Who Knows, Who Decides, Who Pays, Who Does

A Structural Map of Power

Politics can be modeled as coordination between four irreducible functions.
Each function exists in every large-scale society.

1) The Four Functions (Primitives)

• Who Knows (Seers)
  Epistemic authority: science, religion, ideology, expertise, media.

• Who Decides (Leaders)
  Binding authority: executives, party leadership, sovereign power.

• Who Pays (Providers)
  Material throughput: capital, industry, finance, logistics, tax base.

• Who Does (Servers)
  Execution substrate: workers, soldiers, cadres, operators.

2) Regimes as Wiring Patterns

A regime is a stable configuration of influence edges among the four functions.
Institutional labels describe surface forms of these configurations.

Pattern A — Command Regime

Leaders concentrate authority.
Seers and Providers supply legitimation and resources.
Servers execute under discipline.

Pattern B — Technocratic Coordination

Leaders operate through expert layers and bureaucracy.
Providers fund apparatus.
Servers execute routinized programs.

Pattern C — Ideological Mobilization

Seers mobilize Servers directly.
Leader mediation weakens.
Providers continue to supply Leaders.

Pattern D — Provider Capture

Providers steer Leaders through funding and control of throughput.
Execution follows resource channels.

3) Rewiring Over Time

Large-scale transitions follow recurring rewiring paths.

Transitions cluster around shocks in resources, legitimacy, execution discipline, and elite coordination.

4) Revolutionary Cycle

Seer-driven mobilization converts narrative authority into execution power.
Leader reconsolidation restores centralized control.

5) Structural Diagnostics

Five queries map events to coordination structure:

Mismatch among these layers predicts instability.

6) Failure Modes

• Epistemic capture
• Charismatic bypass
• Oligarchic steering
• Execution breakdown

7) Minimal Mental Model

Coordination stability depends on balanced edge weights.

8) Compression

Societies operate through coordination between epistemic authority, binding authority, material throughput, and execution capacity.
Durable order arises from stable wiring among these functions.