One purpose of the combined Peace Portal and FDU platform design is to provide a comprehensive Information Age economic model that sustainably addresses extreme global poverty, over-use of natural resources, and unequal compensation in a globalized world. Our Game is designed to improve the human and planetary condition by supporting humanitarian partners with the capacity to resolve issues related to lack of basic resources in health care, education, jobs, fair wages,food, water, and shelter. 

If we trace the causes of poverty, the above mentioned issues, and of environmental degradation on a planeary scale we will find they all have a common root-cause, the Industrial Age economic model. The FDU will test a Information Age economic model that also supports charities qualified here on Peace Portal.

The current economic model creates wealth out of thin air and then requires that one of two forms of substance pay the bill, the first is to extract it from Earths natural resources thereby upsetting our natural planetary cycles; the second source of substance for paying the debt is the labor of living people.

While poverty has always been a issue, it was only with the advent of the Industrial Age and it’s use of paper money that extreme gaps in poverty developed along with the gap between the richest and the poorest. 

An analysis of long-term trends since the approximate start of the Industrial Age indicates the distance between the richest and poorest countries has grown, causing extreme poverty to those who are on the loosing side of the equation.

· 3 to 1 in 1820
· 11 to 1 in 1913 
· 35 to 1 in 1950 
· 44 to 1 in 1973
· 72 to 1 in 1992 

The result today is dire. A kindergarten class a second dies, that is 30,000 children a day under the age of five; Half the world — nearly three billion people — live on less than two dollars a day. This is a direct result of the Industrial Age economic model trying to keep up in our current day with monstrous debt load that has been created out of nowhere via the phenomenon of interest. 

“The developing world now spends $13 on debt repayment for every $1 it receives in grants.” ~ Global Development Finance, World Bank 

This continued cycle of poverty is based on the assumption of a competitive nature based economy. In return for new loans to poor countries, lenders in the 1980s and 1990s insisted on 'structural adjustment' to increase their chances of being paid back. This meant cutting government spending on things like healthcare and education - the very services on which poor people (and women and children in particular) rely. Many of these countries have ended up spending more on servicing their debts than on the basic needs of their citizens. 

The Free Digital Universe and it’s component parts hope this Game will help individuals and companies from around the Globe to better respond to the dilemmas created by the Industrial Age.

“The technology of the Information Age makes it possible to create assets that are outside the reach of many forms of coercion. This new asymmetry between protection and extortion rests upon a fundamental truth of mathematics. It is easier to multiply than to divide.”

“Information technology will create equivalent opportunities for competitive choice in domiciling economic activities, but with important differences. One is that unlike the medieval frontier societies, cyberspace is likely to be in due course the richest of economic realms. It will therefore tend to be a growing rather than a receding frontier.”

With the tools of the Information Age we can achieve our goals. With the help of the independent peer partners whom have chosen to implement the Free Digital Universe concept, perhaps we can relieve pressure on individuals, communities, and governments. 

“If you don’t like the way to the world is, you change it. You have an obligation to change it. You just do it one step at a time. ~ Marian Wright Edelman 

Today, peace means the ascent from simple coexistence to cooperation and common creativity among countries and nations.