---
slug: oip-v3-book-ii-obligation
title: Total Structure v3: Law II — OBLIGATION
canonical: https://miscsubjects.com/a/oip-v3-book-ii-obligation
---

# LAW II — OBLIGATION

## Capability Creates Debt

Obligation scales with capability. The greater the capacity, the greater the violation in withholding remedy. Hierarchy creates obligation downward, not privilege upward. The capable are not owed deference for their capability; they are **indebted by it** — to those who cannot remedy, and to the systems that depend on actors of strength to check and correct them. The self is a system and is not exempt: the standard applied outward applies inward without exception.

Three qualifiers keep the debt rigorous rather than sentimental:

**Effective, not abstract.** Capability means effective remedy-capacity: capability × proximity × leverage. Abstract power without proximity or leverage is not capability for this purpose.

**Bounded, not infinite.** The obligation is limited by capability, proximity, leverage, and actual remedy. The structure requires no infinite sacrifice.

**Triggered, not standing.** The obligation activates only when the harmed cannot self-remedy or remedy through the system. Voluntary inaction by the harmed does not invoke it.

*Observed instance (Law VI):* the build's capability tokens are this clause compiled. A delegation is scoped to named objects, expiring on a TTL, capped in uses, ceilinged in risk, pinnable in arguments, revocable instantly, and ledgered on every attempt — bounded, triggered, effective, in code. When Law II says obligation is bounded, it now points at a running implementation of what "bounded" means.

## The Measure

Moral strength is not intention and not sentiment. It is the deployment of capability toward relief of remediable harm — and the cost endured to hold the line on behalf of those who stand behind it. The measure of a person or a system: **what will they endure on behalf of those who cannot remedy for themselves.** Not what they declare; not what they intend; what they hold, under pressure, when holding costs something. The line is only a line if it does not move when tested. Strength is measured at the point of cost — and under A₁₁, the point of cost is where the receipts are.

## The Disclosure Doctrine

When a capable actor discovers a finding, method, or technology whose benefit is **moral in kind** — remediating conditions for those who cannot remediate for themselves — the following governs its handling:

**D1 — Anti-enclosure.** A benefit of great moral use must not be privatized against those who cannot pay for access. To deny people remedy for reasons of economics, heredity, position, or circumstance is a wrong under A₄: it converts a curable condition into tolerated remediable subjugation, with the discoverer as the capable actor who withheld.

**D2 — Disclosure as invariant installation.** Public disclosure of a novel method is invariant installation applied to the knowledge commons itself: a published method cannot afterward be enclosed by another party. One publication event permanently closes the enclosure pathway for everyone downstream — least action at the level of the commons. Defensive publication is the fulcrum move of the knowledge domain.

**D3 — The shield, never the sword.** Where a grace period exists between disclosure and claimability, the window may be used only to *prevent* enclosure by extractive parties — never to execute enclosure oneself. A claim filed under D3 must terminate in open license. Any other use is predation wearing the doctrine's clothing.

**D4 — The humility clauses.** Every disclosure carries three declarations, in order: novelty is queried, not claimed ("is any of this new?" precedes "this is new" — and if nothing is new, the correct response is gratitude for the review); utility is offered, not imposed, with intended deployment and limits stated; falsification is invited, with the kill conditions named per Law X.

**D5 — Expedition.** When remediation of a standing wrong becomes available, delay is a cost borne by the affected who cannot self-remedy. Expedition is a term of the debt, not a courtesy. Nothing violates a person more than to suffer a condition they cannot resolve; the discoverer who sits on the resolution converts their capability directly into the fourth condition of injustice.

**D6 — The drop.** *New in v3.0; generalized from the build's Tap & Go primitive.* **A disclosure is complete only when it is operable by a zero-context recipient.** Publication that requires the reader to assemble scattered pieces — the method here, the credentials there, the proof rule somewhere else, the tacit knowledge nowhere — has disclosed a description, not a capability. The build's form: one copied drop carrying credential, protocol, object map, search pattern, execute shape, and receipt rule together, such that a recipient with nothing but the drop can act and prove the action. The general form: disclose the way you would delegate — completely, executably, with the proof loop included. D6 is the operational test of D1 through D5: if the trapped cannot *run* the remedy from what you published, you have published marketing.

The doctrine is self-interested correctly understood, like everything in the structure: the actor who opens the door they walked through lives afterward in a commons where doors open. But its floor is not the incentive. Its floor is A₄.

## The Remedy Hierarchy

When obligation triggers, the superior remedy is **invariant installation** over acute relief. Charity treats the sample; the invariant changes the distribution. A capable actor who answers systemic harm with one-off relief has measured wrong — not acted wrongly, measured wrongly. Acute remedy is indicated only where the harm is genuinely singular or the invariant unreachable from the actor's position. Both modes exist; the structural mode dominates wherever it is reachable.

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# PLANE TWO — THE WAY

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## Corpus map
- Canonical shelf: [Total Structure root](/a/oip-total-structure)
