C1.4 Automation Resilience
Material Security. Can the system provide material necessities reliably and universally?
Pass threshold
Poverty <8% and aggregate demand >85% baseline in each of the 30%, 50% and 70% displacement scenarios
Clause by clause:
- Poverty <8%
- aggregate demand >85% baseline
Every clause: in each of the 30%, 50% and 70% displacement scenarios.
What it asks
Maintain material security as human labor becomes increasingly optional: poverty <8% and aggregate demand >85% of baseline in each of three scenarios in which 30%, 50% and 70% of baseline paid working hours are displaced by automation.
Why it matters
This criterion alone disqualifies most existing frameworks. When machines replace humans at scale, systems dependent on wage labor for both income and aggregate demand collapse into deflationary spirals that no monetary policy can resolve.
How it is measured
Stress test across the three automation scenarios, a displacement of 30%, 50% or 70% of baseline paid working hours, with no assumption about when each occurs. In each, poverty is measured at the Societal Poverty Line, as in C1.1, and aggregate demand as real final consumption expenditure relative to the pre-displacement baseline. The Pass Threshold's figures apply in every scenario.
Indicators
Societal Poverty Line (as C1.1); national accounts final consumption expenditure; for a design, its own model of the three scenarios.
How scores are anchored
1.0, pass
An explicit mechanism decoupling income/demand from employment, robust in the system's own design logic across displacement severities. CCO-PTF-CIP-SZH (1.0): "Stress testing shows the system maintains poverty <5% and aggregate demand 90-110% baseline across 30%, 50%, 70% job displacement scenarios."
0.5, partial
A buffer or partial mechanism exists but is not designed for or shown to survive the higher-severity scenarios. Nordic Social Democracy (0.5): "Generous unemployment benefits... still fundamentally dependent on wage labor for tax revenue and social cohesion. Cannot sustain 50-70% displacement scenarios."
0.0, structural failure
No mechanism; system structurally requires wage labor for both income distribution and demand. Status Quo Market Capitalism (0.0): "No mechanism exists to maintain either as automation advances... would trigger a deflationary spiral."
Apply it carefully; see also Appendix G for a documented case where a candidate evidentiary source (a companion simulation) could not actually be used to evaluate a system at this criterion's higher severities. v2.0 (Session 45): this criterion's Pass Threshold was reworded without a change of bar (K6, R1; NEEC_Criteria_v2_s45.md); the band texts stand.
Normative roots
From N2 (Labor Non-Necessity) + N11 (Automation Compatibility).
Judgment calls on this criterion
How the systems score
0.5, partial
CCO-PTF-CIP-SZH, Participatory Economics, Integral, Degrowth Economics, Nordic Social Democracy, Market Socialism, Sovereign Wealth Fund Statism, Georgism / LVT, Ostrom Commons, Mutual Credit / LETS, State Capitalism / Singapore, Universal Basic Income, Universal Basic Services, MMT + Job Guarantee, State Capitalism / China, Fully Automated Luxury Communism, State Capitalism / Qatar, Centrally Planned Socialism
0.0, structural failure
Islamic Finance, Status Quo Market Capitalism, Stakeholder Capitalism, Doughnut Economics, Libertarian Minarchism
Sources
Definition: Paper Section 6; restated in v2.0 (NEEC_Criteria_v2_s45.md, Appendix V). Anchors: Paper Appendix H.7.