🚧 Draft in Progress — This narrative holon is evolving and open for remix.

💧 Vital Capital Flows in the MAP¶

Modeling value as flow in regenerative coordination¶

🌱 What is Vital Capital?¶

In the MAP, Vital Capital refers to the core forms of value that sustain and regenerate life — across human, ecological, social, and technological systems. Rather than reducing value to money, MAP enables the flow of diverse capital types through consent-based Promises and Agreements.

Vital Capital is the lifeblood of the MAP.
It is what moves when Cells make Promises, activate Dances, and join Agent Spaces.

MAP’s capital model draws from the work of: - Context-Based Sustainability (CBS) (McElroy, 2008) - Multi-Capital Frameworks in integrated reporting - Doughnut Economics (Kate Raworth, 2017) - Regenerative Economics (e.g. John Fullerton, Capital Institute)

These sources offer a multi-capital lens for understanding and tracking value beyond financial terms — which the MAP evolves into a holon-native, flow-oriented implementation.

🔠 Vital Capital Types¶

The MAP supports a rich typology of Vital Capital. This can be extended or customized by communities, but core types include:

Capital Type	Description
Natural Capital	Ecosystem services, land, water, air, biodiversity
Human Capital	Skills, labor, knowledge, health, attention
Social Capital	Trust, reputation, relationships, group cohesion
Cultural Capital	Stories, rituals, symbols, traditions, identity
Built Capital	Tools, infrastructure, digital systems, physical resources
Financial Capital	Currency, tokens, credit, investment flows
Experiential Capital	Aesthetic, emotional, and lived experience
Memetic Capital	Values, beliefs, narrative codes, memetic signatures
Temporal Capital	Time, availability, scheduling attention
Spiritual Capital	Purpose, presence, connection to meaning (optional but available)

📘 Adapted and extended from: Context-Based Sustainability (CBS), Multi-Capital Frameworks, Doughnut Economics, and regenerative design systems.

🔁 Capital Flows in MAP Promises¶

Every Promise in MAP includes one or more Vital Capital Flows, specifying:

capitalType: What kind of capital is flowing
direction: Incoming / outgoing (from the issuer's perspective)
quantity: Scalar (e.g. 10 hours), symbolic (e.g. “ongoing”), or subjective (“sufficient”)
conditions: Rules or thresholds that gate the flow
impact: Intended or observed outcomes of the flow

Example:¶

"vitalCapitalFlows" : [
  {
    "capitalType": "Human Capital",
    "direction": "outgoing",
    "quantity": "4 hours/week",
    "conditions": ["trustLevel > 0.7"],
    "impact": "Skill development for youth members"
  },
  {
    "capitalType": "Social Capital",
    "direction": "incoming",
    "impact": "Strengthened mutual trust within community"
  }
]

🔄 Patterns of Flow¶

MAP supports several flow archetypes, encoded in Promise Types:

Pattern	Description
Gift Flow	Unconditional giving (e.g. "I will share this resource freely.")
Reciprocal Flow	Mutual exchange based on parity or complementarity
Mutualism	Coordinated flows for shared benefit (e.g. co-creation of a shared resource)
Stewardship Flow	One party promises to care for or maintain value on behalf of others
Commons Contribution	Value flows into a collectively accessible pool
Conditional Flow	Value flows only if certain criteria are met (e.g. trust, role, proposal outcome)

These patterns shape how Vital Capital is activated, trusted, and restored over time.

📏 Thresholds, Sustainability Quotients, and Dashboards¶

To support meaningful regenerative coordination, the MAP integrates key ideas from Context-Based Sustainability (CBS), including:

Sustainability Thresholds: Concrete boundaries (ecological, social, economic) that define what constitutes a sustainable state for a Cell.
Sustainability Quotients: Measurements that relate a Cell’s actual performance to its sustainability thresholds.
Dashboards: Interfaces in DAHN that surface these metrics to support awareness, feedback, and intentional design.

🧠 A Cell is sustainable to the extent that its resource flows and behaviors remain within the thresholds that define what it can justly and safely take, give, or impact — in context.

🔹 What Is a Threshold?¶

A Threshold defines the contextually appropriate limit for a particular Vital Capital flow or stock. This may be:

Ecological: How much fresh water can be used without degrading the watershed?
Social: What is the minimum level of human care required for dignity within a community?
Economic: What resource balances ensure viability without extraction?

Thresholds are defined per capital type, and may be set by: - Collective Cell governance - Commons stewardship policies - Scientific or traditional knowledge - Memetic codes embedded in Life Code

🔹 Sustainability Quotient (SQ)¶

The Sustainability Quotient is calculated by comparing a Cell’s actual Vital Capital usage or contribution against its threshold:

Sustainability Quotient (SQ) = Actual Impact / Contextual Threshold
- If SQ ≤ 1 → the flow is **within sustainable bounds**
- If SQ > 1 → the flow **exceeds** the sustainable threshold (overshoot)

Each Vital Capital type can have its own SQ, giving a multi-dimensional view of sustainability.

🌿 MAP doesn’t reduce sustainability to a single score — it provides a mosaic of context-aware indicators.

🔹 Example: Water Use¶

Natural Capital: Water
Threshold: 50L/day/person based on regional replenishment rate
Actual use: 40L/day/person
SQ: 40 ÷ 50 = 0.80 → Sustainable (20% headroom)

In DAHN, this would show up in the Capital Compass Dashboard as: - A green arc with 80% fill - Optional narrative: “Usage within sustainable limits” - Suggestion: "Consider offering surplus water access as a Commons Promise"

🔹 Capital Dashboards for Every Cell¶

Every Cell — individual or collective — can activate Dashboards in DAHN to monitor:

Dimension	What It Shows
Vital Capital Flow	Inflows and outflows by type (daily, weekly, cumulative)
Capital Stocks	What is being stored, cultivated, depleted
Sustainability Quotients	Contextual performance vs. thresholds
Trend Arcs	Velocity and directionality of capital movement
Alerts / Prompts	Notifications when nearing thresholds or experiencing overshoot
Regenerative Insights	Suggestions for restorative Promises or capital exchanges

These Dashboards are configurable, privacy-respecting, and may be: - Fully private (for self-awareness) - Shared selectively with Agent Spaces - Used as inputs to governance decisions (e.g. capacity to take on a new role)

🔹 Sources of Threshold Definitions¶

MAP enables Cells to define or adopt threshold models appropriate to their context:

Ecological: planetary boundaries, bioregional thresholds, permaculture principles
Social: dignity floors, mutual aid agreements, care covenants
Economic: contribution minimums, non-extractive pricing models
Cultural: time for ritual, space for story, respect for silence

Thresholds are defined in self-describing holons, and may be: - Versioned - Co-governed - Aligned with memeplexes or value codes

🔹 Application in Promises and Agreements¶

Promises and Agreements can reference thresholds:

“This Promise is only active if the Cell’s Human Capital SQ is < 1”
“This Agreement includes a clause for restorative flows if Memetic Capital falls below threshold”
“Water sharing will be paused when SQ > 1.1 and restored when SQ < 0.9”

This enables responsiveness to context — not abstract commitments.

🧭 Why This Matters¶

Most systems today track value without context. MAP ensures:

Value flows are measured relative to what's just and regenerative
Sovereign agents have the tools to understand their impact
Coordination can be driven by shared thresholds, not just transactions

MAP’s sustainability model is not a top-down metric — it’s a living membrane of feedback and consent, enabling Cells to thrive in coherence with each other and the world.

📊 Flow Tracking and Impact¶

Vital Capital Flows can be:

Observed by peers or stewards
Visualized using DAHN modules (e.g. the Capital Compass)
Summarized in Weaves or Collective Cell dashboards
Visualized with timelines, Sankey diagrams, or graph overlays

Impact Awareness¶

Each flow may optionally include:

Intended Impact: the goal or purpose of the flow
Observed Impact: narrative or quantitative feedback
Replenishment Policy: how the capital will be renewed (if applicable)

This allows capital-aware decision-making, such as:

Pausing new Promises if a capital type is overdrawn
Rebalancing within an Agent Space
Inviting support or restoration from allied Cells

🔎 Open Threads for Vital Capital Design¶

1. Quantification & Subjectivity¶

How do we model subjective capital (e.g. trust, care, presence) without oversimplifying or abstracting away its richness?

2. Capital Health & Balance¶

What tools or visualizations help a Cell or Collective Cell know: - What’s flowing in/out? - What’s depleted or thriving? - What needs replenishment?

3. Emergent Capital Types¶

How can communities define their own capital ontologies (e.g. Ritual Capital, Ancestral Capital) and make them interoperable?

4. Reputation and Feedback¶

How do we track fulfillment and impact of capital flows without coercion or surveillance?

5. Collective Flow Governance¶

What scaffolds and protocols allow Agent Spaces to: - Define policies for commons contributions - Steward pooled capital responsibly - Encourage reciprocal, regenerative flows?

💡 Why Vital Capital?¶

By modeling value as flow — not as static assets — the MAP supports:

Regenerative economics
Transparent coordination
Adaptive governance
Distributed decision-making
Systemic trust and resilience

MAP doesn't just move information or money.
It flows what matters — care, knowledge, trust, story, time, and presence.