Law 6: Bigger isn't better. Better is better.

If money and promotions are no longer the sole measures of success, then what is? One answer might be growth. In the mythology of business, the goal of a small enterprise is to become a larger enterprise -- the garage becomes an office tower; the corner drugstore becomes a national chain. But on this dimension, too, free agents are questioning what truly constitutes success in the new economy.

Dennis Benson, 54, runs a microbusiness in Columbus, Ohio called Appropriate Solutions Inc., which conducts public-policy research and management consulting. When he started the firm in 1978, he and his four partners worked out of their homes. Then the company grew and found "real" space. "When we signed our office lease, it was sort of a symbol that we'd made it," Benson told me.

By the mid-1990s, the firm employed 30 people. But an expanding company got to be an expanding hassle, so Benson began paring back his operation. He could have made more money, but he decided that it wasn't worth the aggravation. He downsized his own firm, canceled his office lease, and moved the company into his suburban home. By 1998, Appropriate Solutions was down to a two-person microbusiness -- Benson and his wife, Sandy.

But wait! Isn't growing a sign of success and shrinking a sign of failure? Not to Benson. He was spending less and less time on what he enjoyed doing and what he did best. And that proved inconsistent with Appropriate Solutions's philosophy: "It has to be good. It has to be fun. It has to be profitable. When it stops being fun, do something else."

Here's the bottom line: The one-size-fits-all approach to success -- measured in promotions and denominated in dollars -- is over. Welcome to the my-size-fits-me approach to success, measured by personal metrics and denominated in anything from time to freedom to authenticity to prestige to challenge. Maybe Bob Dylan -- and, thankfully, not Puff Daddy -- is the Francis Scott Key of Free Agent Nation. "A man is a success," Dylan once sang, "if he gets up in the morning and ... does what he wants to do."

Law 7: Forget survival of the fittest. Think Golden Rule.

This may be the most grating misconception about Free Agent Nation: Critics have said that the rise of free agency means the triumph of a "survival of the fittest, I'm only in it for me" ethic in American life. Not at all. In fact, it's the opposite. In a free-agent economy, we need one another more, not less.

Here's how Notty Bumbo, a northern California health-care consultant, summed it up: "If you and I are on the playground and like to go on the teeter-totter, and I'm a jerk who likes to jump off and leave you to fall on the ground, how many times will you get on the teeter-totter with me?" Reciprocal altruism is the underlying process that allows the free-agent economy to function. And it ruthlessly eliminates those who violate its terms. Treat somebody badly, and there goes a portion of your free-agent business network.

You can dismiss this as enlightened self-interest, or deride its naked pragmatism. But consider: The same principle -- "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you" -- is the cornerstone of every major world religion. In Christianity, it comes from the book of Matthew. In Judaism, the Talmud teaches: "What is hateful to you, do not to your fellow man. That is the entire Law; all the rest is commentary." Islam holds: "No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself."

So we are left with what seems like the ultimate paradox: The underlying operating system of the freewheeling, individualistic, hypercapitalistic free-agent economy is . . . the Golden Rule. The DOS, Windows, and Mac OS of the real new economy is one of the oldest principles of human civilization. In other words, the way to be better off is to be better. That is the entire law of the new economy; all the rest is commentary.

Daniel H. Pink (dpink@fastcompany.com) is a Fast Company contributing editor. This article is adapted from his new book, Free Agent Nation: How America's New Independent Workers Are Transforming the Way We Live (Warner Books), published this month.

Sidebar: We Hold These Truths ...

Three developments have catapulted talented individuals to the center of the story -- and will keep them there in the coming chapters.

First, economic adolescence is over. The Organization Man worked in a climate warmed by the sun of corporate paternalism. Giant companies such as AT&T ("Ma Bell"), Kodak ("The Great Yellow Father"), and Metropolitan Life ("Mother Met") promised to take care of their workers. But in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when globalization and technology squeezed those companies, as well as the rest of their matriarchal and patriarchal ilk, they booted out their employees like wayward teenagers. Curiously, dotcom companies revived the family metaphor -- only this time Mother and Father were like the cool parents down the block, the ones you always wished were yours. MomAndDad.com gave the kids a huge allowance. They let them have a dog. They turned the office into a rumpus room. And when times toughened? They booted out the kids. The lesson: This economy is rated strictly for adults.