Modern monetary systems are widely treated as neutral coordination mechanisms. Yet the sequencing of fiscal and monetary rules often conditions access to essential life-support systems — water, healthcare, food security, shelter, and infrastructure — on market performance and financial ratios. This paper examines how monetary architecture can contribute to direct, structural, and cultural violence when survival is subordinated to accounting constraints.
Drawing on peace theory, macroeconomics, behavioral research, and public infrastructure governance, the paper distinguishes between real constraints (biophysical and ecological limits) and artificial constraints (institutional or symbolic rules treated as natural laws). It introduces the concept of Viability Budgeting, a fiscal sequencing framework that prioritizes life-support systems before financial optimization.
Through diagnostic models, implementation pathways, and local-to-global scaling strategies, the paper argues that monetary systems can function either as fragility amplifiers or as peace infrastructure. The central claim is not that money is inherently violent, but that its design determines whether it stabilizes or destabilizes society.
Viability-first monetary architecture is presented not as ideological transformation, but as institutional reordering: life first, accounting second.
