Resilience Economics

Basic Information

Resilience Economics is a type of possible economic system which resembles traditional capitalism, but in which economic actors are prevented from becoming "too big to fail" - leading to a more flexible, redundant, and decentralized economy with a better ability to withstand economic crises at the cost of some efficiency.

The obvious problem, of course, being, who gets to decide what to break up, when and how… the devil, as always, is in the details.

Sources

Bibliography

1. One Model for a New World Economy by Jamais Cascio

2. Three Possible Economic Models (Part 1) by Jamais Cascio

3. Three Possible Economic Models (Part II) by Jamais Cascio

Game and Story Use

• As any company which gets too big within its market sector will get busted up and split into smaller companies, a lot of intrigue will revolve around proving or making it appear that competitors have become "too big" to weaken them - and about corporations concealing their true size.
• In a fantasy setting, such a system might evolve after a nation has had a number of bad experiences with large guilds or merchant houses who have abused their near-monopolistic status too often. If a new government is out to spit up large mercantile organizations to give smaller operators a chance, there will be a lot of intrigue and hostility between those former economic powerhouses and the new government.
• The transition period would be an interesting time. Small businesses and corporate raiders would be setting up to take advantage of monopolies breaking up, while large corporations would be trying to stop the breakups or get specific exemptions. The loss of network effects would allow for PCs to act as middlemen between the new companies, while exposed proprietary information could lead to new inventions or people taking advantage of formerly-secret vulnerabilities in existing products.
• This regime has the potential to give worrying levels of power to deep state style bodies and similar conspiracies, using captured regulators to destroy organisations they consider problematic.