New Value Institute

Lab

Multi-Value Decision-Making Lab

Develops and tests mechanisms for accountable decisions among values that cannot be reduced to a common measure.

Development Focus

Plural Value and Decision-Making

Lab Function

Mechanism and protocol development

What the Lab Develops

Derived from Post Capitalistic Auction, the Lab isolates and tests structures that allow heterogeneous and non-commensurable forms of value to enter one decision situation without conversion to a single metric. Its focus is the relation between commitment, public articulation, situated judgment, responsibility, and consequential choice.

Founding Corpus

Post Capitalistic Auction

Source Structure and Core Question

How can decisions remain legitimate when the values at stake cannot be reduced to a common measure?

The Lab begins from selected structural relations within the operative rules of Post Capitalistic Auction. It separates plural bidding, public deliberation, situated authority, binding commitment, and consequential choice so that their interaction can be examined and tested.

Bounded test conditions are used to identify what participants prioritise, what they are prepared to commit, what remains protected or excluded, and how rules shape the visibility of different forms of value.

Post Capitalistic Protocol remains a protocol hypothesis in development rather than a validated institutional tool. Post Capitalistic Art Award is an initiative in development.

Source Materials

  • Post Capitalistic Auction across four editions
  • Plural bidding structures
  • Binding value commitments
  • Non-conversion
  • Situated judgment
  • Post Capitalistic Protocol
  • Post Capitalistic Art Award

Mechanisms and Protocol Hypotheses

  • Heterogeneous value channels
  • Non-conversion
  • Binding commitments
  • Public articulation
  • Situated judgment
  • Consequential choice
  • Transferability testing

Outputs

  • Mechanism analyses
  • Protocol hypotheses
  • Transferability tests
  • Bounded test designs
  • Allocation and decision architectures

Possible Test Contexts

  • Cultural funding
  • Grants
  • Commissions
  • Residencies
  • Awards
  • Philanthropy
  • Resource allocation
  • AI-assisted decisions where final human responsibility must remain visible

Development Status

Active protocol development

Development beyond the Source Work

Development beyond the founding work proceeds through external cases, interdisciplinary expertise, and bounded institutional tests.