Earth Reserve Assurance

Discussion

On the Distinction Between ERA and UBiC Frameworks

Reflections on conceptual distance and possible dialogue between the Earth Reserve Assurance (ERA) framework and the Common Good Unit (UBiC) hypothesis.

Michel Foata:

1. Shared Intention

"Both ERA and UBiC arise from the same foundational intuition: the monetary architecture of our economies no longer communicates the real state of the living world. Each framework seeks, in its own way, to reconnect value creation with the regenerative conditions of life and the commons.

ERA grounds monetary worth in biophysical reality. It aims to make money truthful by tying it to verifiable relative changes in the productive capacity of ecosystems. UBiC, meanwhile, explores how money might become reflexive: a medium through which the care of the commons is recognised and rewarded within every act of exchange itself. Although these approaches share the same ethical horizon, they seem to operate within distinct paradigms of what constitutes legitimate knowledge and agents in a monetary system.

2. The Logic of ERA

If I understand your framework correctly, ERA establishes a Money-of-Account grounded in change to the Earth’s productive capacity, expressed through the indices ERiE and ERiC. It thereby restoresestablishes a form of macro-ecological truth: when the ecosystems within a currency zone degrade, the purchasing power of the anchored currency declines, but the floating currency’s worth declines collectively becomes more expensive, cause reduces international demand for goods and services prices in the floating variant..

This design elegantly transforms environmental degradation into a monetary signal rather than a moral one. It offers a non-coercive way to make ecological reality economically visible. It is then a valuable contribution to the conversation on “sound money.”

At the same time, I sometimes wonder about the degree to which such a signal, being aggregate, can shape micro-level behaviour. BecauseBy design ERA’s feedback operates collectively, it does not appear to differentiate between regenerative and extractive actors, because extaction can be ecologically sound. It does distinguish between circular use of exhaustible resources, and their permanent degradation. In that sense, it may ensure truth, yet perhaps not coordination : the ecological condition of value is made explicit, but the grammar of exchange, still symmetric and privately optimising, remains unchanged.

3. The Logic of UBiC

UBiC begins from a similar diagnosis but moves in another direction. Rather than recalibrating a global reference of value, it seeks to transform the act of valuation itself. Each transaction can create or destroy units according to a Common Good Care Score, derived from legitimate citizen deliberation across local, regional and planetary scales. The aim is to produce a direct feedback loop between economic activity and the quality of our collective care.

the two approaches are neither equivalent nor compatible. Where ERA attempts to mirror an ecological general truth, UBiC attempts to embody a fine collective legitimacy. It assumes that fine, local and factual measurement through civic evaluation must be intertwined if money is to become a genuine medium of regeneration. The data architecture of ERA could, in this sense, provide some empirical data for the state and planetary layer of UBiC’s deliberative scoring, but not translate in a monetary mechanism on its own.

4. Structural limits of the ERA mechanism from my point of view

From my current understanding, several systemic questions arise:

- Indiscriminate impact. When an ecosystem degrades, all currency holders lose value equally, regardless of their responsibility or contribution. This seems to transmit ecological truth but not necessarily incentive alignment. - Persistence of transactional symmetry. As transactions remain zero-sum, the market may still optimise for private gain, even with an ecologically indexed unit of account. The feedback of care does not yet occur where economic behaviour is generated. - Cross-currency ecological arbitrage risk. In global trade, depreciation of a currency due to ecosystem degradation could make exports cheaper, enabling “clean” economies to outsource environmental harm. Without cross-boundary responsibility mechanisms, such effects could unintentionally reinforce global inequality.

These limits may not diminish the coherence of ERA’s architecture, but they highlight where its stabilising logic might differ from a fine regenerative one.

5. The cybernetic architecture of UBiC

UBiC aims to address precisely these systemic dynamics. It defines money not as a mirror of global ecological condition but as a cybernetic medium of cooperation, a language of value capable of integrating private and collective interests on environmental and social criteria in real time. Its reference frame is multi-scalar and participatory, aligning the legitimacy of evaluation with ecological reality itself. From this perspective, the ER framework could serve as a valuable data and calibration layer within a broader deliberative system, but its monetary logic may not by itself achieve the feedback effects that UBiC seeks to activate. The two approaches thus appear not so much complementary neither equivalent. ERA clarifies what is true verifiable about the statedynamic changes of ecosystems and translate it through a descendant monetary system ; UBiC explores how local truth can be translated into just, regenerative and ascendant economic economical incentives and behaviours.

6. Closing Reflection

Your ERA framework offers one of the most rigorous and thoughtful attempts to ground monetary worth in the biophysical integrity of the Earth. It raises questions that, in my view, are essential for the next generation of monetary research. If I have underlined some limitations here, it is not to diminish its value, but to open a dialogue on how verifiable ecological truthdata might eventually be coupled with participatory legitimacy. I am of course equally open to a critical reading of my own work on UBiC. Scientific dispute, when conducted in good faith, is both a pleasure and the surest way to advance shared understanding—even, and perhaps especially, when our frameworks do not coincide. I would be very happy to continue this discussion with you, in whatever form you might find fruitful."