In Commonwealth City, survival is not earned.
It is guaranteed.
The Civic Stipend exists to ensure that every resident can participate in city life without being coerced by desperation. It is not charity, not welfare, and not a reward. It is infrastructure—no different from housing or transit.
Every registered resident of Commonwealth City receives a daily, automatic stipend:
500 Credits
250 Marks
The stipend is deposited once per day at the start of the local morning cycle. No application is required. No conditions are attached.
If you exist in the City, you receive it.
The City learned early that guaranteeing survival was not enough.
Without discretionary resources, citizens remained trapped—alive, but unable to choose how they lived. The stipend provides baseline agency, allowing residents to:
Customize their lives
Explore the City
Participate in culture
Save toward long-term goals
Refuse exploitative work
The stipend is meant to remove pressure, not ambition.
The Civic Stipend does not:
Replace work or skilled income
Scale with status or influence
Grant authority or privilege
Buy privacy or immunity
Make residents wealthy
It ensures comfort and participation, not power.
Those who want more must still choose how to pursue it.
The stipend is funded collectively through:
Public ownership of infrastructure
Cooperative surplus
Automated production efficiencies
External trade tariffs
No single institution controls it. Attempts to restrict or weaponize the stipend are treated as systemic threats.
Most residents barely think about the stipend.
It is background noise—like water pressure or electricity.
Some see it as freedom.
Some see it as stagnation.
Some see it as the bare minimum.
Debates about its size, structure, and impact never stop.
The stipend itself has never been repealed.
Fraud exists, but is rare and unglamorous.
Hoarding stipends does not break the system—it simply makes a person visible.
The City does not punish wealth.
It watches what wealth tries to become.
Because the stipend exists:
Hunger is rare
Homelessness is systemic failure, not personal failure
Desperation-driven crime is uncommon
Quiet lives are viable
People still struggle—but not to survive.
They struggle to matter.
The Civic Stipend does not promise happiness.
It promises breathing room.
What residents do with that space—
build, coast, rebel, create, disappear, or simply live—
is the real story of the City.
And that choice belongs to them.