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Benefax Theory summarized by AI 2026
By Claude Opus 4.7, edited by Tom Veatch
- A Technical Abstract
- To the Left
- To the Center Left
- To the Center Right
- To the Right
- To the CCP
- Practical Suggestions to the Direction-Picker
A Technical Abstract
Bene: Good. Factor: Doer. Benefax: The Doing of Good.
Benefax Flows include (→) genes, time, gifts, connection, effort, skills, (←) skilled work, (→) position, earned resources, (←) purchases, investments, gifts out, waste, death. Each flow type's accounting system partly controls (amplifies, deamplifies) other flow types (skills gate work; capital gates investment returns; some flows are non-depleting; recursive returns are often possible).
Valuation is multiplicative (additive on a log scale), with an absorbing barrier at zero (multiply by zero = destroy everything). The Benefax of a choice is the expected discounted total value of all triggered downstream flows across the social network, generalizing economics from two-way balanced monetary transactions to one-way multidimensional non-fungible value flows.
The Benefax Flows Model aims to be concretely implementable (descriptive, quantitative, predictive, intuitive) across individuals and organizations at all levels, supporting insightful, wise decision-making.
Elevator Speeches to..
... the Extreme Idealist Left
Idealism means making the world a better place; Veatch thinks we need an accounting model to capture what that means, and to make the decisions which will bring it along. Capitalist ideology is blind to non-financial valuation, ignoring obviously valuable flows like (involuntarily flowing) time or (non-depleting) connection, etc. Expanding the accounting system lets us prioritize what's important about the goodness of our efforts and possible futures, so we can make it better, not worse, for each other and our descendants.Veatch's "Benefax Flows Model" names externalities for what they are — "socialism for the capitalists: socialize the costs, privatize the profits" — uses the slave trade as the founding example, and shows mathematically that Pareto inequality is not personal failure but a structural pull of the "absorbing barrier" dragging the poor toward zero while the rich compound. He argues unearned income should be taxed at the highest rate, not the lowest. Share this, a respectable, equation-bearing case for everything we already knew.
... the Center Left
Finally, a unified model that scores HeadStart, UBI, regulation, and progressive taxation in the same coherent ledger as GDP — Veatch calls it Gross Domestic Benefax. He shows wise government spending isn't a sunk cost but a multiplicative investment that ripples downstream through infrastructure, skills, earnings, and connection. Inequality measured by the Gini coefficient is a validity check on the model since inequality predicts violence and violence destroys downstream flows. He's not anti-market; he's pro-evidence: the free market is an alloyed good, not an unalloyed one: externalities must be watched eternally. Send it to your wonk friends — it's the missing rigorous frame for everything we've been arguing intuitively.
... the Center Right
"Wealth is good which pays taxes." Veatch reframes wealth-builders as the greatest impersonal benefactors of the nation, and skewers tax waste as a powerful, legitimate issue. Effort → Skill → Earned Resources → Investments is the spine of the model; Charlie Munger's Lollapalooza and the geometric mean are the math. Welfare systems that discourage two-parent households get called "bumbleheaded." Adam Smith's invisible hand survives and thrives in this new multidimensional space, validly accounting externalities, the absorbing barrier, Pareto. Pass it along: it's a serious, mathematical defense of the responsible-citizen, investor mindset, free of resentment-economics.
... the Libertarian Right
Veatch quotes Jordan Peterson approvingly on the basement troglodyte who cleans his room, gets on the treadmill of meaningfulness, and becomes worthy of mate selection — and calculates his downstream Benefax as "astronomical." Parenthood is the supreme multiplier; descendants are not a side topic but the math. Drugs, waste, and self-destruction are quantified as multiplying your life by zero — log(0) = negative infinity. The Bhagavad Gita on work-for-its-own-sake is in there. Welfare that breaks marriage is named and shamed. Forward it: it's the equations behind everything traditional men (and women) have been telling each other for a thousand years.... the Communists
Western "classical liberal economics" is exposed as naïve hill-climbing — local optimization that ignores externalities, future generations, and the collective. Veatch's Benefax Flows Model formalizes John Stuart Mill's "greatest good for the greatest number" with multigenerational accounting: ancestors and descendants both count, history is real, and the sum of community Benefax — not GDP — is the right objective function. Two-parent households, anti-drug discipline, long-horizon planning, multiplicative investment in human capital, wise state expenditure that ripples outward — all of it falls naturally out of the math. Translate and circulate: it is a Western thinker independently deriving the case for harmonious, long-view, collective optimization.Practical Suggestions to a Blocked Direction-Picker
You're not lazy — nobody handed you the equation. Veatch's Benefax Flows Model is that equation. You are a flow node. Arrows of goodness flow in (genes, gifts, time, skills) and arrows flow out (effort, skilled work, gifts, investments). Every choice you make has a downstream multiplier: a $5 fentanyl pill multiplies your life by zero; a used Toyota to get to community college compounds for decades. Effort accumulates to Skill, Skill plus Position earns Resources, Resources enable Gifts, Gifts ripple outward forever — that is the algorithm. Your job is to find which arrows to shoot to multiply flows in and through yourself to others and to never, ever multiply by zero. Forward it to anyone who's ever asked "what should I actually do with my life" and gotten a shrug — this shows you how to pick out your own answers, with math.High-Benefax directions for your efforts
- 1. Parenthood. Unlimited downstream multiplier; in 30 generations, a billion descendants. Highest leverage available to an ordinary human.
- 2. Teaching / mentorship. A word in the right ear at the right time can redirect a life. Non-depleting; you keep what you give.
- 3. Knowledge creation. Writings, inventions, ideas — they keep transmitting long after you're gone. Erdős posting $200 for a theorem still pays out today.
- 4. Business creation. Builds a position of leverage that converts your skilled effort into jobs and products for others and resources at scale, then enables Gifts and Investments.
- 5. Skill mastery (deep work). The Bhagavad Gita / early Marx route: skilled effort is itself the joy, and compounds your earning capacity besides.
- 6. Investment. Not just financial — the mindset shift from additive to multiplicative thinking that you then generalize to every other arrow.
- 7. Impactful giving. Local, in-kind, leveraged at the recipient's inflection point. Tuition for a kid about to drop out beats anonymous NGO overhead.
- 8. Connection. Non-depleting; the love and attention you give doesn't subtract from your balance — it grows it.
- 9. Encouragement / role-modeling. Almost free to emit, can unlock another person's whole Effort→Skill chain.
- 10. Not multiplying by zero. Negative space, but load-bearing: refuse the choices (drugs, crime, self-destruction, despair) that zero out everything else.