E1 Resource regime segments

Topic

There are four stages of the resource regime—the track that fundamentally drives *Economy* and *Cliodynamics*, and partially influences *Population*, whenever the stage shifts: the agrarian-land stage, the industrial-capital stage, the informational-credential stage, and the post-scarcity stage. What distinguishes one stage from another is, in each case, the society's dominant source of surplus: land rent in the agrarian-land stage, industrial surplus value in the industrial-capital stage, credential rent in the informational-credential stage, and automated surplus—surplus that no longer depends on marginal human labor—in the post-scarcity stage.

The dominant source of surplus is the variable that determines which stage of the resource regime a society occupies at any given time: as long as land rent, industrial surplus value, credential rent, or automated surplus remains the dominant source, the society stays within the corresponding stage, regardless of how much the other three sources of surplus fluctuate from year to year.

Only when the dominant source of surplus changes discontinuously and persists for generations does a society leave one stage of the resource regime and enter another; this specific change has been established as the trigger for the resource regime transition. Furthermore, the relative shares of land rent, industrial surplus value, credential rent, and automated surplus—along with the speed of technological adoption—are the factors tracked by the stage diagnosis and productive transition signals to determine which stage a society is in and when it begins moving toward the next one.

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