What Is Government For? Nobody Gets a Pen for Your Book

Three roommates share an apartment, and tonight they're arguing about the dishes.

Ann and Ben vote 2 to 1 that Sam does them every night for a month. Sam voted no.

Ann says the vote is fair, because everyone got one. Ben says the chart is already on the fridge. Sam says nobody asked him.

Now make the house bigger. A hundred people, then a whole city, with a council, a seal on the letterhead and people in uniform to carry the chart out. Does the question change? Where does the right to make Sam wash those dishes come from, and at what size does it start?

That's the question inside "What is government for, and when is power legitimate?" It has an exact answer, and the answer is the same at every size of house. A chart on a fridge is a chart on a fridge.

The short answer

Nobody gets a pen for your side of a relationship. So a government's act is right exactly when the same act by anyone would be.

Reality keeps a permanent record of every event, because the basic laws of physics never destroy information. A relationship is a comparison, and a comparison needs both of its sides, so every relationship has two ends. The record holds it twice, once in each end's own books, and nobody writes in another's books. An act may change a relationship only when both of its ends write the change. The moral code is a verdict on acts. It reads an act through what it does and who wrote it, and it can't see a badge. A title, an office, a uniform, a majority and an army aren't facts it reads, so none of them is a pen for your side.

A government is people acting together, so what's left for it to do rightly is a great deal: the work the code already requires and permits of everyone, done together. Help that everyone it touches writes and that lowers the cost. Accounts that keep the truth. What's due, read from what happened. Pushes blocked. Every member in view, every resource counted once. The code picks no single institution for that work. Three steps of this answer aren't derived yet, and each is said once where it matters: how a role gets its authority, which of two colliding claims comes first, and which real acts are which writes.

Here's the whole answer in seven steps. The rest of this post takes them one at a time and shows how we know each one.

1. A vote is real, and it isn't your write. It changes the bond between the voters, never a bond with the one who voted no.
2. The verdict can't see a badge. Swap the official and the stranger and no verdict moves. Holding the keys isn't authority.
3. A push is forbidden, whoever does it. A penalty without the wrongdoer's write is a push, and so is a levy taken without the payer's write. Blocking isn't.
4. The many never outvote the one. A total can fall while someone who wrote nothing pays, and a later yes doesn't reach back.
5. What's left is the code's own requirement, done together. An institution has no power its members lack.
6. When claims collide, the code says what a settlement must respect, not who wins.
7. No single institution is forced.

Why this matters: it gives you one question to put to any claim of authority, at any size. What does the act change, and who wrote it? A badge doesn't answer that, and neither does a majority. And it doesn't leave government with nothing to do. It leaves everything people can rightly do together, and it says exactly where the code stops.

Here's the route. Each step ends with a line on why the next one comes next.

What this post stands on

Four starting claims, each with its reason.

The past still exists. Every event leaves a complete trace, and none is ever erased. The reason starts in known physics: the basic laws never destroy information. In quantum mechanics that's called unitarity. The present fixes the past exactly, and running the laws backward recovers every earlier state. The record has a rule of its own as well: it only grows. Each new entry is added with every earlier entry kept, and writing a new entry never alters an earlier one.¹ Earlier posts call this permanent record the Ledger, and Part 1 tells the whole story.

A relationship is a comparison with two ends, and each end keeps its own books. The smallest thing that can happen is one thing told apart from another. You're doing it right now, reading these letters: every measurement and every perception tells one thing from another. Telling two things apart takes information about both, so the record's unit is a relation between two ends. I'll call the record's entry for a relationship a bond. Its number is one end's amount divided by the other's: 1 when they match, and then the bond is level. Each end keeps its own record of the bond in its own books and writes only there. (A book is a drawing of one end's side of the record. The two records are real.) A write is an end's entry in its own books. An act is a change written in the actor's books, or in both ends' books when two people act together. The authors of an act are exactly the people whose own books it changes, and consent is the record of who wrote. Nobody writes in another's books. Why Do We Need Each Other? builds the bond from the smallest event.

A bond has a cost, and the formula is forced. A level bond costs nothing. Any other number costs: J(x) = (x + 1/x)/2 - 1. Add the number to its flip (1 divided by the number), halve the sum, and subtract 1. For 2: 2 + 1/2 is 5/2, half of that is 5/4, and 5/4 minus 1 is 1/4. The cost has to be zero only when the two sides match, grow as they differ, and come out the same whichever side you put first. Add the rule for how the costs of combined comparisons add, and one calibration (how sharply the cost rises near level), and exactly one formula is left.² The cost measures imbalance. It isn't a payment to anyone. A person's burden is the cost of the bonds they're an end of, each counted in full, and the record's own total counts each bond once.

There is one moral code, and it fits in a paragraph. An act is admissible when it meets four clauses. First, it touches only bonds that exist now. Second, every record of every bond is true after it. Third, it moves a bond only when both of that bond's ends write on it. Fourth, it ends a bond only when one of that bond's own ends ends it. Of the admissible acts, the code permits exactly those that leave the least total cost on the complete record, which counts every moment still to come. Every other act is forbidden. I'll call the paper behind this, "The Moral Code," the preprint.³ Doing nothing is always admissible, so something is always permitted. The clauses aren't chosen. They're what a record kept twice admits: an end that doesn't write keeps its old record of the bond, and that record stays true only if the bond doesn't move. They govern acts, because acts are the only way a bond changes. Nothing moves a bond between acts: a bond changes only through something sent, and sending is an act. The code judges acts and moves no one's hands. A forbidden act is as possible as a permitted one.

Step 1: A vote is real, and it isn't your write

A vote is each voter's own write. It can change the bond between the voters. It can't change a bond with the person who voted no, and more voters or a representative don't change that.

Back to the house. Before the vote, the three bonds are level: Ann and Ben, Ann and Sam, Ben and Sam, each at 1, each costing 0. (The dishes and the numbers are a drawing. Which physical amounts a real relationship compares is part of the open step at the end.)

Ann writes "yes" in her own book. Ben writes "yes" in his. Sam writes "no." Each write is real, and each sits where its author wrote it.

What can two writes change? An act may change a bond only when both of its ends write on it. Ann and Ben are the two ends of the Ann-Ben bond, and both wrote, so that bond is theirs to move. The chart is about the other two bonds, Ann-Sam and Ben-Sam. Each has two ends, and Sam's end is blank. An end that doesn't write keeps its old record of the bond, and that record stays true only if the bond doesn't move. So Ann's write alone moves nothing, and neither does Ben's. What's due is read from what happened: an offer, an acceptance, a delivery, a payment, a release. Sam has accepted nothing, and a vote he lost isn't an acceptance, so nothing is due from him on the dishes.

Make it 20 to 1. Now Sam has 20 bonds with the voters, and each has one end written and one end blank. Make it a thousand to one. The count changes how many writes there are. It never changes whose pen writes Sam's end.

Now the representative. Say the house picks Ann to sign for everyone. Her signature is Ann's write. It changes Ann's books and leaves Sam's alone, and the authors of an act are exactly the people whose own books it changes. The books hold two kinds of entry: your own, in your own book, and a joint one that both ends write. There's no entry "on behalf of." A Favor Isn't a Yes works it out: "I'll sign for you" leaves your side blank, whoever says it. What Is Freedom? says it from the other side: your side of every relationship is written by you or by nobody. If Sam himself wrote a yes when the house picked Ann, that earlier yes doesn't cover a later act of hers that puts a loss on him, because the code reads each act with its own writes. It can cover a later act that delivers him something, because what reaches him is a gain.

One step isn't derived yet: which real acts, a vote, a law, an arrest or a sentence, are which writes on the record. The house is a drawing.

How we know. This is the third clause with the definition of an author.³ That what's due is read from events is the code's own reading, and a vote someone lost isn't their acceptance.⁴

Next, and why: a vote can't write Sam's side. What about an office, with its title, its uniform and the keys? That's Step 2.

Step 2: The verdict can't see a badge

The code reads an act through what it does and who wrote it. A title, an office, a uniform or an army isn't one of those facts, so swap the official and the stranger and no verdict moves. Holding the keys isn't authority.

Take any case and swap two names: no verdict changes. The code reads the strain an act puts on bonds, the bonds it ends and its authors, and two acts that leave the same world with the same authors get the same verdict.³ What Is Justice? works this out for names. A badge works like a name: put it on someone else, and nothing the verdict reads has changed. Picture an official making Sam do the dishes by force, and a stranger doing the same. Swap them and the verdict doesn't move. (Step 3 says why it's forbidden.) An official's act is right exactly when the same act by anyone would be, so the test of whether power is rightly used isn't who is doing it. It's what the act does and who wrote it.

A title matters only if it's a physical fact the record holds: something people actually wrote. Our book, The Moral Code of Reality, works out one such case, a promise between two people, whose accepted record fixes what the one who promised is required to do (Right and Wrong Aren't Opinions walks through it). How many people's writes form a role with authority is the open step below.

What about holding the keys? Being able to do something to someone isn't authority to do it. The book's small economy has Alice take a unit of food from Bob's stock. Nothing physical prevents it. Whether it's authorized is a separate question about that event.⁵ In the book's words, "A law governing conduct need not make contrary conduct impossible." Control gives an office the ability. It gives it no pen for anyone's side.

And authority is specific. A denial written into a book doesn't cancel what's due. A debtor's attempted release leaves it unchanged, and the creditor's release reduces it. A record doesn't prove delivery either: two sets of books can agree while the promised unit still sits in the seller's store. What's due is read from events, and an announcement by someone outside the debt isn't one. It can't make something due that the events don't make due, and it can't cancel what they do. Sorry Doesn't Rewind the Tape works release through as an event.

One step here isn't derived yet: how a role gets its authority. In the book's worked exchange only the one who is owed can release a debt, and in its small economy only the donor can hand over a stock. Each is a rule its own case is built with. Who holds a release, a custody or an office, from what people actually wrote, isn't derived.

How we know. Invariance and "reads only what happens" are two of the code's six properties, and the preprint states the consequence: a different moral answer to the same case needs a different physical fact, or a judgment of a different form.³ The step from names to offices is a direct application. The control and release points are the book's, at the scope of its worked exchanges.⁴⁵

Next, and why: so what does the code forbid an office to do? Exactly what it forbids anyone. That's Step 3.

Step 3: A push is forbidden, whoever does it

A push is an act that changes a bond without one end's write, which leaves that end's own book false. The third clause forbids it on any books, whoever does it. A penalty without the wrongdoer's write is a push, and so is a levy taken without the payer's write. Blocking isn't.

Each person writes only in their own books, so a book never holds an entry its owner didn't write. A book goes false when the bond changes and its owner didn't write the change. That's harm made physical. Nothing in the record is authorless: every change to a bond comes from something sent, and the record keeps who sent it. Call an act that changes a bond without the other end's write a push.

Say Ann and Ben carry the chart out by force, with no write from Sam. The Ann-Sam and Ben-Sam bonds each move from 1 to 2, and Sam's book of each still says 1, so his books are false. Each bond now costs J(2) = 1/4. The record's total goes from 0 to 1/2, and Sam carries both bonds' full cost, 1/2. Nothing physical stops it. A forbidden act is as possible for an office as for a roommate, and the record writes it down under its authors' names. Why Does Evil Exist? works out why a verdict isn't a wall.

Three pushes matter for governments, and one act that can look like a push isn't one.

A penalty. A penalty that changes a wrongdoer's relationships without the wrongdoer's write breaks the clauses like any push. What a wrong calls for is repair, and a repair changes the bond, so both ends write it. The wrong stays on the record whatever follows. What Is Justice? works it out in its Step 4, and Sorry Doesn't Rewind the Tape shows why a repair is a new line and never an edit.

A levy. Say the house votes 2 to 1 to take coins from Sam's wallet every month for cleaning supplies. A levy moves an amount from the payer to the one who levies, and every transfer posts at both ends of the relationship between them. So a levy taken without the payer's write is a push, forbidden like any other, whoever takes it.⁶ The same holds for a taking from any fund someone holds, a town's or a government's included: the amount moves from its holder to the taker, the transfer posts at both ends of the relationship between them, and without the holder's write that's a push.

"But Sam agreed to live here." A write in one act doesn't carry to a different act. A write given ahead of time can't cover a later levy. The code reads each act with its own writes, and an earlier agreement never covers a loss taken later: the payer has to send that loss itself.

Force and blocking. Force that changes an attacker's relationships without the attacker's write is a push, and the code forbids it at the step it's done, whoever started.⁶ The attacker's act writes nothing for yours. Blocking is different. Keeping the attack from changing your bond changes no one's relationship, so no clause forbids it. And an act can end a bond when one of its own two people ends it, so the one attacked may end the bond. An ended bond keeps its cost: no allowed act touches it, and nothing moves a bond between acts. The wrong stays on the attacker's record. No situation requires a push, because every act the code permits is an admissible act. Which defensive act the code permits in a given case is a comparison of costs among the admissible acts, and this post doesn't run one.

How we know. Each of these is the clauses at work, and the third clause reads who wrote, never who the writers are.³ A levy is a transfer, and a transfer posts at both ends of the bond it crosses.⁶ That a write in one act doesn't carry to another is a working result of the Recognition Physics Research Institute, not yet public in full.⁶ Its public forms are the preprint's "consent is per relation," which says taking part in one act never consents to another act done at the same time, and the book's formation case, where agreeing to the terms "does not license every later act."³⁴

Next, and why: one act at a time is clear. What about an act that helps most people and hurts one? That's Step 4.

Step 4: The many never outvote the one, and a later yes doesn't reach back

One participant's relief of you never offsets another's harm to you, and two acts on separate bonds, done together, are judged exactly as the two acts are. So a whole can't outvote a member. And a later yes covers what it covers, not what came before.

Here's the house with numbers. Ann is owed by both housemates: her bond with Ben reads 2, and so does her bond with Sam. Each costs J(2) = 1/4. Now Ann acts on both. Ben pays what he owes, so his bond goes from 2 to 1, and both of them write it. And Ann takes a little more from Sam: his bond goes from 2 to 5/2, and he doesn't write.

Check the 5/2. Its flip is 2/5, the sum is 29/10, half of that is 29/20, and 29/20 minus 1 is 9/20.

The house's total falls, from 1/2, which is 10/20, to 9/20. Ben and Ann come out ahead, so two of the three do, and a vote of the house would pass it 2 to 1. The code forbids it, because the Ann-Sam bond moved and Sam didn't write. Ben's relief is a real act on a different bond, and it doesn't pay for the other. Sam's burden rose by 1/5, and nothing in the house's total says so.

Doesn't a big enough saving change that? No. Put any finite charge on pushing, and some push still comes out ahead, because the relief a push can buy has no ceiling. So the clauses come first, and cost compares only the acts that pass them. Right and Wrong Aren't Opinions works a ring of three, and What Is Money? a chain, where the settlement with the lowest total loads a bystander. The code doesn't say a lower total always loads someone. It says that when it does, and the one loaded didn't write, the act is forbidden.

A later yes doesn't reach back. Say the chart was carried out on Sam without his write. A week later Sam writes a yes to a new, bigger deal with Ann and Ben. His yes is real, and it covers that deal. It doesn't make him an author of what was done to him the week before. Joint moves preserve an existing gap, so the earlier push stays a push on the record.⁴ A Favor Isn't a Yes works it with dinners. Apply it to power: power taken by a push stays a push on the record, and a later vote, treaty or oath covers what it covers and nothing before it. The book states the result for a one-sided demand between two people. Reading a seizure of power that way is a direct application, not a separate result.

How we know. The first half is the preprint's "consent is per relation."³ The numbers are the book's own case, in which a whole's cost falls while one member's rises, with Ann, Ben and Sam in place of its three people.⁷ The second half is the book's result on a later joint move.⁴

Next, and why: the house can't do any of this to Sam. What can it do rightly? That's Step 5, and it's a lot.

Step 5: What's left is the code's own requirement, done together

The code requires help wherever an act that all its ends write lowers the cost, and then doing nothing is forbidden. An institution has no power its members lack, so its rightful work is what the code already permits or requires of people acting together.

The requirement first. Where an admissible act lowers the cost, omission is forbidden, and the code requires action. No promise is needed: the stranger is owed.³ What Do We Owe Each Other? works the case of a woman on the third floor you've never spoken to.

Now together. Acts done in the same step of the record reach it as one joint act, and every one of its writers is an author.³ So when many people write one act, the act is theirs. Nobody is an author called "the government" who writes for them. An institution, in the book's words, organizes who can act, what people can observe, which undertakings remain in force and how resources move, and it acts through people and physical events.⁵ It has no power its members lack. The people whose books an act changes are its authors, and nobody else's side is theirs to write.

Put those together and five jobs are left. Each is something the code already asks of anyone.

1. Help that everyone it touches writes, and that lowers the cost. If Sam is sick and Ann and Ben cook for him, Sam writes his side of each bond and they write theirs. No vote is needed, only the writes. Where that act lowers the cost, doing nothing is forbidden.
2. Accounts that keep the truth. The book says an institution's descriptions "must keep those events' possibilities and obligations," and every act the code admits leaves every record true.⁵
3. What's due, read from what happened. A court or an official stands outside the bond between two people. It can read the events, say what happened and what's due, and help from its own bonds. It can't write their correction, because only the two ends write the repair of a bond between them. What Is Justice? works it out in its Steps 2 to 4, and Why Do We Need Each Other? shows why nothing heals alone.
4. Pushes blocked. Blocking changes no one's relationship, so no clause forbids it.
5. Every member in view, every resource counted once. Add people up into a total, and each person's needs and effects still have to stay in view. The book's glossary: "The whole must keep the member distinctions a judgment uses, and the member accounts must keep the shared constraints and count each resource once."⁷

Everything on the list is something people can do. Ann and Ben can offer Sam a deal he writes. They can wash the dishes themselves. They can keep Sam from doing to them what they didn't write. They can end their own arrangements with him, and each ended bond keeps its cost. At any size, that's what rightful power is made of. An act that changes someone's bond still needs that someone's write. How a big group comes to hold the writes it needs is where the open step of Step 2 sits.

How we know. The requirement and "the stranger is owed" are in the preprint's Sections 3 and 8, and joint acts and authors in its Section 1, on the premises the open list at the end names.³ The institution passages are the book's.⁵ Putting them together for an institution is an application. The code doesn't derive a purpose for government, or that a government is needed. It says what any such work has to be.

Next, and why: what happens when two people's claims on the same thing collide? That's Step 6.

Step 6: When claims collide, the code says what a settlement must respect, not who wins

Where it's need against need, among acts both people write, the act the code permits gives to the greater need first. Where it's claim against claim, the code derives what any settlement has to respect, and which claim comes first isn't derived.

Settling collisions between claims is a job people ask of a government. Two kinds of collision need separating.

Need against need. One gift, two people short. The cost curve is a bowl, steep far from level and flat near it, so the same relief takes more cost off the bond that sits further from level. The code permits the act that leaves the least cost, and that act gives to the greater need first.⁸ Why Do Poverty and Inequality Exist? works it with numbers. That verdict is among acts both people write. It decides where a gift goes. It never licenses taking, so it never makes a levy right: a taking is a push, whoever has more.

Claim against claim. The book works the exact case. Alice holds one unit of food and two accepted promises, one to Bob and one to Carol. Each has a reserve, what they have left to pay for repairs: Alice's is 3/2, and Bob's and Carol's are 1/4 each, exactly one interval's upkeep. Under the case's own rules, if Alice feeds Bob, he comes through the next interval with a balanced bond and a reserve of 1/4, while Carol is left with her bond at 2 and nothing to repair it. Feed Carol, and it's the other way around. Every possible operation leaves one of them like that.⁹

The book derives what each meal leaves, which event made it impossible to keep both promises, what each claim's local repair requires, and what a release written by the right person changes. The derivation of an answer has to start from how the two promises formed and keep both people, their histories and the one shared unit. An impossibility by itself "orders no claims, designates no beneficiary, authorizes no release and removes no affected participant." Bob accepted first, and none of the results turns that into priority.

That step isn't derived yet: which of two colliding claims comes first. Neither is whether Bob's earlier acceptance gives him priority, whether Alice's second promise wronged Bob, or who must release. Two mirror-image claims on one thing that can't be divided tie, and either way of giving it is permitted (What Is Justice? works the ticket). A claim that isn't a mirror image leaves something physical different between the two, and what the code says then isn't derived. The book also says what a derivation of the answer can't do: it "cannot be supplied by discarding a claimant, redefining failure as success, or hiding authority inside a scalar total."

How we know. Need against need is the code's judgment applied to a need: the cost curve's strict convexity is in the preprint's Section 1, and the judgment is in Section 3.³⁸ The facts of the collision are the book's chapter on governing authority and competing claims.⁹

Next, and why: if the code doesn't say who comes first, what does it say about the institutions that settle things? That's Step 7.

Step 7: No single institution is forced

The code rules acts in and out. It rules out impossible plans, acts that leave another's own record false, and acts that change a bond one of its ends didn't write. Where several acts are permitted, choosing among them is itself an act.

The least-cost judgment doesn't always pick one act. Where the possible acts can be divided as finely as you like, exactly one outcome is permitted, because the cost curve is a bowl: if two different acts both left the least cost, the act halfway between them would leave less. Free choice between different outcomes comes only from what can't be divided, from acts that tie at the least cost.³ What Is Freedom? works it out with a pizza slice and a pot of soup.

So the code does two things for institutions at once. It rules out what no institution can rightly do: a push, a false record, an act that changes someone's bond without their write. And it leaves open how people organize who can act, what they can observe, which undertakings stay in force and how resources move. The book puts it exactly: preserving physical resources, authored undertakings and member effects "constrains institutions without making one institutional form follow."⁵ Of a nearby case it says, "Necessity fixes the condition, not the schedule."

Does the code say a government must exist? No. Does it say one must not? No. It judges acts, and it picks no form.

How we know. The convexity and the tie results are the preprint's Section 3, "Where free choice comes from."³ The institutional point is the book's.⁵

Next: what's still open, then the whole trip in one breath.

What's still open

The code is stated in full above. These steps aren't derived yet.

• How a role gets its authority. Who holds a release, a custody or an office, from what people actually wrote, isn't derived. The book's worked cases supply those rules; they don't derive them.
• Competing claims. Which of two claims written by two people comes first, whether Bob's earlier acceptance gives him priority, whether the second promise wronged Bob, and who must release, aren't derived.
• From the drawn cases to real acts. Which real acts, a vote, a law, an arrest or a sentence, are which writes on the record isn't mapped. Neither is which physical amounts a real bond compares, or that the physical record carries what is due, with the two people as the bond's two ends. The house, the dishes and the coins are drawings.⁴
• Under the code itself. Why both ends must write, which holds exactly when a kept record records one state, and the step from "the record charges this" to "this ought not be done," are open in every post on the moral code. What Is Justice? and Why Does Evil Exist? state them.

The whole trip, in one breath

Every relationship is recorded twice, once in each end's own books, and nobody writes in another's books, so an act may change a relationship only when both of its ends write the change. A vote is the voters' own write: it changes the bond between the voters and no bond with the one who voted no, and a representative's signature changes the representative's books, not yours. The code reads an act through what it does and who wrote it, so a title, an office, a uniform and an army aren't facts it reads, and a government's act is right exactly when the same act by anyone would be. Holding the keys isn't authority, and authority is specific to a relationship and to what happened. A push is forbidden whoever does it: a penalty without the wrongdoer's write is a push, so is a levy taken without the payer's write, and blocking isn't. The many never outvote the one, because a total can fall while someone who wrote nothing pays, and a later yes covers what it covers and nothing before it. What's left for a government to do rightly is the code's own requirement, done together: help that everyone it touches writes and that lowers the cost, accounts that keep the truth, what's due read from what happened, pushes blocked, and every member in view. Among acts both people write, a gift goes to the greater need first, and that never licenses taking. Where claim meets claim, the code says what a settlement must respect and not who wins. It picks no single institution.

So, the house. Ann and Ben can wash the dishes. They can offer Sam a deal he writes. They can keep Sam from doing to them what they didn't write, and they can end their own arrangements with him. They can't write Sam's side, and nobody can, at any size.

That's how reality is built: a record kept twice, one cost on every bond, and a code that reads what an act does and who wrote it, never a badge. Nobody gets a pen for your book. What's left for a government to do rightly is everything people can rightly do together, and that is a great deal.