An interactive thought experiment

The Common
World

Everyone earns the same. Everything productive belongs to everyone. People work on what interests them. Each light below is about 1.6 million of the world's 8.1 billion people, colored by the work they chose. Change the rules and watch the world respond.

5,000 rule-based people, running in your browser
Year0
Average work week–
Quality of life–
Essential work undone–
Effort vs. today–
Waiting for a job–
Try a scenario:

Under the hood

Every rule of the live simulation, with real-world data behind the numbers.

Wellbeing index
Average work week
Essential work left undone
Rotation per person

Jobs

JobPeopleNeed coveredTime multiplierHours a weekWaitlistStatus

The standard week shrinks as automation frees up labor; a 2x multiplier halves it. Care and missions need trained people, so rotation can't fill them; free education slowly raises everyone's skills.

Everyday teams

Active
Started
Closed
People moved on
Effort on failing teams
Product quality index (start = 100)

Bars show each team's share of users. Amber = new team in its runway, red = failing.

Exams

People misjudged
GroupQualified for research
Majority (80%)
Minority (20%)

Both groups have the same true skills. People retake exams yearly, so some misjudgment comes from skills that grew since the last exam.

Regions

RegionPeopleChangeHousing priceQuality of life

Price 1.00 = normal. Construction adds homes where prices are highest; land-constrained regions build more slowly.

Missions chosen by citizens (illustrative)

Illustrative only: progress grows with the effort people put into missions. It is not calibrated to real research timelines and is not a prediction.

Where the numbers come from

Job mix and behavior are calibrated mostly to OECD economies; regions use world population figures. Anything not listed here (how much people like each job, team quality, mission difficulty, exam noise) is an assumption with no good data behind it.

In the modelValue usedReal-world basis
Standard work week33.5 hOECD workers average about 1,700–1,750 hours a year. OECD
Care and health jobs10%One in ten OECD jobs was in health or social care in 2019. OECD Health at a Glance
Care demand growth2.7% a yearOECD health and social care employment grew 30% from 2013 to 2023, driven by aging. OECD 2025. WHO projects an 11.1 million health worker shortage by 2030. WHO
Food and farming5%About 4.8% of OECD employment was in agriculture in 2019. ILO modeled estimate
Construction7%7% of the world's employed work in construction. ILO
Mission research3% defaultResearchers are about 1–1.7% of jobs in leading OECD countries (Korea 17.3 per 1,000). The default is set higher for a mission-driven world. OECD via Statista
Unpleasant and hazardous work8%Assumption: no single statistic matches this category.
People able to qualify for researchabout 40%41% of OECD adults aged 25–64 have tertiary education. OECD Education at a Glance 2024
Effort under equal pay90% defaultAssumption. At Safelite, switching to piece rates raised output per worker 44%, and about half came from people working harder. Lazear, AER 2000. Most of today's jobs are not piece-rate, so the default loss is smaller.
How much people value free time over a nicer jobmodestWorkers would give up 8% of wages to work from home and 20% to avoid short-notice schedules, but most won't pay for flexible hours. Mas & Pallais, AER 2017
Region populations8.1 billionApproximate UN population figures by region (East & Southeast Asia about 2.3 billion, South Asia about 1.9 billion, sub-Saharan Africa about 1.2 billion).
Wanting to live somewhere elseabout 16%People strongly prefer their home region; tuned so that roughly 16% would rather live elsewhere, matching the share of adults worldwide who would like to migrate. Gallup 2021
Extra effort from loving your work30% defaultAssumption. Intrinsic motivation is strong for interesting work and weak for routine or unpleasant work; there is no direct measure for a world without pay differences.
Housing supply response0.6 to 3.0The average US metro has a supply elasticity of 1.75; land-constrained coastal cities are below 1 (San Francisco about 0.66). Saiz, QJE 2010
People reconsidering where they live5% a year11.8% of Americans moved in 2024, about 2.1% across state lines. US Census via GlobeSt. 16% of adults worldwide would like to migrate permanently. Gallup 2021
Automation of routine work2% a year27% of OECD jobs are at high risk of automation; the model spreads that over roughly 15 years. OECD Employment Outlook 2023 via RTÉ