A civic economics of provision has three goals: making provisions, protecting providers, and creating a worthwhile purpose. The three traditional sources of wealth – labor, land, and money – are key providers that should be protected from exploitation and misuse and enlisted in achieving the goals of human communities. Most of this work occurs in various systems. To meet the expectations of an economics of provision, we will need to think of the economy as a system and then figure out how to move the system toward fulfilling its purposes with justice and in a sustainable manner.

If we define a system as a set of interdependent and interconnected parts that constitute some whole, then it is clear that most of our everyday life occurs in some system. We go shopping for dinner in the food system. We discard our leftovers in the ecological system. We breathe in the atmospheric system. The quality of our life depends on the quality of our body's immune, digestive, and circulatory systems. Our life, in other words, is a life in a global system that is comprised of a series of large and small sub-systems. In this chapter, we will explore the nature of economic systems. Following chapters will provide strategies for reframing, evaluating and changing these systems.

In a sense Adam Smith's idea of the market's “invisible hand” was an early system concept.