Unfinished specs
Open problems are part of the program.
Depth means naming them. Next writing passes should pick one and write it to the depth of a standalone section, with cases — not another manifesto restating the goal. Nothing here is a finished constitution, threshold rule, or investment instrument.
01 · A · Agency
A definition that does not pick a winner
Write a definition of agency that does not already pick a winner in the compatibility debate. Section 7 of Paper 01 is a constraint, not a close. The unread-remainder / time-instance clause is prospected from Individual Completion (Shields 2026a); it does not close the definition.
02 · A · Agency
Level of the Consequence Argument
Specify the level — microphysical, neural, personal, institutional — at which “laws fix the future” must hold for the Consequence Argument to apply to persons.
03 · A · Agency
Empirical progress without a proof of free will
State what would count as empirical progress: constraints on models of the individual system. Individual Completion (Shields 2026a, after Einstein 1949) is prospected here as a candidate: unread remainder before the act, T* as the time-instance. A6 analog: if better individual data never narrow when and what this person does, the mapping has failed for persons. Not a proof of free will.
04 · A · Agency
Date “libertarian” in every paper
Keep the 1789 / 1857 / 1955 / 1971 / metaphysical senses dated. Russell’s ‘trade-mark’ (FEE, May 1955) is the documented American inversion. Undated use is a method error. Foundations of the Right is the right-hand file; Fractures is the left-hand file.
05 · B · Empires
Polarity codebook
Quantitative thresholds (military spend share, reserve-currency share, chokepoint control) so Akkad, 1815, and 1991 can be compared without storytelling. The oscillation — unipolar knockout, multipolar default, bipolar freeze — is the claim. Without a codebook it remains a dated narrative. Superpower versus great power must be operational at planetary scale so regional knockouts are not inflated.
06 · B · Empires
Corporate-technical poles
Where labs, payment networks, and model-weight monopolies sit on the board. Score a lab against a state without collapsing the model.
07 · B · Empires
Whether an AGI race can be slowed without a polarity bargain
In a multipolar or bipolar security dilemma, one pole’s pause is another’s relative gain. Unanswered. Keep it unanswered.
08 · D · Institutions
Threshold rule
When does a sole shop become productive commons? Employees, hours, revenue, site lock-in? Who applies it without Gosplan or a Lochner court?
09 · D · Institutions
Investment without dominion
Time-capped claims, mutual credit, decaying votes — specify one operational bundle. No listed stocks/bonds is a negative rule; the positive instrument is missing.
10 · D · Institutions
Agenda oligarchy
All-citizen senate without an allotted, paid, rotating agenda jury will be captured by staff, recommenders, or petition industry. Design the jury.
11 · D · Institutions
Pay without vote-buying
Stipend for allotted service, not per-vote piecework.
12 · D · Institutions
Land and platforms
The triad is written for factories and farms. Urban land, spectrum, rails, and models need the same species-change rule.
13 · D · Institutions
Contractor evasion
Threshold games (franchise, subcontract, “independent” labor) will be the first exploit.
14 · E · Method
Simultaneity
Without something like world-scale or extra-hegemonic transition, polarity and elite theory topple a local stack. Either drop that or make it a designed phase, not a hope. The unplug now has three demonstrated forms: dollar rails (SWIFT, frozen reserves, entity lists); a rising pole’s processing chokepoint (rare earths, 2010 rehearsal, 2025 spent); and the issuer’s own flood (23 March 2020 ‘amounts needed,’ then 2021–22 inflation). All three can be used without a landing. A wean from the Treasury bid is not a completed exit.
15 · D · Institutions
Mixed constitution
Polybius’s warning: pure “many” decays. Name the “few” (allotted) and the “one” (narrow emergency executive) or accept ochlocracy risk.
16 · F · Biology
Social fitness remains unrepaired
Mendelian genetics operationalized biological fitness. Spencerian social “fit” was never given a propensity reading. Do not treat market share as fitness.
17 · A · F
Organism-agency is not van Inwagen
How far Noble organism-agency transfers to political agency without smuggling a compatibility solution. Adjacent, not a deduction.
18 · F · Biology
Smith is not Spencer
Keep the economic-metaphor history dated. Competitive political economy (1776) is not the biological warrant (1864). Collapsing them is the error this paper exists to block.
19 · C · Fractures
Do not flatten left-internal splits, or right-internal ones
Mutualism, collectivism, anarchist communism, syndicalism, platformism are not one thing. Keep them distinct from the left/right property chasm. On the right: Hayek is not Rothbard; Friedman is not Nozick; Hoppe is a later fork. Konkin is not a right-anarchist fork — agorism is left free markets (Movement of the Libertarian Left). Foundations of the Right exists so the right is not a cartoon of ‘the LP.’
20 · D · Institutions
Automation without hiring
Species-change at hired-labor scale does not answer a world where models and robots make hiring optional under shareholder primacy. No finished answer.
21 · G · Equilibria
n-player PCE on a polarity board
Halpern–Rong two-player PCE is a teaching aid. Interstate systems are n-player; BUG is then defined via NE of reduced games. Write the n-player version for a three-pole AGI race.
22 · G · Equilibria
Lab PD is not the Politburo
The transfer from undergraduate PD and irrigation communities to great-power play is the weakest joint. State what would count as evidence that a pole is playing M-PCE rather than Nash.
23 · G · Equilibria
Monitoring the productive commons
Ostrom 4 (monitors are users or accountable to them) applied to a plant with occupant use-shares. Who watches subcontracting games (problem 13) without a ministry?
24 · A · Agency
A metric of institutional agency
Voice, exit, title, non-domination — specify a bundle that can be compared across regimes without becoming a GDP-of-freedom, and without pretending the compatibility debate is closed.
25 · A · D
Must FA be settled before we maximize room?
Paper 01 says no: we already design as if the unit were real. State the conditions under which that stance would have to be withdrawn.
26 · C · D
Infighting is where the method decomposes
1846, 1872, 1921, 1926, 1937: people who shared a goal could not agree on organization and transition. CenLib names a hybrid and leaves specs open. State what a vetting process would have to do so that a new declaration does not become another church.
27 · B · D
Replacement under imperial preference
Harari names a useless class if intelligence uncouples from consciousness. Open problem 20 is the domestic form. The interstate form: a pole that wins the AGI race on a Nash board. What would count as keeping the person as unit on that board, without a crystal ball and without a manifesto.
28 · B · Empires
Dalio’s gauges, this program’s codebook
Steal the eight vital signs (and the lagged reserve-currency claim) without stealing the 250-year one-empire clock. Take inner and outer conflict as a pair beside the eight, not as two more ‘power’ lines. Open problem 5 still wants quantitative thresholds. State how bipolarity (1945–91) and India-as-wildcard are scored when the input is an eight-gauge average that wants a single successor. 2025–26 adds a second lagged instrument (processed rare earths) that is not a reserve currency. Score it without smuggling a China-destiny. Named hegemonies (caloric, force, fiscal, routes, energy, money, standard, alliance, courier, materials) are the drift from the eight; state how they enter the codebook without becoming a second average.
29 · B · Empires
Scoring armed networks against states
Axis of Resistance is a network, not a NATO: no Article 5, no common budget clause, a Quds Force architect until 3 January 2020. Heft is real (Lebanon 2006, Gaza 2007, Red Sea 2023–, 13 April 2024 direct). Assad’s fall and Nasrallah’s death are the tests that a network does not automatically replace a node. Open problem 5’s codebook is written for states. State what would count as scoring a network without upgrading it to a pole or dismissing it as a gang. 7 October is not the test: broad complicity ≠ operational direction. Keep that distinction in the metric.
30 · B · Empires
Energy-unit succession as a codebook
Grain → wood → coal → oil → pipeline gas → processed minerals as sibling; later candidates (electron, FLOP) named so they can be attacked. Follow the Oil is the narrative. Open problem 5 still wants thresholds: oil-invoice share, chokepoint veto, processing share, so Akkad’s grain, 1815’s coal, and 1991’s oil can be compared without storytelling. State what would count as the unit having changed, without writing a petroyuan funeral or a hydrogen landing. 2026 Hormuz is live data, outcome open.
31 · B · Empires
Inner-conflict metric that is not a mood
Dalio scores inner conflict (wealth/values gaps, polarization, populism). This program takes the pair with outer and refuses the clock. A codebook still needs something that can be compared across Akkad’s revolts, Rome 395, the USSR 1980s, and present US/China inner files without becoming a GDP-of-discord or a unique-American-destiny. Open problem 24 is the domestic agency metric. This is the pole-level cousin. Do not collapse them.
32 · H · D
The proviso at hired-labor scale
Locke §27: enough and as good left in common. Rothbard drops it; Nozick weakens it; CenLib restores it where a plant commands other people’s time. That is a constraint, not a threshold rule. Open problem 8 still wants the metric (employees, hours, site lock-in). State what would count as the proviso being violated by a platform or a model-weight monopoly, without a ministry and without a Lochner court.
33 · H · D
Bequest without dominion
Nozick’s justice in transfer includes gifts and bequests. That is how labour-mixing becomes a dynasty. The mixer is dead; agency is of the living occupants. Consumptive and personal title can pass; a plant that commands hired labour is the species-change case. Specify one operational bundle for the dead-hand problem that is not a nightly expropriation and not a perpetual residual. Not Mendel. Not fitness. Paper 04 is why the biological metaphor is illicit here.
34 · H · A
NAP versus domination
The non-aggression principle forbids initiating force. Pettit’s non-domination (and Locke §22) forbids being subject to another’s arbitrary will even when no punch is thrown. A kindly residual claimant is still a legislature. State the conditions under which species-change at a legal threshold is not ‘aggression’ in the NAP sense, without letting NAP smuggle world-ownership in as a side-constraint. The compatibility map and the property map remain two boards.
35 · I · Synthesis
What would falsify Game of Empires
Paper 08 names it as a research programme, not a covering law. State one observation that would kill the hard core (multipolar default given imperial preference; unipolarity as knockout; named mix that must be kept) without being a mood. Open problems 5, 30, and 31 are the codebooks. This is the falsifier. Do not write 2025–26 as a landing to avoid the test.
36 · I · Synthesis
Operationalizing the two hard cores without a church
Paper 08 states the axioms of the two hypotheses. Several already have open problems (8, 9, 10, 14, 15). The remaining job is a constraint-list that a later writer can use without treating the list as a catechism: which axioms, if dropped, kill which hypothesis. Do not add axioms to look more scientific.
37 · I · C
Elite circulation that is not a personnel story
Pareto: elites circulate; they do not disappear. Mosca: organized minority. Michels: iron law inside the party. Gilens and Page (2014): preferences that do not count. State what would count as a stack having broken circulation without becoming a new fox-class — occupant use-shares plus allotted agenda plus no listed residual — as a metric, not a hope. Open problem 10 is the jury. This is whether the jury is enough.
38 · I · A
Praxeology and organism-agency as the same unit
Mises’s acting man and Paper 01’s remainder-then-act are cousins. They are not the same theory. Praxeology claims a priori status this program refuses. Individual Completion is prospected physics, not a deduction of FA. State what would count as the two units being the same system without letting apodictic method close the property question, and without letting Noble close van Inwagen. Adjacent is not identity.
39 · J · Map
Score the two axes so placement is not a drawing
Paper 09 places systems on office × property. The drawing is an argument, not a codebook. State one operational pair — what counts as ‘office’ (standing machine, monopoly of security, career filter?) and what counts as ‘title through the firm’ (employees, residual claim, listed equity?) — so that Tucker and Rothbard cannot be collapsed, and so that fascism cannot be scored as applied ancap. The ecological reading is a second figure of the same seats, not a third axis on the hourglass (open problem 40). Game of Empires stays off this figure.
40 · J · F
Score the ecological reading so it is not only a drawing
Paper 04 and the map now place every system on mutual aid versus struggle: fascism as survival of the fittest at all levels; the party-state as argued cooperation under a commanding office; CenLib as the attempted bridge. State what would count as an operational score — stated ecology versus practiced ecology, so a ministry that argues the orchard is not scored as Kropotkin, and a night-watchman is not scored as Huxley. Do not smash this onto the hourglass. Do not treat the score as a proof of a title-regime.
41 · G · F
Which games constrain a title-regime, without writing it
Paper 06 now spends stag hunt, hawk–dove, Nowak’s five rules, Skyrms, ESS, not only PD and PCE. State what would count as enough of that literature to constrain the triad (open problems 8, 9) without letting Nowak write Proudhon, Maynard Smith write Locke, or group selection write Gosplan. The orchard is a stag hunt with monitoring. That is a constraint, not a constitution. Lab play is not a pole (open problem 22).
42 · B · A
Blowback versus intent, and a public information practice that is not an organ
Covert-action law bars intent to influence the US public (50 U.S.C. § 3093(f)); CIA 1967 called fallout “inevitable and consequently permissible.” Smith-Mundt never governed DoD. The feed does not honor the preposition. State what would count as a codebook that distinguishes intent from the wired remainder without writing a new Sedition Act — and what a CenLib public-information practice would have to be (white, dated, rebuttable) so the person is not treated as an organ. A finished theory of attention is not on the page. Do not collapse OSI into SAC. Date the third scare’s bogey or produce a fake disagreement.