assembly-economics/models/GADM-0.5.md

GADM-0.5 (in development)

Status: dev (2026-10-13), ASSEMBLY-WP-0007. Scope: models/GADM-Sectors-Scope.md. Module: simulations/gadm02/gadm05.py (gadm04 plus base-model parameters with defaults that reproduce GADM-0.4).

1. Rival and non-rival output (T01)

1.1 Structure

K_r = 1 − (1 − K_phys)(1 − φ_r K_Ω)        rival capacity (physical goods)
Y_r = K_r √E                                rival output, limited by ecological headroom
Y_n = (1 − φ_r) K_Ω (1 − K_phys)            non-rival output (information, organism services)
Y*  = Y_r + Y_n                             equals K at E = 1 for every φ_r

Non-rival output flows into commons X as far as it is openly inheritable: dX += xn · Y_n · lin_open · (1 − X). The ecological draw is unchanged (physical capital e1 K_phys dem thr plus compute energy e2 K_Ω). φ_r = 1 and xn = 0 reproduce GADM-0.4 exactly.

Priors at first: φ_r = 0.2, xn = 0.3. Grounded values (§ 6): φ_r = 0.15 (range 0.05–0.25), xn = 0.6. The tables in §§ 1–4 were computed with the priors; § 6 lists what changes.

1.2 Results across the band (nonrival.py, results/nonrival.md)

Reading	B1	B2	B3	B4	class
ΔVFAC, GADM-0.5 vs. 0.4, baseline	+0.015	+0.026	+0.039	+0.049	quantitative shift
of which from the commons feed alone	+0.016	+0.026	+0.039	+0.049	quantitative shift
ΔE, baseline	−0.011	−0.020	−0.026	−0.025	quantitative shift
ΔVFAC, generative regime	+0.002	+0.003	+0.003	+0.007	quantitative shift
ΔE, generative regime	0.000	0.000	0.000	−0.002	—
generative − baseline VFAC (GADM-0.5)	+0.274	+0.308	+0.303	+0.266	robust

Non-rival share of output at t 100: baseline 0.12 (B1) to 0.66 (B4); generative regime 0.08 to 0.31.

1.3 Readings

1. The non-rival effect works through the commons, not through the output split. The whole VFAC gain comes from non-rival output feeding X. Calling output non-rival does not change VFAC, because VFAC measures stocks, not output.
2. The generative regime's ecological cost does not shrink (scope test 2: no). Its low ecological headroom (E 0.48 against 0.68–0.82 in the baseline) comes from the physical-capital and compute-energy draw, which a non-rival output share does not reduce. In the baseline, the commons feed even lowers E slightly, because more commons raise activity and throughput.
3. No genuine throughput decoupling (scope test 1: no). VFAC rises while throughput falls only in the baseline at B3–B4 (20–40 % of five-year windows), and there only because organism capability peaks and declines, taking its compute draw with it. The generative regime shows no decoupling.
4. What genuine decoupling would need: non-rival output that replaces rival consumption (dematerialization of demand), so that demand for physical throughput falls as Y_n grows. GADM has no demand composition. This is the question for the ecological classes (T02) and, if needed, sectors (T04). It is recorded as BR-010.
5. The generative regime's advantage is robust across the band (+0.27 to +0.31), slightly smaller than in GADM-0.4 (+0.29 to +0.34), because the baseline also gains from the commons feed.

2. Ecological resource classes (T02)

2.1 Structure

gadm05.simulate_eco replaces the single E with three classes, each with its own floor (0.20). The aggregate E used for output and VFAC is their geometric mean.

Class	Covers	Start (prior from indicators)	Regeneration
Er renewables	energy, land, freshwater, biosphere	0.15 (all three land/water/biosphere boundaries breached, PHC 2025)	yes, at rest at start
Ed materials	depletable stocks	0.45 (EU footprint 13.7 t/capita vs. a sustainable level of about 6–8 t)	none, or replenishment at rest (reserve growth)
Es sinks	climate, ocean acidification, novel entities, nutrient flows	0.33 (2 of 6 sink-type boundaries safe)	yes, at rest at start

Physical load (K_phys · dem · thr) draws 40/30/30 % on renewables, materials and sinks. Compute load (K_Ω) draws 30/20/50 %. The sink load is scaled by (1 − low-carbon electricity share, lowc 0.40, US-like). Recycling (circ 0.12, the EU circular material use rate) slows material depletion. These shares are priors.

2.2 Results (eco_classes.py, results/eco_classes.md)

	Strict material depletion	Material replenishment at rest
Renewables	below floor at start, every scenario	below floor at start, every scenario
Materials	cross the floor at t 25–70 (generative regime first, t 25–30)	never cross
Sinks	generative regime: t 29 (B4) to 83 (B1); others: never	same
Lowest class at t 100	materials	renewables

Organism growth (baseline, B4 − B1, relative change t 0 → 50): sinks −0.036, renewables −0.032, materials −0.018.

Low-carbon electricity share (generative regime, replenishment at rest): the sinks breach moves from t 49 / 37 / 29 (B2 / B3 / B4, share 0.4) to t 87 / 66 / 52 (share 0.7, EU-like). At 0.9 there is no breach within 100 years.

2.3 Readings

1. Grounding test passed: organism growth binds sinks and renewables (energy) before materials (ParameterGrounding.md § 3).
2. The renewables class is already beyond its floor at the start. The single E (0.235) hid that one class is binding today while the others still have headroom. Floors must be checked per class.
3. Which class binds next depends on an unmeasured assumption. With strict depletion, materials bind first in every scenario. If reserve growth keeps pace with use, they never do. Material replenishment needs grounding (reserve-to-production ratios over time).
4. The generative regime's ecological cost sits in the sinks. It is the only scenario that breaches the sink floor, and faster adoption brings the breach forward (t 83 → 29). This makes BR-010 more specific: the regime's problem is the sink load of its physical and compute activity, not output as such.
5. Low-carbon electricity is the decisive lever for organism-driven sink load. An EU-like share (0.7) delays the breach by 23–38 years; 0.9 avoids it within the horizon. The effect is conservative: sink regeneration is fitted so that each share starts at rest, so the lever acts only on the growth of the load.

3. Endogenous selection weights (T03)

gadm05.simulate_sel: the five selection weights (market, science, community, public, organism) relax at 0.05 per year toward targets pushed by domination and civic capacity:

• Domination: market concentration Pm raises the market weight, and discovery concentration Pd raises the organism weight (strength 2).
• Civic capacity: epistemic capacity Q raises science, and commons X raise community (strength 1).

Capture is the share of selection weight held by the market and organism channels. Results are in selection.py and results/selection.md.

Reading (endogenous − fixed weights, t 100)	B1	B2	B3	B4	class
capture, attention oligopoly	+0.114	+0.131	+0.138	+0.141	robust
capture, baseline	+0.023	+0.109	+0.115	+0.115	quantitative shift
capture, generative regime	−0.240	−0.211	−0.189	−0.161	robust
ΔVFAC, any scenario	≤ 0.002 in absolute value				no effect

Largest change in the weights themselves: 0.0044 per year.

Readings:

1. Domination captures selection, and the generative regime de-captures it. Both are robust across the band. Capture is slow and incremental, so the grounding test passes: no flip within a few years.
2. Capture of selection is not a material channel for VFAC in GADM. The five quality signals are of similar size, so moving weight between them hardly changes selection quality σ. A plural selection mix also does not make the generative regime more stable against a domination shock.
3. What would make it material: captured channels that deliver systematically worse quality. An example is organism selection under discovery concentration, O = Q (1 − disc), which falls only through the lever disc, not through the discovery channel Pd. Linking O to Pd is the candidate change. It is recorded here and not implemented, because no reading depends on it yet.

4. Two-good demand split: dematerialization (T04)

4.1 Structure

gadm05.simulate_eco(..., demand=...) adds a slow state Cr, the rival share of demand relative to its start (Cr0 = 1). Cr relaxes (rate dm_lam) toward 1 − dm_eps · (qn − qn0), where qn = (Y_n / Y*) · √(X Q) is the quality-weighted non-rival offer. Physical throughput intensity thr and physical investment aK scale with Cr. The same capital then serves dematerialized demand with less physical load. dm_lam = 0 switches it off. Priors: λ 0.05 per year, ε 2; strong case λ 0.1, ε 4.

4.2 Results (demand.py, results/demand.md; material replenishment at rest)

Generative regime	B1	B2	B3	B4
decoupled decades, no split → split → strong	0 → 0 → 0	0 → 0.45 → 0.89	0 → 0.71 → 0.75	0 → 0.22 → 0.34
sinks breach, no split → split → strong	t 83 → none → none	t 49 → 98 → none	t 37 → 61 → none	t 29 → 40 → none
VFAC t 100, no split → split	0.607 → 0.613	0.583 → 0.598	0.564 → 0.585	0.509 → 0.533

A decoupled decade has VFAC rising, physical throughput falling and K_Ω not falling, which excludes the artifact of § 1.3. Baseline: decoupled decades 0–0.09, and no sinks breach with or without the split.

Calibration check: see § 5. (A first comparison here used total throughput per output, which is the wrong operator.)

4.3 Readings

1. Genuine decoupling needs demand composition. With the split, the generative regime decouples welfare from throughput in most decades at B2–B3, while organism capability keeps growing. BR-010 is resolved structurally: non-rival output must replace rival consumption, not only add to it.
2. Decoupling is band-dependent (qualitative break). It needs a non-rival offer of sufficient quality, which B1 adoption does not build. At B4, physical and compute growth outpace substitution, and decoupling is rarer (22 %).
3. The generative regime's sinks breach becomes avoidable. The default split moves it 15–50 years later. The strong split removes it within the horizon at every anchor. Together with low-carbon electricity (§ 2.3), this is the second lever on the regime's ecological cost.
4. The readings are conservative against data. Corrected in § 5: that comparison used total throughput per output, which includes compute energy. On the right operator (material draw per output), the model already dematerializes as fast as observed. The decoupling reading then depends on the rival share φ_r, and the EU data do not support it.

5. Dematerialization against data (ASSEMBLY-WP-0018-T01)

Data: Eurostat resource productivity (env_ac_rp, GDP per kg of domestic material consumption, chain-linked 2015 EUR). It rose 1.85 % per year in the EU and 2.73 % per year in Germany over 2010–2024. Material intensity fell at the same rates.

Operator: the material draw per unit of output in the first decade from the calibrated start. Total throughput per output is the wrong operator, because it includes compute energy, which grows with adoption.

Jurisdiction	Observed	Model, no split (φ_r 0.2)	Model, split ε 2 (φ_r 0.2)	φ_r that reproduces the data (split ε 2)
EU	−1.85 %/y	−2.45 %/y	−2.89 %/y	0.66
DE	−2.73 %/y	−2.26 %/y	−2.64 %/y	0.15

No efficiency trend is needed: non-rival organism output that needs no materials already makes output grow faster than material use. The data constrain the rival share of organism output φ_r, given the demand split. The two parameters are not separately identified by one series.

Generative regime, demand split at its default (dematerialization.py, results/dematerialization.md):

φ_r	decoupled decades B1 / B2 / B3 / B4	sinks breach B2 / B3 / B4, no split → split
0.15 (fits DE)	0 / 0.55 / 0.72 / 0.24	49 → none / 37 → 67 / 29 → 41
0.20 (prior)	0 / 0.45 / 0.71 / 0.22	49 → 98 / 37 → 61 / 29 → 40
0.66 (fits EU)	0 / 0 / 0 / 0.02	49 → 58 / 37 → 43 / 29 → 33

Readings:

1. The decoupling reading of § 4 depends on the non-rival share of organism output. It holds when organism output is mostly non-rival (φ_r ≤ 0.2, the task-data prior and the German fit). It disappears when it is mostly rival (φ_r 0.66, the EU fit). Recorded as BR-011.
2. The fit is weakly identified. The 2010–2024 dematerialization happened mostly before generative AI, while the model attributes it to organism output and demand composition. Structural change, the energy transition and offshoring of material-intensive production are not in the model. The first decisive data are post-2024 values of E5, now wired into the full checkpoint.
3. Practical reading: whether AI-era growth decouples welfare from ecological load is an empirical question about what organisms produce. Information services (non-rival) support decoupling. Automation of physical production (rival) does not. The checkpoints should watch φ_r through L4 (task shares) and E5 (material intensity) together.

6. Grounding of the non-rival parameters (ASSEMBLY-WP-0018-T03)

φ_r, the rival share of organism output. Anthropic Economic Index: AI use concentrates in information occupations:

• computer and mathematical: 37 % (February 2025) and 32 % (Claude.ai, 2026 wave), against 3.4 % of workers;
• arts and media: 10 %;
• education: 9–14 %;
• office: 8 %;
• transportation: 0.3 % (9 % of workers).

The direct share of physical-output occupations is at most about 0.05. Adding AI use that indirectly supports physical production (engineering, logistics, management) gives φ_r 0.05–0.25, central 0.15.

xn, the commons feed. In 2025, 18.5 % of GitHub contributions went to public repositories (Octoverse 2025: 81.5 % private). Taken as the open share of non-rival output and divided by lineage openness (0.3): xn ≈ 0.6. This depends on lin_open. For a J3-like jurisdiction (lin_open 0.1), the same measured share would mean xn ≈ 1.8.

Effect on the readings (all re-run with the new defaults; tables in results/):

Reading	Priors (φ_r 0.2, xn 0.3)	Grounded (φ_r 0.15, xn 0.6)
non-rival VFAC gain, baseline B1–B4	+0.015 to +0.049	+0.038 to +0.077
non-rival VFAC gain, generative regime	≤ +0.007	≤ +0.011
decoupled decades with demand split, generative B2 / B3 / B4	0.45 / 0.71 / 0.22	0.69 / 0.71 / 0.25
class most hit by organism growth	sinks > renewables > materials	unchanged
selection capture (attention oligopoly / generative)	+0.11–0.14 / −0.16 to −0.24	+0.11–0.13 / −0.16 to −0.24

Consequence for BR-011. Task data support φ_r ≤ 0.25, which is inconsistent with the EU dematerialization fit (0.66). The EU's slower dematerialization since 2010 is therefore unlikely to come from rival AI output. It points to non-AI factors that GADM lacks: industrial structure, the energy mix of material processing, offshoring. With the task-data φ_r, the decoupling reading holds. The EU fit remains the warning case, if future AI use shifts toward automating physical production.

7. Grounding of the ecological classes (ASSEMBLY-WP-0018-T02)

7.1 Values

• Starting levels. Each boundary is placed in its zone of increasing risk, with the boundary at 0.4 and the high-risk line at 0:

  Boundary	Value now	Boundary / high-risk line	Level
  Climate (CO₂)	423 ppm	350 / 450	0.11
  Forest cover	60 %	75 / 54 %	0.12
  Biosphere (HANPP)	30 %	10 / 20 %	0
  Ocean aragonite saturation	81 % of preindustrial	80 %	≈ 0.38
  Ozone, aerosols	safe		≈ 0.6

  Freshwater, nitrogen, phosphorus and novel entities have no values here; they are taken as deep in the zone. That gives renewables 0.12 and sinks 0.30, close to the priors (0.15, 0.33). Secondary sources: the Planetary Health Check PDF is not machine-readable.

• Compute load. Data centers used 415 TWh in 2024, about 1.5 % of world electricity, and about 945 TWh are projected for 2030 (IEA Energy and AI). GADM-0.2's e2 = 0.03 gave compute 8–17 % of the ecological draw. The grounded e2 = 0.0015 gives about 1 % at the calibrated present.

• Physical load (structural fix). The physical load now follows rival capacity, 1 − (1 − K_phys)(1 − φ_r K_Ω), so organisms that automate physical production draw on the classes like physical capital. Before, only K_phys did, and the overstated compute term had hidden that gap.

• Materials. Copper reserves rose from 680 Mt (2013) to 880–980 Mt (2025) while about 22 Mt were mined each year. Reserve additions outpace use, which supports replenishment at rest.

7.2 What changes

Reading	Before grounding	After
class most hit by organism growth (§ 2)	sinks > renewables > materials	none: direct draw about 0 (compute small, rival automation small at φ_r 0.15)
generative regime's sinks breach (§ 2)	t 29–83	none within 100 years; with strict material depletion, materials bind at about t 33
decoupled decades with demand split, generative B2 / B3 / B4 (§ 4)	0.69 / 0.71 / 0.25	0.78 / 0.69 / 0.38
φ_r fitted to dematerialization, EU / DE (§ 5)	0.66 / 0.16	0.79 / 0.57
decoupled decades at the DE fit	0.55 / 0.72 / 0.24 (φ_r 0.15)	0.15 / 0.45 / 0.19 (φ_r 0.57)

7.3 Readings

1. The ecological case against the generative regime rested on an overstated compute draw. With grounded compute energy, the regime breaches no class floor within the horizon when materials are replenished. The T02 grounding test (organism growth binds energy and sinks before materials) is moot: the direct draw is about 1 % of the total.

2. Renewables are already below their floor in every scenario. This does not depend on organisms.

3. The conflict in BR-011 sharpens. Task data give φ_r ≤ 0.25. Both dematerialization series now give 0.57–0.79. At the task-data value the model dematerializes far faster than observed (EU −4.6 % per year, against −1.85 % observed). Two explanations remain open:

   • the model lacks something that keeps output coupled to materials, for example rebound effects or the physical footprint of digital services;
   • the 2010–2024 data reflect pre-AI structural factors, not an AI-era parameter.

   Decoupling holds at the task-data φ_r and becomes partial or disappears at the dematerialization fits.