Participatory budgeting is when ordinary residents vote directly on how part of a city's money is spent.
path dependence: Path dependence means that choices made long ago limit the choices open today, even when the original reasons no longer apply.
peer-coordinated (society / systems): Peer-coordinated means people organize the work among themselves as equals, without bosses or a central authority giving orders.
Phase 7B: Phase 7B is the late step in the roadmap when, once community alternatives already work, democratic law ends the power of some people to own what others need (for example, renting out homes they do not live in), while letting everyone keep their own home and personal belongings.
phase transition: A phase transition is a sudden change in how a whole system behaves once a threshold is crossed, the way water turns to ice at zero degrees.
plurinational / Buen Vivir: A plurinational state legally recognizes several peoples (such as Indigenous nations) within one country; Buen Vivir ("living well") is an Andean idea that a good life means harmony with community and nature, not ever-growing income.
polycentric (governance / coordination / scaling): Polycentric means "with many centres": decisions are made by many local groups that coordinate with each other, rather than by one central authority.
precarity / precarious work: Precarity means living without security: unstable work, unsure income, and the constant risk of losing your home or job.
public compact: A public compact is a written, public agreement between community groups and a local government or large institution such as a hospital, about working together.
r > g: "r > g" is economist Thomas Piketty's shorthand for the finding that money earned from owning wealth usually grows faster than the economy as a whole (and so faster than wages).
readiness gate: A readiness gate is a checklist a community must pass before moving to the next stage, to make sure the new system can really carry the load.
regulatory capture: Regulatory capture is when the government agency meant to watch over an industry ends up serving that industry instead of the public.
reinforcement / reinforcers: In behavioural science, reinforcement is what makes a behaviour more likely to be repeated, usually a reward that follows it.
rent extraction: Rent extraction means getting paid simply for owning something other people need (a home, land, a patent) rather than for doing useful work.
rentier: A rentier state or person lives mainly on income from owning something, such as oil, land or property, rather than from producing things.
self-devouring cycle: The “self-devouring cycle” is the author’s term for an economy that must keep selling more to survive, so it makes things that wear out, keeps people buying and working to pay for them, and uses up the people and the natural world it depends on.
sociocracy / consent decision-making: Sociocracy is a way of running a group in which a proposal passes when no one has a serious, reasoned objection, rather than needing everyone's enthusiastic agreement.
sortition: Sortition is choosing decision-makers by random lottery from ordinary citizens, the way juries are chosen.
sovereign: "Sovereign" here means having the final say; the roadmap means that AI may suggest, but people always decide.
stewardship: Stewardship means looking after something on behalf of everyone who uses or depends on it, instead of owning it for your own profit.
structural / structurally: When we call a problem "structural", we mean it comes from the rules and setup of the system itself, so it keeps happening no matter which people are in charge.
structural dynamics: Structural dynamics are the forces built into a system's rules that push things in one direction over time, whoever is in charge.
subsidiarity: Subsidiarity means each decision is made by the smallest, most local group that can handle it well.
systemic: Systemic means "built into the whole system", not the fault of one person or one bad decision.
three kinds of scarcity: The three kinds of scarcity are physical (there is not enough of something), capacity (it exists, but production, transport, labor or distribution cannot yet get it to everyone) and monetary (the goods and the capacity to deliver them exist, but people lack the money for access).
time bank: A time bank is a group where members trade hours of help, and every hour counts the same whatever the task.
tipping point: A tipping point is the moment when a slow change suddenly becomes fast and very hard to reverse.
the Transition: The Transition is this project’s name for a gradual, peaceful and voluntary change from a society where you need money to get the basics to one where communities meet people’s needs directly, completed through democratic law.

Key Terms in Plain Language

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