Three control surfaces.
Governance decides who chooses. Economy decides what gets produced. Information decides who knows what. Every civilization has a setting on each — and the cell it falls into determines what kinds of failure it is exposed to.
Governance
| Form | Throughput | Stability | Fragility | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Decentralized network / DAO | 25 | 30 | 80 | Stateless tribal coalitions; modern crypto DAOs |
Federation / confederacy | 50 | 60 | 50 | Iroquois Confederacy; early USA; modern Switzerland |
Republic / parliamentary democracy | 65 | 70 | 45 | Roman Republic; Venice; modern democracies |
Centralized empire / autocracy | 80 | 65 | 35 | Roman Empire; Han; Ming; USSR |
Economy
| Form | Throughput | Stability | Fragility | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Subsistence agriculture | 15 | 80 | 20 | Pre-state societies; medieval peasant villages |
Tributary / agrarian state | 40 | 70 | 35 | Han China; medieval European kingdoms |
Mercantile / trade-network | 65 | 55 | 55 | Venice; Hanseatic League; pre-modern Singapore |
Industrial | 80 | 50 | 60 | 19th-century Britain; 20th-century USA, USSR |
Digital / financialized | 95 | 35 | 80 | 21st-century US; Singapore; modern Korea |
Information
| Form | Throughput | Stability | Fragility | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Closed / authoritarian | 30 | 60 | 60 | Late Ming; USSR after 1968; modern North Korea |
Curated / élite-managed | 55 | 65 | 45 | Confucian China; medieval Catholic Europe; Singapore |
Open / free press | 75 | 55 | 50 | 19th-c. Britain; post-WWII US, EU; classical Athens |
Radically open / on-chain | 90 | 35 | 75 | Modern internet; crypto / DAO governance |