C3.6 Productive and Innovative Capacity
System Resilience. Can the system maintain function under stress and adapt to change?
Pass threshold
Real output per hour worked non-declining over 20 years, total factor productivity non-declining over 20 years, basic-needs output sustained at the system's own working time
Clause by clause:
- Real output per hour worked non-declining over 20 years
- total factor productivity non-declining over 20 years
- basic-needs output sustained at the system's own working time
What it asks
The system sustains and improves the output its other criteria distribute: productivity does not decline, improvement comes from better methods and not only from more capital, and basic needs are provisioned at the working time the system itself assumes.
Why it matters
Every distributive criterion can be passed on projections that hold output fixed. Whether a system can produce, and improve, what it proposes to distribute, including how it allocates resources when information is dispersed, is the question comparative economics most often puts to alternative systems. The criterion is defined on productivity and provisioning, not on growth of total output, so it builds in no preference against designs that choose shorter hours or lower consumption: a system may produce less in total and pass, provided output per hour does not decline and basic needs are met at its own hours.
How it differs from nearby criteria
Labor productivity from total factor productivity: output per hour can rise on capital accumulation alone while methods stagnate, as in the extensive growth of Soviet-type economies, so the second clause tests improvement in methods and allocation. C3.6 from C1.4: C3.6 asks whether output can be produced and improved; C1.4 asks whether security survives when labor is no longer needed to produce it.
How it is measured
Clause 1: real GDP per hour worked at constant prices (OECD Productivity Database, Penn World Table, Conference Board Total Economy Database), compound annual change over the 20 years to the stated date. Clause 2: total factor productivity at constant national prices (Penn World Table, rtfpna), compound annual change over the same window. Clause 3: the goods and services in the C1.1 poverty basket produced for the whole population at the average working time the system assumes (for a configured economy, its actual hours; for a design, its stated hours), shown by the economy's record or, for a design, by its own accounting of output per hour at those hours with component evidence. For a design, clauses 1 and 2 are scored on its mechanisms for allocating investment and rewarding improvement, calibrated by the record of the components it cites (protocol 4.1); a design that suppresses price or other allocation signals without a stated replacement for them cannot show either.
Indicators
OECD Productivity Database; Penn World Table 11.0 (rtfpna); Conference Board Total Economy Database.
How scores are anchored
1.0, pass
All three clauses shown: productivity and TFP non-declining over 20 years on published data, or, for a design, mechanisms for allocating investment and rewarding improvement whose components have that record, and a provisioning account at its stated hours.
0.5, partial
One or more clauses not shown, or shown only by projection resting on untested assumptions, where the system has a functioning allocation mechanism of its own (markets, planning with feedback, or another stated mechanism).
0.0, structural failure
Productivity or TFP declining over 20 years with no credible pathway under the system's own logic, or a design whose own assumptions imply that basic needs cannot be provisioned at its stated hours, or that suppresses allocation signals with no replacement.
Normative roots
From N13 (Incentive Alignment) + N1 (Human Flourishing).
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, Islamic Finance, Mutual Credit / LETS, Universal Basic Income, Universal Basic Services, MMT + Job Guarantee, Fully Automated Luxury Communism, Stakeholder Capitalism, State Capitalism / Qatar, Doughnut Economics, Libertarian Minarchism, Centrally Planned Socialism
Sources
Definition: NEEC_Criteria_v2_s45.md, Appendix V (Package B, decision 45.1). Anchors: NEEC_Criteria_v2_s45.md, Appendix V (Package B, decision 45.1).