Zero-Sum Exchange: Spontaneous Driving Forces of Symbiotic Order and Its Fundamental Distinctions from Planning and Market Systems

Both planned and market economies rest on a flawed shared premise: material accumulation is treated as an end in itself. The planned economy erases individual disparities via aggregate statistical planning, while the market economy dissolves collective meaning through the concentration of capital. Symbiotic Order overturns this foundational assumption: it fixes the sum of stock value at a constant level ($$M+P=\text{Constant$$), relegating physical goods to instrumental status and defining life experience as the ultimate objective of economic activity. This paper demonstrates that under the rules of Zero-Sum Exchange, individuals’ spontaneous motivation stems not from external incentives or coercive commands, but from perpetual competition for priority access to experiences and pioneering reputational prestige. Such competition never results in capital concentration or systemic deadlock; instead, it generates baton-style successive resource circulation. The institutional framework achieves dual transcendence over planning and market mechanisms, offering an institutional answer to the core existential question: how ought human beings to live?