The Conditions for Sharing with All of Humanity:
Deriving an Open Information Protocol from Four Layers of Economic Rationality

Writing Declaration: This paper was independently authored by Han Qin. All intellectual decisions, framework design, and editorial judgments were made by the author.

Abstract

This paper is an institutional application of "Four Layers of Economic Rationality" (SAE Economics Paper 1, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19358011). Paper 1 diagnoses the mainstream rational agent as a 12DD rational agent and identifies two higher forms of economic rationality: 14DD (guarding non-negotiable values) and 15DD (joint C-production between two purposive subjects). The present paper applies this framework to the domain of public information. It first diagnoses three existing systems — academic publishing, Wikipedia, and the open access movement — as exhibiting characteristic DD-layer misalignments. It then derives, step by step, a complete system design from the four layers of economic rationality, demonstrating that when 14DD is compressed to its absolute minimum, the institutional form of a "platform" dissolves entirely, leaving only an open protocol: publishers pay on-chain storage fees (gas) as a 14DD commitment, readers access content for free, readers may voluntarily donate to authors on-chain as an expression of 15DD C-production, and all code is open-source so that anyone can deploy their own frontend. No platform, no institution, no gatekeeper.

This protocol is not limited to academia; it applies to anything anyone wishes to share with all of humanity. Its ultimate significance lies not only in the free accumulation of human knowledge but also in providing AI training with a new, sparse but high-value signal of human behavioral judgment. Five testable predictions are offered, ranked by evidentiary strength into three tiers.

Keywords: Self-as-an-End, economic rationality, public information, knowledge sharing, dimensional sequence theory, Kingdom of Ends, Kingdom of Means, blockchain, open protocol, permanent storage

Structure

§1 Introduction: the paradox that as physical publication costs fall, institutional costs rise; the core question — can a system be designed whose only admission criterion is the publisher's own judgment? §2 Theoretical Framework: recapitulation of Paper 1's four-layer model as diagnostic tools. §3 Diagnosis: academic publishing as 14DD masquerading as 15DD; Wikipedia as 13DD masquerading as 15DD; open access platforms (Zenodo, arXiv) as liberation at 12DD, halting there. §4 Derivation: publishers bear cost (14DD) → free reading (12DD barrier dismantled) → voluntary on-chain reader donation (15DD C-production) → authors may withhold donation addresses (silent freedom of 15DD) → no ranking or recommendation (thinnest 14DD) → institutional dissolution from platform to protocol. §5 Economic Signals as DD-Layer Detector. §6 Beyond Content Classification. §7 Ultimate Significance: humanity's information repository and AI training ground. §8 Testable Predictions.

Core Derivation Result

The derivation's unexpected but logically necessary conclusion: when 14DD is compressed to its absolute minimum, the institutional form of a "platform" dissolves. What remains is only three things: an immutable smart contract (storing content, defining rules); a metadata specification (defining format); a set of open-source frontend code (providing human-machine interface, forkable by anyone). Economic relationships consist of only two lines: publishers pay gas to the blockchain network (a few cents, permanent storage); readers donate to authors (on-chain direct transfer, optional). No third party participates in either line. The person who deploys the protocol does three things — deploys the contract, launches the frontend, uploads the first batch of content — and then becomes the "first user," fully equal to all who follow.