Four Futures Self-Locator
A two-axis assessment that locates an organization or region in the Four Futures matrix — Shared Abundance, Managed Transition, Rentism, Exterminism — by scoring how broadly productivity is distributed and whether hierarchy is bending or compounding, then names what moves you between quadrants.
What it does
Delia Reyes wakes at 11:47 a.m. In one version of the next decade that's a tragedy; in another, it's the morning she's been waiting for her whole working life. Chapter 7 of The Bridge adapts Peter Frase's Four Futures to show that the difference isn't the technology — the same high-productivity, AI-driven economy produces both Shared Abundance and Rentism. They sit in the same row of the matrix. The only thing that changes is who owns the surplus.
This tool locates your organization, region, or jurisdiction in that matrix. You answer a set of questions about two things and two things only — how broadly the productivity gains in your context are distributed, and whether social hierarchy is diminishing or compounding — and the locator plots you in one of four quadrants: Shared Abundance, Managed Transition, Rentism, or Exterminism. Then it does the part that matters most: it names the specific determining variables that would move you between quadrants, because the whole argument of the chapter is that the scenarios are conditional, not predicted.
The locator is deliberately honest about asymmetry. Chapter 7 is blunt that Rentism is the default trajectory — it "requires no new institutions, no new political coalitions, no new governance architecture; only that current trajectories continue." Shared Abundance and Managed Transition both require deliberate action. So the tool treats movement toward the right-hand quadrants as work that must be specified, and movement toward Rentism as gravity. Standing aside, as the chapter says, is already a bet — and it pays out for Rentism.
Who it's for: strategy leaders and boards asking "which future are our design choices building toward this quarter," regional and municipal policymakers, cooperative and platform-governance designers, and anyone who wants the cynic's-view stress-test the chapter stages against Bregman's structural-malleability counter.
Figure: The Four Futures matrix this tool plots you onto — the distributional question, not the productivity question, is the hinge.
Answer the ten signals across the two axes — distribution and hierarchy — and the locator plots you in one of the four futures, then names what moves you between them.
Which Future Are You Building Toward? The Four Futures of AI
Three-Pillar Bridge Policy Cost Estimator
Participation Dividend Modeler
Steward-Ownership Structure Selector
Four Pillars of Formation Curriculum Builder
- Book 2 (*The Bridge*), Chapter 7 — "Scenarios: The Choice Before Us," especially "The Matrix: Two Axes, Four Quadrants," "Where the Evidence Points Now," "Confronting the Cynic's View," and "The Determining Variables."