Economic Rebalancing
Economic Rebalancing is the economic framework of the Sanctuary Protocol, proposing the elimination of unnecessary work and redistribution of time, based on the revelation from COVID-19 that 40-60% of jobs are not essential to civilization.
The COVID Revelation
In March 2020, the world ran an experiment: what happens when we stop most work?
The answer: not collapse. Essential services continued. Supply chains adapted. Life went on with roughly half the workforce staying home.
What we learned:
- 40-60% of jobs are not essential to civilization
- The "essential workers" were often the lowest paid
- Many high-paying jobs produce nothing of tangible value
- Human beings can adapt to radically different work patterns
Bullshit Jobs
David Graeber named this phenomenon bullshit jobs: work that exists not because it's needed, but because the system generates employment as its own output.
Signs of a bullshit job:
- You could disappear for a week and no one would notice
- You can't explain what you do to a child
- Your main output is meetings, emails, and reports read by no one
- The role exists to justify someone else's headcount
Graeber's research found that 37-50% of workers surveyed believed their jobs were meaningless.
This isn't laziness or cynicism. It's honest assessment. People know when their work matters and when it doesn't.
What Actually Matters
Essential Work During COVID
- Healthcare
- Food production and distribution
- Infrastructure maintenance
- Sanitation and waste management
- Childcare and education
- Emergency services
- Logistics and delivery
What Didn't Collapse When Paused
- Most management consulting
- Most marketing and advertising
- Most financial services intermediation
- Most administrative overhead
- Most political activity
The economy survived because the meaningful work continued. The bullshit jobs were overhead cost, not productive input.
The Time Restoration Principle
The Sanctuary Protocol proposes: eliminate the bullshit and return the time.
If 50% of work is unnecessary, halve the work week. Not through unemployment, but through redistribution.
Everyone works less. Everyone gains time.
| Current Model | Restored Model | |
|---|---|---|
| Work hours | 40-60 hour work weeks for employed | 20-30 hour work weeks standard |
| Employment | Unemployment and underemployment for some | Full employment on meaningful tasks |
| Bullshit jobs | Create busy-work for millions | Eliminated |
| Care work | Unpaid and undervalued | Recognized as real work |
| Safety net | Patchy, conditional | Universal basic services guarantee |
Parents Get Their Kids Back
A parent working 50 hours a week plus commute spends more time with colleagues than children. Children are raised by institutions, not families.
Under time restoration:
- One parent can work part-time while the other parents full-time
- Or both parents work reduced hours
- Or parenting itself counts as recognized, supported work
The nuclear family model assumed one earner. The current economy demands two-plus earners. The result: children raised by strangers and screens.
Time restoration returns parents to childhood. Not as a retreat to 1950s gender roles, but as genuine choice about how to structure family life.
Care Work Recognition
Care work—raising children, supporting elderly, nursing the sick, maintaining households—is currently invisible in economic statistics.
It's real work. It requires skill, time, and energy. It produces the healthy, educated humans that the formal economy depends on.
Under the Sanctuary Protocol:
- Care work receives formal recognition
- Caregivers receive income support
- Skills developed in care work count as credentials
- Transitions between care work and market work are seamless
This isn't a "mother's wage" that traps women at home. It's recognition that care is work, whoever does it.
Dignity Work
Some work matters not for its output but for the dignity it provides the worker.
A garden maintained by an elderly person may not maximize agricultural efficiency. But it gives that person purpose, structure, and contribution.
The Sanctuary Protocol distinguishes:
| Type | Description |
|---|---|
| Productive work | Creates necessary goods and services |
| Care work | Maintains human beings |
| Dignity work | Provides meaning, structure, and contribution |
All three are valid. All three deserve support.
Economic Viability
How does halving work maintain economic output?
Automation: Technology can replace much of the eliminated bullshit. Administrative overhead, information processing, coordination—machines do these better than humans anyway.
Efficiency: Shorter work hours correlate with higher hourly productivity. Fatigued workers in bullshit jobs produce negative value.
Reduced overhead: Less commuting, less office space, less work-related healthcare costs, less childcare expense.
Reallocation: Workers freed from bullshit can do useful things—or simply live.
Universal Basic Services
Rather than Universal Basic Income (cash payments), the protocol favors Universal Basic Services:
- Housing guaranteed
- Healthcare free at point of use
- Education free through life
- Food security ensured
- Digital access universal
This covers basic needs without creating cash dependency. Work continues for those who want additional income, goods, or meaning.
What Happens to "The Economy"
GDP as currently measured would decline. This is not failure—it's honesty.
GDP counts bullshit jobs as productive. It counts illness and accidents as economic activity (healthcare spending). It counts environmental destruction as growth.
A truer measure:
- Time available for self-directed activity
- Health outcomes across the population
- Educational attainment and skill development
- Environmental sustainability
- Subjective wellbeing
Under these metrics, time restoration is economic success.
Transition Pathway
| Phase | Actions |
|---|---|
| Phase 1 | Identify and sunset obvious bullshit jobs through attrition. Workers retrain or take early retirement. |
| Phase 2 | Reduce standard work hours gradually—45 hours, then 40, then 35, then 30. |
| Phase 3 | Expand care work recognition and dignity work programs. |
| Phase 4 | Stabilize at new equilibrium where meaningful work is shared and time is restored. |
This takes a decade, not a year. But it starts with honest assessment of what work actually matters.
The Nightlife Clause
Won't reduced work mean boring lives?
No. The Sanctuary Protocol explicitly protects:
- Arts and culture as essential work
- Nightlife and social gathering as community infrastructure
- Play and recreation as human needs
- Science and exploration as civilizational purpose
The goal isn't grim efficiency. It's human flourishing. That includes dancing, creating, exploring, and celebrating.
See Also
References
- Graeber, David. (2018). Bullshit Jobs: A Theory. Simon & Schuster.
- Schor, Juliet. (2010). Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth. Penguin.
- Srnicek, Nick & Williams, Alex. (2015). Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work. Verso.