Definition
Three commitments a legitimate system has to keep: no one is subject to unchecked power, the time and stamina people spend is counted, and authority lasts only while its errors can still reach someone who will correct them. None of the three follows from the others.
Non-domination means people can exit or refuse, and are not subject to an architecture they cannot control. Burden accounting means the institution tracks the finite human capacity and uncredited labor it consumes, the human subsidy, as an operating cost. Error-correcting authority means contradiction from downstream counts as evidence and can force revision of the rule that produced it. The derivation in the core axioms sets out all three.
Tests that show it is in place
- The system measures exit depth and refusal costs for the people it decides about.
- Frontline manual exception handling is tracked on-ledger rather than treated as free operational elasticity.
- Downstream contradiction trends are bound to formal review clocks that can halt or roll back the automated rule.
Hypothetical example
- A public benefits agency evaluates a deployment not only by administrative velocity but also by applicant exit costs, frontline exception repair hours, and whether appeal trends trigger mandatory rule revision.
References
- Core axioms: derivation · Standard
- What Ethotechnics is not · Theory