An Integrative Monetary and Economic Reform — The Gradido Concept

This concept study formulates a scientifically interoperable version of the Gradido model as an integrative response to four structurally interwoven tensions of the present: the debt-money architecture with its inbuilt growth pressure, AI- and robotics-driven substitution of paid labour, the concentration of physical, land and platform wealth, and the overshoot of planetary boundaries. Reforms addressing one strand alone regularly meet financing or legitimacy limits — the study takes the interlinkage itself as its subject. At the core sits a positive-sum mechanic in a new currency (Gradido, GDD): debt-free, additive per-capita money creation through three components — an ABI component (Active Basic Income), a public-budget component, and a BEF component (Balancing and Environmental Fund) — of 1,000 GDD per person per month each, complemented mathematically by a continuous transience (demurrage) of 50% per year. Money supply and unit value converge on a steady state. A ten-level subsidiary architecture organises creation and distribution; an explicit values layer (gratitude — dignity — donation) connects to established research traditions. The model emerged from independent bionic observation in the 1990s; its convergence with established reform traditions is a finding of later phases, not a derivation. Beyond the monetary order, the study sketches a four-pillar architecture (money — land — steward-ownership — intellectual-property reform) as a diagnostic map, with money as the core contribution and the other pillars as adjacent reform fields. Causal claims are consistently graded across three tiers (STRONG / PLAUSIBLE / SPECULATIVE). Three parallel implementation paths — Cutoff Day, Complementary Currency, Community Currency — are addressed alongside the international dimension (multi-region logic, climate-migration architecture, Pacific-atoll pioneer constellation). Eighteen chapters locate the model within the reform discourse (free-money tradition, complementary currencies, basic income, MMT, post-growth economics, civil economy, steward-ownership). Open research questions are made explicit; the study presents itself as integrative concept formulation and invitation to the Great Cooperation.