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If a system is unstable, it is only a matter of time before you run out of options.
No currency unit in use today has a valid definition. The law names it and divides it (one euro is one hundred cent) but nowhere says what it is. What exists is a symbol, not a defined concept. And mathematics inherits its units: math over undefined units is undefined, over flawed unit definitions is false, and applied without clarification systemically misrepresents all that incorporates it.
Our common, operative notion of money is a misrepresentation. It treats the unit as both a measure of value and a commodity of value. The two exclude each other: a unit that carries value of its own cannot also record the value of what is exchanged (A = A + B only if B = 0). That conflation is a core cause of instability.
“A proposal contingent on undefined units says nothing in lots of words.”
There is a solution that doesn’t require any bank collapse or intervention into your bank accounts, anywhere.
For contrast, two recent cases: Paraguay, Ueno Bank (the central bank took the bank over; its app, cards and transfers stopped working; AP, 5 Nov 2026) · Serbia, Alta Banka (licence revoked, bankruptcy opened, deposits guaranteed up to €50,000; AP, 2 Nov 2026).
Before anything else, demand a valid transparent definition of currency units as units of measure, administered accordingly.
That is your role: understand it, and share it along with the following links with at least three other trusted friends.
Real value W = 100 enters at the first link. At every link the money service is charged: on the left as r per cent of the amount transacted, on the right as a flat fee f, the cost of recording one transaction. Move the sliders.
A percentage charged at each link is also charged on the earlier charges. A flat fee never is. Even with the flat fee raised to the percentage’s first charge (press “Match”), the charges on charges remain, and they grow without limit as links increase, at any rate above zero.
This is multiplication. It shows the mechanism’s property, not its magnitude in any actual economy.
r represents the percentage of value extracted over the unit’s range (the value it records) as opposed to over the real goods or services provided (domain). A flat fee can only correspond to the value of the service of using the unit (domain), while a percentage-based fee is explicitly calculated on the value range of others’ goods and services. This is the disconnect. The percentage can be charged openly, as fees and interest, or imputed, when the number of units changes relative to units of production. Pick a unit.
One cycle is a four-link chain: extraction and manufacturing, distribution, storage, retail. Each link adds its real value, and the money cost r (set above) is charged on everything recorded so far: Cj = (Cj−1 + wj)(1+r). The chain runs cycle after cycle, with each cycle’s recorded cost carried into the next, and production can grow from one cycle to the next.
premise Physical output cannot grow exponentially for ever: that would need ever-growing physical inputs and energy, which are finite (V16 Ch. 16; Appendix C, O-2). This is taken from observation, not from the mathematics. Stability does not need growth: at r = 0 recorded claims equal real value on every path.
illustrative The three value profiles are examples. Recorded margins cannot show the true split, because they already include money costs passed down the chain. The result holds for every profile; only its speed changes. The physical limit is set at three times the first cycle’s output, as in the Governor, approached logistically. Starting richer does not help either: wealth that is recorded compounds with the rest (V16 Corollary 1).
The money supplier is outside production. Its service is the same at every link: recording and settling the transaction.
The percentage of value extracted over the range (the value recorded) rather than charged for the service in the domain: fees, interest once priced in, and any change in production per unit (V16 Ch. 4, 13b, 17). Once in a price, it is part of every later link’s base.
Real chains add value at each link. That only adds to the amount the percentage is charged on; the charges on charges can only be larger.
When each cycle’s recorded cost becomes the next cycle’s base, m cycles of n links compound as one chain of n·m links (V16 Corollary 3). Slide n further.
Source: V16 Chapter 8, Theorem 1 (Cn = W(1+r)n); Corollary 3; Ch. 13b (gold, Bitcoin, deflation pathway); Ch. 17 (unit-cost destabilisation). Cost per payment: Schmiedel, Kostova & Ruttenberg, ECB Occasional Paper 137 (2012), 2009 data, national examples. Status: derived throughout, apart from the stated premise on physical output.
Claims on the economy grow each turn. Keep every sector below what it can bear for as long as you can.
Learner mode, in the control bar at the bottom, pauses the run at half covered and before any sector goes into crisis, and explains your options. Switch it off to play without interruptions.
The lake is everything the economy can carry: its real value, plus the uncompensated liability each sector can bear before it goes into crisis. Recorded claims fill it. They grow by the same proportion every turn, like lilies doubling on a pond, so the lake looks almost empty for a long time and then fills in a few turns. Once it is full, no transfer can keep every sector out of crisis: that is the point of no return.
Each limit is a share of real value: how much uncompensated liability that sector can absorb before it goes into crisis. Change them before starting a run and watch what moves: only the timing, and which sector breaks first.
The pond is what the economy can carry ; the lily pads are recorded claims. Financing a new chain enlarges the pond toward the physical horizon (dashed); crises shrink both the pond and the horizon.
The same run played four ways under the game’s own rules, at the r set above. Your own run is drawn on top as you play.
How to use them. When a sector turns red, it is in crisis: it carries more than it can bear. Move part of its load along one of the arrows to a sector with room. Each press moves 10% of real value. The total never changes; you only choose who bears it. Prices and Savers & creditors have no arrow out, so once they are full, only financing a new chain (which raises what every sector can bear, and adds claims that compound) or conceding helps.
What moves between sectors is instability. The numbers are its nominal measure.
Sources: V16 Ch. 8 (Theorem 1); Ch. 12 (Stein’s dirt: instability is moved, not removed); Ch. 14 (attenuation and its cost); Ch. 15 (growth toward Vmax); Ch. 18 (units record value given); Ch. 19a and condition 9 (access to units as a credit decision); Ch. 24 (thresholds); Appendix C, O-1. Stein (2003), Respect the Unstable; Martins & Dahleh (2008).
© 2026 Marc Gauvin. The Game of Our Lives (beta). Feedback: community@moneytransparency.com