Martin Ford summarizes the threatening connection between social and environmental crisis like this:

The greatest risk is that we could face a “perfect storm” – a situation where technological unemployment and environmental impact unfold roughly in parallel, reinforcing and perhaps even amplifying each other. If, however, we can fully leverage advancing technology as a solution – while recognizing and adapting to its implications for employment and the distribution of income – then the outcome is likely to be far more optimistic. Negotiating a path through these entangled forces and crafting a future that offers broad-based security and prosperity may prove to be the greatest challenge for our time. Understanding education as a public good which must not be influenced by competitive profit or power maximation is key to finding that path.

System Principles

The ARK establishes a social currency with the mission of changing mankind’s value system from competition to cooperation, from scarcity to abundance, from greed to empathy, from profit extracted from people & planet to value added to people & planet.

1. The ARK motivates people to focus on contribution and understands this planet and all its inhabitants as one system to which we have to contribute purposefully.
   1. The effective person focuses on contribution. He looks up from this work and outward toward goals. He asks, “What can I contribute that will significantly affect the performance and the results of the institution I serve?” His stress is on responsibility.
   2. The focus on contribution is the key to effectiveness: in one’s own work (its content, its level, its standards, and its impacts) in one’s relations with others) with superiors, associates, subordinates), and in the use of the tools such as meeting and reports.
   3. The great majority of people tend to focus downward. They are occupied with efforts rather than with results. They worry over what the organization and their superiors “owe” them and should do for them. And they are conscious above all of the authority they “should have.” As a result, they render themselves ineffectual.
   4. The man who focuses on efforts and who stresses his downward authority is a subordinate no matter how exalted his title and rank. But the man who focuses on contribution and who takes responsibility for results, no matter how junior, is in the most literal sense of the phrase “top management.” He holds himself accountable for the performance of the whole. That is the planet.
   5. The human who asks himself, What is the most important contribution I can make to the performance of this organization? Asks in effect, What self-development do I need? What knowledge and skill do I have to acquire to make the contribution I should be making? What strengths do I have to put to work? What standards do I have to set myself?The ARK motivates people to focus on contribution and understands this planet and all its inhabitants as one system to which we have to contribute purposefully.

       

2. The ARK structures a conditional universal basic income: everybody age 12 and older can sign up for an individual ARK account, no matter which sex, nationality, race, or faith. Children below age 12 can use the ARK through a connected account with their legal guardian.

    

3. The ARK structures a conditional income: registered individuals receive their income on the condition that they have acquired a minimum amount of Impact Points each month. It is subject to local governments and plutocrats to initiate regional pilot projects for these transfer payments, before a meaningful global north-south transfer structure has been found which empowers civil society to drive wealth redistribution and fair ecosystem service remuneration.

    

4. The ARK structures a performance based basic income: every registered individual who has completed learning assignments and showed sustainable behavior receives Impact Points accordingly. Personal performance translates to community performance and community performance translates to humankind’s performance.

    

5. The ARK is decentralized: by setting the proof of work on meaningful time spent on self, other or planet, no centralization can take place: every citizen of this planet is enabled to create value and perform individual ecosystem services. This decentralization is genuine, it is not only based on technological theory, but on human reality. As the use of mobile phones spreads throughout the world, everybody is able to sign up for an ARK account and participate – no expensive mining rigs are needed, but only one’s own time spent purposefully in a community registered on the ARK.

    

6. The ARK is secure: blockchain technology will guarantee that existing records can’t be manipulated.

    

7. Impact Points are units of time spent. 10 Impact Points equals 1 hour. As such a natural limitation is established on how many Impact Points can be created. Speculation, hording and system abuse are alien to the system design.
   1. The supply of time is totally inelastic. No matter how high the demand, the supply will not increase. There is no price for it and no marginal utility curve for it. Moreover, time is totally perishable and cannot be stored. Yesterday’s time is gone forever and will never come back. Time is, therefore, always in exceedingly short supply.
   2. Time is totally irreplaceable. Within limits we can substitute one resource for another, copper for aluminium, for instance. We can substitute capital for human labor. We can use more knowledge or more brawn. But there is no substitute for time.
   3. Everyhting requires time. It is the one true universal condition. All work takes place in time and uses up time. Yet most people take for granted this unique, irreplaceable, and necessary resource. Nothing else, perhaps, distinguishes effective executives as much as their tender loving care of time.
   4. Everybody can and should be the CEO of his time and be responsible for how it is spent. The ARK empowers individuals no matter where she is or who she is and transcends nationality, religion, education and gender.