The claim: the way civilization currently runs (call it Game A) is competitive, extractive and built on endless growth, and it's hitting its limits. Game B is the name for whatever cooperative system might replace it. The interesting part isn't either game. It's the transition, which has to grow inside the old system rather than overthrow it.
Where it comes from
The framework came out of a loose group of thinkers around 2013 to 2016, most associated with Jim Rutt (former chairman of the Santa Fe Institute, the complexity-science research center) and Jordan Hall (co-founder of DivX, then writing as Jordan Greenhall). It lives mostly in essays, podcasts and online community discussion, not in academic papers or a book.
Game A
Game A is the operating system we already run: nation-states, corporations, financial markets and status hierarchies, all competing.
- Zero-sum. My win is your loss. Rival goods, winner-take-all.
- Extractive. Value comes from pulling resources out faster than they renew.
- Growth as the scoreboard. GDP up is good, full stop.
- Captured institutions. The organizations meant to correct course end up serving the players.
The argument isn't that Game A is evil. It built the modern world. The argument is that it works at small scale and breaks at planetary scale. Ecological overshoot, institutional decay, a crisis of meaning, and now AI acceleration are all read as the same failure showing up in different places.
Game B
Game B doesn't exist yet as a system. Its founders are clear that it's a direction, not a plan: a set of design principles for what comes next.
- Positive-sum. Cooperation that makes the pie bigger instead of fighting over slices.
- Coherence without central control. Coordination that doesn't collapse into either authoritarianism or chaos.
- Sovereignty. Individuals who can make sense of the world and choose for themselves without leaning on institutional authority. This is the building block.
- Collective intelligence. Groups that think better than any one member. Not voting, not consensus, not central planning, but something that emerges from how the group works together.
The transition is the point
A revolution that topples Game A and installs something new is still Game A logic: win-lose, seize control. So the proposed path is emergence. New structures grow inside the old ones until they're strong enough to carry the load. The awkward part is that the people building Game B still have to play Game A to pay rent.
The mechanism both founders point to is the multipolar trap (sometimes called "Moloch"): everyone acts rationally in their own interest, and the sum is an outcome nobody chose and nobody can stop alone. Arms races, attention-economy apps and AI labs racing each other are the standard examples.
Why AI makes this urgent
AI cuts both ways, and the framework takes both seriously.
- As a Game A accelerant: AI deepens concentration of power, speeds everything up and turns up race pressure faster than institutions can absorb. The risk here is systemic destabilization, not only a rogue superintelligence.
- As a possible Game B enabler: AI could make it cheaper for groups to make sense of things together, coordinate, and give individuals capabilities that used to require an institution.
Which way it goes is treated as a design and agency question, not something baked into the technology.
Where it connects
- The disappearing career ladder. Game A careers climb a ladder. As entry-level work thins out, Game B suggests the replacement is a network, not a new ladder.
- Organizations in transition. Much of what gets called "AI transformation" is Game A organizations trying to operate like Game B ones, and mostly failing.
- Techno-feudalism. Yanis Varoufakis argues Game A players will capture AI and deepen control. Game B thinkers see the same technology as a possible way out.
- Exponential curves. Game A can't handle exponential growth on a finite planet. Game B is meant to be designed for it.
- Growth optimism. Marc Andreessen and Peter Diamandis see more growth and markets as the cure. Rutt and Hall see that as the disease.
Who else is nearby
- Jim Rutt: the complexity-science voice. Civilization as a complex adaptive system, not an equilibrium economy.
- Jordan Hall: the sovereignty and sense-making voice. Argues our shared ability to figure out what's true is breaking down.
- Daniel Schmachtenberger: adjacent. Frames the "metacrisis" as one underlying coordination failure behind AI, climate and institutional decay.
- Nora Bateson: adjacent, from ecology and systems thinking. Emphasizes relationships and context over isolated data.
- Aza Raskin: shares the race-to-the-bottom diagnosis, focused on technology and the attention economy rather than civilization as a whole.
The weak spots
- Hard to test. "A direction, not a plan" is honest, but it means no concrete institution counts as success or failure.
- The limits have been coming for decades. "The current system is about to break" is an old prediction. What makes this moment different needs to be spelled out.
- Sovereignty takes capacity. Not everyone has the time, education or stability to be a self-directed sense-maker. Without care, Game B reads as an exit for the already capable.
- Vocabulary can stand in for mechanism. Terms like "coherence" and "emergence" are evocative. Testable models are thinner on the ground.
- Big idea, small footprint. The framework has real reach online and almost no institutional adoption. That's either too early or a sign the design doesn't survive contact with Game A incentives.
Open questions
- Is AI a Game A tool, a Game B enabler, or both at once? And does that line hold as capability and concentration grow?
- Can Game B emerge inside Game A, or does Game A have to fail first?
- What does a Game B structure look like at small scale today: a team, a practice, a community of individuals working with AI outside institutions?
- How does Game B include people who don't yet have the capacity sovereignty demands?
All theories · clickbridge.com · Rich Price · last reviewed September 2026 · Primary material is mostly podcasts, essays and community discussion rather than peer-reviewed work · People linked here have their own pages at people.clickbridge.com