These principles are about the model behind the vocabulary.
- The model must enable collaboration between different people in different organizations using different software on different platforms using different human and programming languages.
- The model must be able to form global networks which can track the flows of resources (values) forwards and backwards. Or maybe it would be better to say "in any direction", but forwards means in the direction of value creation, and backwards means in the direction of return or compensation.
- Corollary: the model must be able to support value equations that distribute income (rewards) according to peoples' contributions to the creation of the values that generated the income or rewards, regardless of where and when in the network configuration those contributions occurred.
- The model must be able to support circular economies, value flows where resources come full cycle to be fed into the same set or other processes so that recycling, re-use, and other ways to encourage resources not becoming waste.
- The model must also be able to support coordinating work between different people in different organizations. People who are not concerned with rewards may still want to coordinate work.
- The model must be fractal. It must support global views of networks in aggregate as well as drilling down to lower and lower levels of detail. Those lower levels of detail, for example inside one organization, may require permissions.
- The model must also work on the Recipe, Plan and Event levels (whatever those get called in the end), where the objects on each level are linked appropriately to the other levels.
- The model must support non-business-as-usual organizational forms and economic relationships in addition to traditional business organizations and relationships. These organizational forms can be as varied as the people and groups who create them want. VF in particular embraces this experimentation towards next-economy/solidarity-economy/commons-based-economy/P2P-economy/etc., in this transitional time.
- The model must support systems where all the contributors can get shares of the outcome to allocate as they wish e.g.
- contributors to renewable energy coop get kWh of electricity to allocate
- contributors to train system get 'km on the railway' to allocate
- contributors to food network, get 'food baskets' to allocate
- etc.
- In other words, a group can choose to introduce various monetary currencies into their flows but can also do all the coordination and accounting without introducing such artifacts.