An answer to the World's Problem requires a Vision. A Vision requires a plan. A plan must address the unequal distribution of resources and wealth about the planet. One begins with a particular social organization — a mutation of social structure that has more social intelligence than other organizations and that has more access available to its membership than other organizations. However, manufacturing a social medium for us humans requires human values; thus, the design must contain operational definitions that realize relative truth, freedom, justice, and fun, within the context of the goals and limitations of each enterprise. As an articulating symbolic structure, the organization can be interpreted and evaluated by the users to meet their needs, and the organization can be interpreted by the designers to see if their specifications are realized; thus the structure may be read as a statement and may be evaluated for its capacity to adapt and provide for its citizen-owners.
In designing a social structure to meet human criteria, possibilities are limitless, and thus one must begin with an initial and somewhat arbitrary set of conditions. Once a single structure as been created, it can modify itself and create other structures or it can be used as a design basis for new models. Some purposes will require specialized structures, but every project should have the following basic restrictions: people and cultures who interact within or without the structure shall be better off after interaction; the environment—flora, fauna, geology, air — shall be better off after interaction with the organization. Improvement in the quality of life and the environment is basic to survival and to the well being of all humans on earth.
The initial design goal has a moderate degree of complexity, as opposed to the obscure and labyrinthine complications of traditional culture; the complexity maximizes freedom, with minimal definitions and rules. The initial design model is for a complex adaptive system that floats between simplicity and randomness. It represents the most efficient use of rules to achieve its purpose as an adaptive social system. People using Alternatium as a social vehicle should not be put off by apparent complexity but should ask with what ease can the organization be made to function and meet the collective will of the membership. If one buys an airplane or a car, one wants to know the behavioral parameters, without becoming lost in the engineering details. The engineering details stand as backup and as a logical foundation for more abstract rules and behavior that enable an adapting population to free itself from poverty or disaster. Happiness and an accumulation of social surplus suggest a measure for success. A social surplus is that which remains over and beyond the efforts of a single individual in the wilderness.