# B′ free-control working — b10

## STATE

**problem.** A peer-to-peer hour-credit exchange destabilizes: credits hoarded (holders stop offering), deficits drift (debtors leave), and a few easy-to-offer services are over-rewarded relative to effort and flood the system, crowding out needed help. Participation spirals down. Organizers can change earning/spending rules, what is tracked, limits, and what members see.

**meta_model.** A closed circulating medium whose value depends on flow, but whose stored claims accumulate at the extremes (hoard / debt) and stall circulation; the medium's "price" (one credit = one hour) is decoupled from real cost/value, opening a low-effort arbitrage that drains the shared pool. Need: redesign the rule environment so circulation and honest contribution are each participant's best response, close the harmful mispricing without flattening legitimate variety, and keep stored claims from becoming dead value — without pricing out the norms that make a mutual-aid community work.

## VERBS RUN (in order, with one-line why)

1. **lift** — strip domain to the meta-model above so retrieval lands on structure, not "time bank."
2. **match (search_by_facets)** — oblique, multi-structure problem (hoarding + mispricing + commons drain + incentive design); facet decomposition. Surfaced: incentive_compatible_rule_design, harmful_arbitrage_closure / arbitrage_capture, deadweight_loss_reduction, iterative_reciprocity, price_signal_design, satiation_aware_allocation, tragedy_of_the_commons, free_riding, liquidity.
3. **match (corpus_stats)** — sanity check engine live (643 primes, semantic on).
4. **salience-rank** — incentive-compatible rule design = spine; arbitrage-closure = the easy-service flood; reciprocity = circulation engine; deadweight/price-signal/satiation = the pricing + hoarding levers.
5. **transport + get_archetype ×6** — pulled the six load-bearing archetypes; mapped roles (members=strategic participants; credits=signal/claim; easy services=arbitrage route; pool=commons).
6. **evaluate-fit (gate)** — price_signal anti-signature "signal crowd-out" (pricing erodes civic duty) + arbitrage-closure "close harmful gaps, not all difference" → keep mechanisms light, preserve reciprocity norms, don't over-engineer. Reciprocity anti-signature: don't punish temporary inability like exploitation → graduated, forgiving.
7. **prune** — dropped liquidity/bubble framing (no speculative asset here); kept circulation + mispricing + commons.
8. **compose / reconcile** — assembled mechanisms into one operating design; reconciled "make flow rational" (incentive spine) with "don't kill the gift-economy spirit" (crowd-out gate).
9. **STOP** — all three failure modes and the stabilizer covered; recommendation ready.

COST: ~9 operations, ~38k tokens.

===RECOMMENDATION_BEGIN===

The exchange is failing on three fronts at once — credits pile up unused, deficits drift until people quit, and a few cheap-to-offer services soak up reward they don't deserve — so the fix has to make *circulation itself* the rational thing to do, correct the mispricing that invites flooding, and keep stored credits from becoming dead weight, all without smothering the goodwill that makes a help-exchange work.

**Make flow the natural behavior, at both ends.** Set a soft band on balances rather than a hard cap. Above a high threshold, newly earned credits accrue at a gentle discount (you still gain, but less per hour) and you receive a friendly nudge that your help is most valuable when spent or matched by spending. Below a deficit floor, you can still receive help, but you're guided toward the easiest ways to contribute and given a generous, no-penalty window to climb back. The point is asymmetric friction: it's always slightly easier to keep credits moving than to let them sit or sink. Pair this with a slow, mild decay on the *unused* portion of very large balances — small enough that nobody feels robbed, large enough that hoarding has a quiet cost. Decay revenue feeds a community reserve (below).

**Stop treating every hour as identical.** One credit per hour is the root of the flooding: it decouples reward from real cost and from what people actually need. Keep the hour as the base unit, but let earning rates flex for services that are chronically oversupplied versus chronically unmet. When a category's offered hours far exceed the hours members spend on it, its earn rate drifts downward over the following weeks; when a needed service goes unmet, its rate drifts up. Members see these rates plainly, so the signal guides them before they invest effort. Crucially, this is a *narrow* correction aimed only at the harmful imbalance — not a flattening of variety. Genuinely diverse, in-demand offerings keep full value; only the easy-to-mass-produce, low-demand floods get gently throttled. Cap how fast and how far rates can move so the system stays predictable and can't be gamed by short bursts.

**Anchor the system in repeated, remembered relationships.** Track each member's give-and-take balance over time and surface it lightly: people can see that contribution is noticed and reciprocated, which is what keeps reliable givers from feeling like suckers. Use a graduated, forgiving response to persistent free-riding — a reminder, then a request for context, then reduced priority in matching — always distinguishing someone temporarily unable to give from someone systematically taking. Reentry to full standing is always available. This relational memory, not heavy enforcement, is what makes cooperation the stable equilibrium.

**Guard the easy-arbitrage routes directly.** Whenever a service category suddenly spikes in volume, route it through a brief review and let recipients confirm the help was actually wanted and useful before credits clear. This closes the "flood the system with cheap offers" loophole at the point where value is supposed to be created, without adding friction to the honest majority. If members try to relabel a flooded service as a new category, the demand-tracking rate adjustment follows them, so relabeling buys nothing.

**Keep a community reserve and a few protected floors.** The decay and any small transaction margins fund a reserve that can grant starter credits to newcomers (so deficits early on don't drive them off) and underwrite genuinely needed but under-offered help. Protect a basic floor: everyone, regardless of balance, retains access to essential community help, so the pricing logic never prices out the people the exchange exists to serve. Publish the rules and rate changes openly with a simple appeal path; legitimacy is what keeps members responding to the signals rather than resenting them.

**Watch the system and adjust.** Monitor four things monthly: the share of large idle balances, the share of deep deficits, the ratio of offered-to-spent hours per category, and overall active give-and-take. If idle balances climb, steepen the decay or the high-balance discount slightly; if deficits drift, widen the recovery window and lean on the reserve; if a category floods, let its rate fall faster; if participation dips, loosen frictions. Treat every parameter as adjustable and reversible, never as permanent.

**Final operating rule:** keep credits *moving* and keep reward *tracking real, wanted effort* — make spending and offering needed help always the easiest, most rewarded path; let idle hoards quietly lose ground and over-supplied easy services quietly lose value; protect newcomers, debtors-in-good-faith, and essential access with a reserve and a floor; and tune every threshold from what the participation and balance numbers actually show, so the exchange stays liquid, fair, and genuinely useful over time.

===RECOMMENDATION_END===
