A non-property system is the name of an

economic system An economic system, or economic order, is a system of Production (economics), production, resource allocation and Distribution (economics), distribution of goods and services within a society or a given geographic area. It includes the combinati ...

appearing in the futuristic fictional books and short stories by

Iain Banks Iain Banks (16 February 1954 – 9 June 2013) was a Scottish author, writing mainstream fiction as Iain Banks and science fiction as Iain M. Banks, adding the initial of his adopted middle name Menzies (). After the success of ''The Wasp Factor ...

called the

Culture series The ''Culture'' series is a science fiction series written by Scottish author Iain M. Banks and released from 1987 through to 2012. The stories centre on The Culture, a utopian, post-scarcity space society of humanoid aliens, and advanced su ...

, in which there is no concept of

property Property is a system of rights that gives people legal control of valuable things, and also refers to the valuable things themselves. Depending on the nature of the property, an owner of property may have the right to consume, alter, share, r ...

. No individual or group is given superior rights to control any particular

resource Resource refers to all the materials available in our environment which are technologically accessible, economically feasible and culturally sustainable and help us to satisfy our needs and wants. Resources can broadly be classified upon their ...

. The system is maintained by agreement within the society to encourage normative behaviors governing resource creation and distribution, conflict resolution, and support and protection of the elderly, infirm, and children. Within this system, there is no incentive to own resources aside from personal possessions because owning resources would serve no social function and cannot be sold for money in a market. The non-property system, while being incompatible with

capitalism Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for Profit (economics), profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, pric ...

which is dependent on the idea of

to function, is unlike socialist and communist systems, where there is group ownership by state entities or cooperative enterprises. It is also different from a

barter In trade, barter (derived from ''baretor'') is a system of exchange in which participants in a transaction directly exchange goods or services for other goods or services without using a medium of exchange, such as money. Economists distingu ...

system, where property rights are central to the idea behind barter and exchange. Under the non-property system, there is no property at all; this is most similar to

anarchism without adjectives Anarchism without adjectives (from the Spanish language, Spanish '), in the words of historian George Richard Esenwein, "referred to an hyphen, unhyphenated form of anarchism, that is, a doctrine without any qualifying labels such as Anarchist com ...

, since property can only be maintained in systems where a hierarchy of power still remains (the very disparity between the owner of something and someone who doesn't own that something is itself a hierarchical relationship). Within the division of economic systems from hands-on (coordinated and state controlled) to hands-off (autonomous enterprises), this system has characteristics that appear on both ends of the spectrum. Without property, the ideal of individual freedom is paramount, but coupled with traditions of compassion. The Non-property system also has the distinct characteristic of complete autonomy of society members to form voluntary groups and determine what gets produced. An 'open-source heuristic' mechanism for a non-property system has been proposed to allow logistical production proposals with abundance as the goal. New AI technology with the omniverse can determine feasibility based on current resource dynamics; including volunteers. It can even make suggestions for obtaining the sufficient data for further evaluation.

See also