The safe level of the societal pool

The measure as written

In THE UNJUSTIFIED BURDEN AND ITS IMPLICATIONS, the NEPs are provided from a pool of resources:

There exists a pool of resources that is actually the main coordinating body that enables the steady and timely provision of the NEPs, while preventing unnecessary flooding to create the societal stratification, which in turn allows a well-organized structure of work diversification.

The same paragraph sets its limit:

It is to be noted that the reservoir must not be drained altogether.

and gives the measure:

(In practice, the safe level of the pool can be found by tracking what flows into it (participation) and out of it (burden) year by year, and by testing bad-year scenarios to find the minimum level that keeps the NEPs safe.)

RESPONSIBILITIES FOR THE WEALTH tells what the reserve is kept for:

(In an ideal society, the TAP is retained not for status but as a reserve, i.e. to meet sudden stress on the society and to keep the drains, such as charity and investment, flowing steadily.)

The bad years for which the rest is kept are named as well: "artificial or natural prolonged stress, e.g. wartime needs, famine, floods etc.".

What it measures, in plain words

The same paragraph pictures the pool as a vast area of bubbles: each individual's participation adds small bubbles to the store, and bubbles are given out from the reservoir "in accordance with the quantity and the type of need". Natural Participation fills the pool, and every burden, natural or artificial, draws from it: "the ultimate stress is applied to the resources extracted from the natural participation, which in turn bears both types of burden". Like the water held by a dam, the pool is kept at a level: never drained altogether, and never so low that a bad year leaves the NEPs without cover.

The pool holds everything a society draws on for its NEPs: what its own Natural Participation puts in, what it draws from the work of other societies (among it the Pads stolen from them), and what it draws from nature beyond the elastic limit. Its safe level is the level its own Natural Participation keeps, within the elastic limit, through the worst bad years; whatever it holds beyond that lasts only while the others keep giving and nature keeps allowing. A pool can look full in a society that "consumes more than it produces, yet lives in plenty by drawing on weaker societies"; the measure asks how much of it is its own.

What flows in and what flows out. In hours of work, as everywhere in this book: what flows in is the NEP work a society's own people give, and what flows out is the work its NEPs need (both from Part 3). The part of the need met by the work of other societies is read from the NEP work it draws in (Pads drained between societies), and the part met by coal, oil, gas and uranium from the test of Part 5.

The store. Food is the first of the Needs, and its store can be counted without money: the grains (wheat, maize, rice and the other cereals) held in store at the end of each year, by whoever holds them in the society, counted in months of the society's own use.

Three bad years. The pool is tested against the bad years named, natural and artificial, and against the limit of nature:

· A natural bad year: the harvest falls as far below what the years just before it would lead one to expect as in the worst year on record, and in the worst two years in a row. Does the store carry the society through?

· An artificial bad year: what comes from others stops, as in wartime: the food brought in, and the NEP work drawn from other societies. How long does the store last, and how many more hours of its own work would its NEPs need?

· The limit of nature: the resources that do not satisfy the green check, coal, oil, gas and uranium, can no longer be drawn. How many hours of its own work would its NEPs then need?

How to read the result. A store of 3 months means the society could feed itself for 3 months from its store, with no harvest at all. Hours are a week for each capable adult: where the hours needed rise above the hours given, the society's own work no longer keeps its NEPs. A pool is at its safe level only where it passes all three tests. Four points keep the reading true to what was written:

· The store is counted for the whole society: whoever holds it, it is part of the pool from which the NEPs are met.

· A full pool is not by itself a safe pool: the part filled by the work of others, or by resources nature cannot replace in time, empties when they stop.

· A society that sends out more than it brings in keeps what it sends at home first in a bad year; the world as a whole has no one else to draw from.

· The measure finds the floor. How far above it the pool is kept, and how it flows back "when the need rises", is the work of the guardians in RESPONSIBILITIES FOR THE WEALTH.

How we measured it

The measures. Each is taken from the results of the earlier parts or read from records published for every country:

· Hours given and hours needed: the NEP work, paid and unpaid, that a society's capable adults give each week, and the work its NEPs need, its set point (Part 3).

· NEP work drawn from others: the hours of work in farming, forestry and fishing, in food products and in textiles, clothing and leather done in other economies for a society's final use, minus the hours it does for theirs, a week for each capable adult in 2020 (OECD, Trade in Employment, with the weekly hours of the International Labour Organization, as in "Pads drained between societies"). Nigeria is not covered.

· The limit of nature: the hours needed a week if the resources that do not satisfy the green check vanished, with food and electricity cut and the work of the farm machines done by hand (Part 5).

· The store: the cereals (wheat, maize, rice, barley, sorghum, millet, oats, rye and mixed grain) held at the end of each market year, by whoever holds them, divided by the society's own use of them in that year, times 12, and the harvest of the year against that use (United States Department of Agriculture, Production, Supply and Distribution, grains, file of 9 October 2026), every country and every year from 1960. The world is the sum of every country. The latest year read is 2024/25, the last that is no longer an estimate or a forecast. The world's store is also set against the minimum safe level that the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations gives for the world: 17% to 18% of a year's use.

The three bad years.

· Natural: for each year since 1965 (for Russia since 1992, as its own harvests begin in 1987), the harvest a society could expect is read from the five years before: a straight line through their harvests, carried one year on, and two years on for the second of two bad years in a row. The worst single year and the worst two years in a row are set against the store of 2024/25: what a society sends out is kept at home first, and only the rest of the shortfall is drawn from the store.

· Artificial: if the food brought in stopped, the store lasts its months in store divided by the share of its own use that it brings in; this is read for the societies that grow less than they use. If the NEP work drawn from others stopped, the hours its NEPs need rise by the hours it draws in beyond those it gives.

· The limit of nature: the hours needed, set against the hours given (Part 5).

Measured years only. Each year of the store uses its own harvest, use and stocks; the expected harvest comes only from the years before, so a bad year never lowers the bar for the next. The hours are those of the parts they come from (Part 3 and Part 5, and 2020 for the NEP work drawn from others).

Checks. Read the two other ways, as the average of the five years before or as the harvest of the year before, the expected harvest gives the same verdict for the world and for six of the seven in the natural bad year; for the United States, whose worst year is 1983, the average of the five years before leaves 0.6 months, while the other two readings empty the store.

What the seven societies show

By the three tests, no society's pool is at its safe level from its own work within the elastic limit. In all seven, the hours needed would rise far above the hours given if coal, oil, gas and uranium could no longer be drawn: from 53.0 hours a week in Nigeria to 175.1 in the United States, against 25.6 to 36.1 given (Part 5). The NEPs of every society stand on resources that nature cannot replace in time.

In the societies that draw on the work of others, the pool looks fuller than it is. The United States draws 4.1 hours of NEP work a week for each capable adult from other societies, and Russia 0.7: part of what their NEPs use is filled by the work of others. And though the United States grows a quarter more grain than it uses, a repeat of its worst harvest, in 1983, would empty its store.

Egypt stands on others twice over. It grows less than half the grain it uses (49%), so if the food brought in stopped, its store would last 2.8 months; its people give 32.5 hours a week against the 36.4 its NEPs need; and it is drained of its doctors and of interest (Pads drained between societies). Nigeria's pool fails even the natural bad year: a repeat of its worst harvest, in 2009, would empty its store; its people give 32.5 hours against the 45.1 needed, and it is drained of its doctors. If the food brought in stopped, its store would last 4.2 months.

China holds by far the largest store (8.0 months of its use), and even after its worst two years, 2000 and 2001, would keep 4.5 months. India, Russia and Brazil grow more grain than they use and keep a store after their worst years (0.4 to 2.0 months).

If the stealing of Pads and the drawing on the work of others stopped at once, the pool of each society would change on both sides of the flow. The societies that draw on the work of others would lose the part that others fill: the United States would need 37.1 hours a week of its own work against the 32.6 its people give, Russia 32.5 against 30.9, and Egypt 36.7 against 32.5. The societies drained of their Pads would get them back: their doctors working abroad would raise the health workers of Nigeria from 20.3 to 21.0 per 10,000 people and of Egypt from 24.6 to 26.2, both still far below the 44.5 minimum, and Egypt would keep the 2.50% of its income that it paid abroad as interest in 2023. The societies that give more NEP work to others than they draw would keep those hours, 0.9 to 1.3 a week for each capable adult: China would then give 33.1 hours against the 32.9 its NEPs need, Brazil 26.9 against 25.0, and India 37.1 against 40.8. The world's pool would be no smaller: what one society would lose, another would keep.

Across the world, the store held 3.3 months of the world's use in 2024/25 (2.4 to 3.8 months from 2010 to 2024), 27% of a year's use, above the 17% to 18% that the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations gives as the minimum safe level, and after the worst two bad years on record it would still hold 0.9 months. But 55% of the world's store is held in China, up from 32% in 2010; without it, the rest of the world holds 1.9 months, 16% of a year's use, below that minimum. The world as a whole has no one else to draw from.