Mapping the Regenerative Future: Your EcoCommerce Reading Guide
How Canonical Unit Economies will reshape the economic and ecological landscape
During the next fifteen weeks (or so) I will be publishing subsequent articles to reveal the EcoCommerce Marketplace series. This structure will gradually introduce you to the conceptual, technical, and transformative scope of EcoCommerce and its pioneering role in establishing Canonical Unit Economies (CUEs).
Each post builds a layer of understanding, leading you from core concepts to application, significance, and engagement. Subscribe to the Substack EcoCommerce Marketplace to join and support this journey.
The first batch of 15 articles is structured in three thematic arcs:
🧭 ARC I: Foundations of a New Economic Logic
Introduce key concepts and reframe economic assumptions through the EcoCommerce lens.
1. Why the Economy Can’t Be Fixed — It Needs to Be Rebuilt
Why today’s fiat-debt economy structurally excludes natural, human, and social capital — and what comes next.
2. The Capital We’ve Ignored: Why Externalities Are the New Economy
How trillions in unpriced externalities represent untapped value — and the opportunity to redesign economic systems around them.
3. What Is a Canonical Unit Economy? Introducing the Next Category of Economics
The core principles of CUEs: capital classification, unit standardization, and value-linked currency issuance.
4. The Force of the Source: Why All Economies Begin with Currency Logic
An exploration of how the “source” of money defines economic behavior, from fiat to gold to EcoCoins.
5. From Theory to Practice: The EcoCommerce Equation Explained
An accessible breakdown of the EcoCommerce Equation and how it models capital → currency → outputs.
📦 ARC II: Anatomy of EcoCommerce
Break down the components of the platform and demonstrate how they work together to power a CUE.
6. What’s in an NCC? The Canonical Grid of Natural Capital
A look at the 1m x 1m Natural Capital Cell as the smallest accounting unit for land-based ecological value.
7. Inside the NCU-4: The Four Layers That Make Capital Count
Explore the four ecological layers used to classify, quantify, and value each NCC.
8. GeoNFTs Are Not for Sale: A New Role for Digital Land Contracts
Clarifying misconceptions and explaining how GeoNFTs govern access, not ownership, to ecological data.
9. EcoCoins and Range-Bound Currency: Stability from Regeneration
Why EcoCoins are minted from real capital, how they avoid inflationary risk, and how market pricing works.
10. The EcoCommerce Bank: Currency Without Debt, Extraction, or Inflation
Introducing a non-custodial ledger where value is minted, exchanged, and tracked across ecological markets.
🌍 ARC III: Implications, Innovation, and Integration
Show the broader implications, strategic integrations, and opportunities for involvement.
11. CUE vs. Capitalism: Is EcoCommerce a New Form of Capitalism — or Something Else?
Compare canonical unit economies to traditional models like regenerative capitalism, stakeholder capitalism, and commons-based production.
12. Why Circular Economy Goals Keep Failing (and How CUEs Create Tailwinds)
Analyze why efforts like ESG, carbon offsets, and circular economy platforms struggle in fiat-driven systems.
13. One Square Meter at a Time: Why the Future of Economics Starts with One Cell
Demonstrate how individuals can start participating in EcoCommerce today, and why local action scales globally.
14. The Capital Commons: A Fourth Sector to Govern the Regenerative Economy
Introducing the institutional space needed to host CUEs and govern shared capital fairly and transparently.
15. A New Category, A New Era: Why EcoCommerce Might Be This Century’s Most Important Economic Invention
Tying the arc together with a bold case for why this work matters now, and how readers can help shape it.
Author
Timothy Gieseke’ career path has traversed through government, private business, and non-government sectors while focusing on the common issue of landscape sustainability from ecological and economic perspectives. This led him to explore the transcendence nature of solving complex, socially wicked issues.
He authored three books that outline the environmental, socio-economics, and governance of EcoCommerce for the purpose of addressing economic externalities. His third book Collaborative Environmental Governance Frameworks: A Practical Guide (2019) describes how shared governance can be used to organize socioeconomic efforts. His second book, Shared Governance for Sustainable Working Landscapes (2016) introduces the NCU (natural capital unit) that functions as a landscape accounting unit, a shared governance catalyst, and the source of a currency. His first book, EcoCommerce 101: Adding an ecological dimension to the economy (2011) describes the intimate relationship natural capital, the environment, and the economic have relative to the welfare of society and nature.
