1. Purpose
Human Provisioning Systems (HPS) is a proposed scientific and professional discipline dedicated to understanding, designing, and governing how human societies meet fundamental human needs within biophysical and social limits.
The discipline arises from the recognition that existing economic theory is structurally incapable of addressing the central challenges of the 21st century: ecological degradation, material scarcity, infrastructural fragility, and the failure of production systems to reliably meet human needs despite apparent monetary wealth.
HPS reframes the core question of political economy from:
How do markets allocate scarce resources?
to:
How do societies provision themselves—materially, socially, and institutionally—to meet human needs over time?
2. Problem Statement
Modern societies depend on complex production systems that transform natural, human, social, and built capital into goods and services required for survival and well-being. These systems are increasingly constrained by:
- Finite biophysical stocks and ecological thresholds
- Degrading infrastructure and ecosystems
- Demographic change and skill mismatches
- Institutional fragmentation and short-term financial incentives
Mainstream economics treats these constraints as externalities, substitutions, or price signals. In doing so, it fails to:
- Represent physical stocks and flows explicitly
- Distinguish needs from preferences or demand
- Account for irreversible loss of real capital
- Provide operational guidance for provisioning under limits
Human Provisioning Systems emerges to address these failures directly.
3. Core Object of Study
The core object of study in Human Provisioning Systems is:
The interaction between real capital stocks and production systems in the ongoing provision of essential human needs.
This includes:
- The identification of non-negotiable human needs
- The real capital required to meet those needs
- The production, maintenance, and regeneration of capital stocks
- The systemic feedbacks that create resilience or fragility
4. Foundational Premises
The discipline is grounded in the following premises:
- Human needs are finite, universal, and non-substitutable
While preferences vary, the requirements for nutrition, shelter, health, care, mobility, meaning, and participation are constrained by human biology and sociality. - Real capital is primary; financial capital is derivative
Financial claims cannot substitute for degraded ecosystems, absent skills, or failing infrastructure. - Production systems are physical systems
They operate through stocks, flows, energy gradients, maintenance cycles, and failure modes. - Biophysical limits are binding
No amount of efficiency or substitution can fully escape material and energetic constraints. - Provisioning precedes markets
Markets are coordination mechanisms within provisioning systems, not their foundation.
5. The Four Capitals Framework
Human Provisioning Systems adopts a Real Capital Framework consisting of four interdependent capital stocks:
- Natural Capital
Ecosystems, energy sources, materials, and biophysical processes - Human Capital
Health, skills, knowledge, and embodied capacities - Social Capital
Trust, institutions, governance, norms, and coordination capacity - Built Capital
Infrastructure, tools, machines, and durable artifacts
Provisioning outcomes depend on the condition, interaction, and regeneration of these capitals over time.
6. Production Systems
A production system is defined as:
A structured process that transforms inputs of real capital, energy, and labor into goods and services that meet human needs.
HPS analyzes production systems by:
- Mapping stock–flow relationships
- Identifying bottlenecks and single points of failure
- Assessing maintenance and renewal requirements
- Evaluating dependence on degrading capital
7. Analytical Methods
Human Provisioning Systems draws on and integrates methods from multiple fields, including:
- Systems dynamics and stock–flow modeling
- Biophysical accounting
- Scenario analysis and constraint mapping
- Needs-based assessment frameworks
- Infrastructure and resilience analysis
- Institutional and governance analysis
Quantitative modeling is complemented by qualitative systems mapping where data is incomplete.
8. Normative Orientation
Human Provisioning Systems is explicitly normative in its purpose but rigorous in its analysis.
Its guiding objective is:
To ensure the durable satisfaction of human needs for all, within biophysical limits.
Growth in monetary terms is not a goal of the discipline. Improvements are evaluated in terms of:
- Needs satisfaction
- System resilience
- Capital regeneration
- Risk reduction
9. Relationship to Existing Disciplines
Human Provisioning Systems:
- Is not economics, though it incorporates insights from political economy
- Is not sustainability studies, though it addresses sustainability outcomes
- Is not ecology, though it relies on ecological constraints
- Is not engineering, though it analyzes physical systems
It occupies a distinct integrative space focused on societal provisioning as a system-level challenge.
10. Applications
The discipline is intended to inform:
- Public policy and long-term planning
- Infrastructure investment and maintenance
- Food, energy, housing, and care systems
- Risk assessment and resilience planning
- Institutional design and governance reform
11. Professional Identity
Practitioners trained in Human Provisioning Systems may serve as:
- Provisioning systems analysts
- Real capital planners
- Societal resilience advisors
- Needs-based policy designers
Their role is to translate system understanding into actionable guidance for institutions responsible for meeting human needs.
12. Call to Collaboration
Human Provisioning Systems is proposed as an open, evolving discipline.
Researchers, practitioners, educators, and institutions are invited to:
- Test and refine its frameworks
- Develop curricula and case studies
- Apply its methods in real-world contexts
- Contribute to its theoretical foundations
The discipline recognizes that the challenges it addresses are collective and urgent.
13. Closing Statement
Human societies now face the task of deliberately provisioning themselves within limits for the first time in history.
This task requires a discipline equal to its complexity.
Human Provisioning Systems is proposed as one step toward meeting that responsibility.
Please follow me on linkedin and my patreon blog at patreon.com/Stephenhinton and do get in touch if you’d like to be part of this development.
Stephen Hinton Consulting 