Journal of Economic and Social Dynamics

Abstract

Employment has historically served as one of the principal mechanisms through which individuals obtain

purchasing power. Individuals provide labor to firms or other organizations, receive compensation, and use

their earnings to obtain goods and services. This relationship connects production, income distribution, and

consumption. Technological change may weaken this connection for some groups of workers as artificial

intelligence, robotics, software automation, demographic change, and new organizational forms to alter the composition of labor demand. This paper does not assume that AI will produce permanent mass unemployment. Instead, it examines a distributional scenario in which productive capacity and human employment become less tightly connected. The paper introduces the Convalomy economic model, a proposed institutional model situated within the broader concept of the Contribution Economy. Convalomy separates economic recognition from employment status by allowing verified human contributions to generate transferable digital economic claims that can be redeemed within a participating network. Contributions may include care assistance, companionship, community maintenance, environmental activities, cultural participation, educational exchange, transportation assistance, and other voluntarily requested activities that satisfy defined verification and eligibility rules. The model is built around the sequence of Contribution, Verification, Valuation, Economic Claim, Redemption, Purchasing Power. Its central economic constraint is that digital claims cannot create real resources by themselves. Sustainable purchasing power therefore requires credible redemption capacity supplied by merchants, service providers, public or philanthropic funding, reserves, sponsorship, or other legitimate economic resources. The paper develops the institutional architecture, formal conditions, illustrative equations, governance safeguards, and a proposed pilot design for testing whether verified human contribution can be converted into economically credible purchasing claims without creating fraud, exploitation, excessive commodification, or regulatory evasion.