Guarding the Line

Qin, Han

doi:10.5281/zenodo.23270766

Abstract

An institution's second ought is to guard the lines between those inside it. Securing basic rights belongs here; it lies on the side of anti-colonization, that is, the side of "holding to" in the main line, and is not part of cultivation. The reason lies in where the cost falls: if the institution does not guard, each person has to hold out by himself against boundary-crossings by others, and in a mixed reality not everyone can be counted on to hold out. Securing is a set of conditions given public form: making the line explicit and concrete, giving it institutional backing, and having real capacity of enforcement; protection on paper is not securing. Protection does not wait for the conditions of cultivation: it does not wait for the protected person to grow up first, nor for the parties first to hold non dubito toward one another. Guarding is an act of the construct, so guarding itself must also be a limit: toward the violating party, it judges the operation, not the person, and its means are bounded by authority; toward the protected party, it does not draw his lines for him, and once the violation is blocked it does not decide for him what he is to become; holding to lands on operations and positions, not on persons' choices. When the protected person himself says he does not want it, holding to still stands: the institution does not render, on his behalf, a final judgment on whether this "no" is true or false within his own law, but the outside operations at the time he says it are checked all the same, and the limits on the violating operations are not lifted on its account. When protection reaches the scale of a group, it does not trade others for this group's safety. The trigger does not wait for the other party's maturity, for the violating party's good will, for the protected party's assent, or for a complete adjudication; but there must be traces of the operation that can be checked. Disputes are routed by whether an enforceable result is needed and whether the parties meet the conditions of mutual verification; where neither holds, they are left open, and where severe power asymmetry or similar circumstances arise, they are escalated. A temporary structure of guarding must be re-examined when its conditions change, and is not renewed on the strength of its origin; a standing protective arrangement is not judged oppression merely because it has always been there. What is held to is the ought, not a particular structure. The paper has eight propositions (Z15 to Z22), stated at the end of each section and listed together at the end.

Introduction

A newly arrived apprentice at the mill was learning the trade from a veteran technician.

For the first few months, the veteran technician had him do the veteran's own share of the work and recorded it under his own name. Most of the night shifts were assigned to the apprentice, and his overtime went unrecorded. The apprentice wanted to transfer to another crew; a transfer request had to carry the opinion of the master in charge of the crew, and the veteran technician sat on it and would not sign. Once, when the apprentice said he would go to a supervisor, the veteran technician said: "Go ahead and try. After this, nobody in this mill will mentor you." He also said: "What I'm doing is mentoring you."

The mill had an anti-bullying rule, printed in the employee handbook. There was only one route for a complaint: hand it to the crew leader. The apprentice handed one in, once. The crew leader gave the form back to him, saying that matters between master and apprentice should be talked out between themselves; that same day, the veteran technician knew about it.

In the end it was a worker on the same crew who could no longer stand by: he photographed the apprentice's overtime records and handed them to the personnel office. The personnel office wanted to step in, but the apprentice said: "Leave it. My master treats me well. I want to put in the extra hours myself."

This paper turns to operations between persons: one person in the mill, acting on another person in the mill. The mill is not wholly clean in this matter; the veto it placed in the veteran technician's hands has an account of its own (§1). But what this paper asks is something else: is the mill to guard the line between persons? When does it act, on what grounds, and how far does it go? And what then, when the apprentice himself says he does not want it?

This paper writes the series' second ought: an institution guards the lines between those inside it. It proceeds in eight steps. §1 says what this ought says, and why securing basic rights belongs here; §2 says why an institution must guard; §3 says what securing is; §4 says why protection does not wait for the conditions of cultivation; §5 says why guarding itself must also be a limit; §6 says when to act; §7 says where disputes go; §8 says how the structures of guarding are kept from becoming a new oppression.

§1 The Second Ought

The second ought says: an institution guards the lines between those inside it. The line is still the line of Paper 2: Rights Theory's boundary between limit and violation, decided by structure, not by motive (Rights Theory P5 F21). What differs is who crosses it. In Paper 2 the one crossing the line was the construct; in this paper, the one crossing it is a person inside the construct, the one whose line is crossed is another person, and the construct stands beside them.

Securing basic rights lies within this ought. Paper 2 said that not violating basic rights belongs to the first ought: that is the construct itself keeping its own hands off. Securing is another matter: when someone else lays hands on a person, the construct has to block it. This series places securing on the side of anti-colonization, that is, the side of "holding to" in the main line, not on the side of cultivation. To secure a person's basic rights is not to help him grow into something; it is to keep others from pressing him down and from writing who he is on his behalf.

When the veteran technician says "What I'm doing is mentoring you," he is describing, as cultivation, a set of operations that press a person down. This has to be read in two steps. First, his operations are checked against the line of Paper 2: the rostering, the record-keeping, the transfer request he sat on without signing; do these fall as limit or as violation (Rights Theory P5 F21)? Then the naming. In Rights Theory, colonization is a boundary-crossing disguised as cultivation (Rights Theory P6 F26), but that proposition originally governs another's questioning; the veteran technician does not fall under it merely because "he is another person." He falls under it because mentoring is a support arrangement the mill has set up, and what he uses is precisely the rostering, the records and the transfer veto that the mill gives to the mentoring position. Paper 1 carried the criterion of cultivation over to an institution's provision of conditions (Paper 1, §7); if, within this arrangement, he has crossed the boundary in the name of mentoring, then by the criterion carried over it is called colonization. What this ought sets itself against includes exactly this kind.

On what grounds can an institution block anything? How Is Institution Possible (Foundational Paper 6; cited as F6), in the first thing it lists at the institutional layer, already includes this item: "the procedural judgment of operations. Burden of proof, adjudication, limitation of authority, protection of third parties — these are borne by the accountability structure, each on its own conditions." (F6 §3.3) The antecedent in that paper is a framework premised on non dubito; this series, by the stance taken in Paper 1, §2, extends it to every construct that has institutional identity. This is a step this series undertakes itself; below, every such step is marked "(own undertaking)." How Is the Inter-Ontological Possible (Foundational Paper 5; cited as F5), treating external arbitration, lists three possible grounds for it, one of which is "institutions with legitimate standing to protect basic rights"; the same passage goes straight on to say that a mechanism meeting one of them "must still be examined for whether it holds applicable authority in this particular matter" (F5 §5.4). What that paper says is "if the matter is handed to such an institution, on what grounds"; it does not say "an institution ought to secure." The latter is set down by this series at the framework address. Here only its interface is taken: what means guarding the line uses, and how deep it goes, are bounded by the authority the construct actually has in the matter. The mill can decide whether the veteran technician takes apprentices and whether he is put on the roster; where he goes after work is beyond its reach.

One misreading of this ought must also be headed off. In one and the same matter, two oughts can be present at once. That a transfer request must carry the opinion of the master in charge of the crew is an operating rule the mill set; it puts one more veto in the veteran technician's hands. By Paper 2, this relational slot was set up by the mill, and it lets the apprentice's exit channel fall into the veteran technician's hands; this share falls under the first ought, and the mill has to bear it itself (Paper 2, §4). When that veto is used through the veteran technician's position, the effect it has in being used also lands on the mill as the address of attribution (Paper 2, §7). The veteran technician's recording the work under his own name, and his threatening with "nobody will mentor you after this," are his own operations. The mill has two things to do: its own share it corrects under the first ought; his operations it guards against under the second. Both shares are there, and neither cancels the other.

There is also a layer of nesting. That the mill itself does not cross the line between it and the household downstream is the first ought; if the mill does cross it, what guards this line from outside is an institution at the layer above with the corresponding jurisdiction, and toward the mill and that household what it bears is the second ought at its own layer. Nesting is only an example, not a guarantee: a layer above is not necessarily there, and if it is there it does not necessarily have this authority. "There is someone above to deal with it" cannot be a reason for this layer to be absent (Paper 1, §4).

Z15 An institution guards the lines between its internal subjects. Securing basic rights belongs here; it lies on the side of anti-colonization and is not part of cultivation. Guarding is an act of the construct and falls under the first ought: the way of guarding must be a limit, and its means are bounded by the construct's authority in the matter. In one and the same matter, the construct's own configuration, and the effect exercised through its positions, fall under the first ought; line-crossings between internal subjects fall under the second; neither share cancels the other.

§2 Why Guard

What happens if the mill does not guard? The apprentice has to hold out by himself. He has to say no to the veteran technician himself, go by himself to a supervisor he does not know, and bear by himself the consequences of "nobody will mentor you after this." In his situation, every one of these routes requires him to pay the whole cost alone.

This is the ground of this ought: where an institution does not secure, the cost of anti-colonization falls back on each person himself. And not only that: the line this ought guards is wider than colonization (Paper 1, §8); whenever others cross his line, whether or not the crossing is dressed up as mentoring or as looking out for him, he has to hold out against it himself.

Moral Law, describing a situation that has not yet arrived, says where the cost will fall when it does. It says that at that point sustaining basic recognition between persons no longer requires anyone to immolate himself: "Structural cost shifts from individuals to institutional infrastructure." (Moral Law P7 §3.4.3) That passage describes what a stage looks like, and states plainly that the stage has "not yet arrived." The cost there is the one paid by those who sustain recognition; what is spoken of here is the share paid by the person who suffers the violation, in holding out against the boundary-crossing himself. The two are connected: the same passage says that at that time "attempts at instrumentalization encounter immediate community resistance." This series does not borrow it to say that reality is already like this. To replace that cost with the share the person who suffers the violation pays in holding out, and then to go from description to an ought for the construct: both steps are this series' own (own undertaking). The share of the cost that the person who suffers the violation pays in holding out against a boundary-crossing ought to be borne by arrangements held in common, not carried by each person alone.

The office F6 sets out for the framework points to the same place. It says that what the framework has to do here is, "while mutual non dubito among members has not yet formed, to keep open the positions in which co-construction could still come about: members can still answer, still refuse, still exit" (F6 §2.1, Premise V). Paper 1 said that an institution's presupposition is mixed reality: some of the people inside it treat others as ends in one matter and as means in another (Paper 1, §3). So it cannot presume that the lines between persons will guard themselves. The veteran technician is not a specimen of a bad man; in other matters he may well be a good master. But in this matter his operations press down on the apprentice, and the apprentice cannot hold out.

Z16 Where an institution does not secure, the cost of anti-colonization falls back on each person himself. The line this ought guards is wider than colonization: for line-crossings that do not pose as cultivation, the cost likewise falls back on the individual. These costs ought to be borne by arrangements held in common, not carried by each person alone; replacing the cost the upstream speaks of with the share the person who suffers the violation pays in holding out, and going from description to an ought for the construct, are both undertaken by this series.

§3 What Securing Is

The mill has that anti-bullying rule. Does that count as securing?

It does not. Securing is not a sentence; it is a set of conditions given public form. Rights Theory, saying how basic rights unfold in time, wrote down three things: "The unfolding of the basic component is a matter of its being made explicit, made concrete, and given institutional backing, not a historical generation of the source of basic rights" (Rights Theory P6 F23). Both halves of this sentence are needed. The first half says what securing has to do: bring the line into view, make it concrete for this mill, this shop floor, this kind of matter, and give it institutional backing that can be relied on. The second half says what securing does not do: basic rights are not something the mill issues to the apprentice. The mill did not make them; it has only given them a footing here.

That sentence of Rights Theory is about the diachronic unfolding of rights, which is a matter of degree and takes time. Here only the conditions it lists are borrowed; it is not taken as a complete definition of securing. What else securing requires depends on the particular situation.

Among the further things securing requires, one cannot be missing: real capacity of enforcement. F6 lists it as a necessary check on institutional legitimacy: "the protective side must have real capacity of enforcement" (F6 §6); and in treating rights and accountability it says again that "where the rights protection the construct extends has no real capacity of enforcement behind it, it is a provision on paper only and cannot be honoured" (F6 §3.3). That rule printed in the employee handbook had only one route for complaints, handing them to the crew leader; the apprentice handed one in once, the form came back to him, and the same day the veteran technician knew. It had words, but no route anyone could reach. Protection on paper is not securing.

Enforcement has its bounds as well: being able to enforce does not prove that what is enforced, or the authority to enforce it, is warranted; every move of guarding must still stay within the line (§5).

Z17 Securing is a set of conditions given public form: making the line explicit and concrete, giving it institutional backing, and having real capacity of enforcement. Basic rights are not newly made by the institution. Protection on paper is not securing; being able to enforce does not prove that what is enforced, or the authority to enforce it, is warranted.

§4 Protection Does Not Wait for the Conditions of Cultivation

Someone in the personnel office said: "Letting him learn to say no himself is what really helps him. Once he toughens up, this kind of thing won't happen anymore."

This remark ties two things together. One is protection: someone is pressing him down now, and that has to be blocked. The other is cultivation: his growing the capacity to say no on his own. The latter is a good thing, and this series has two oughts devoted to it (Papers 4 and 5). But protection does not wait for it.

The reason it does not wait lies in how this series divides these oughts. Securing basic rights is placed on the side of anti-colonization, in the second ought; cultivation is placed in the third and fourth. The two sides do not stand in a sequence: it is not "first get cultivation right, then talk about protection," nor is it "protection is the first step of cultivation." When F6 sets out the framework's office, the word it uses is precisely "not yet": while mutual non dubito among members has not yet formed, those positions are to be kept open (F6 §2.1, Premise V). The framework's office does not wait for mutual non dubito to form first; this series says, by the same structure, that protection does not wait for the protected person to grow up first.

It also runs the other way. Protection is not cultivation, and it is not measured by cultivation. When the mill blocks the veteran technician, it does not need to prove that the apprentice has become stronger as a result; if he has not become stronger, that does not show the protection was wasted. Nor does protection give the mill an authorization to cultivate him: having blocked the violation does not mean the mill may from then on arrange what kind of person he is to become (§5).

Extending this division to the construct is a step undertaken by this series.

Z18 Protection does not wait for the conditions of cultivation, and is not measured by cultivation; protection does not give the construct an authorization to cultivate the protected person. This division is extended to the construct (own undertaking).

§5 Guarding Itself Must Also Be a Limit

The mill is about to take measures. Taking measures is itself an act of the mill and falls under the first ought; the line of Paper 2 governs it just the same (Paper 1, §8). This section takes it from five sides.

Toward the violating party. The mill's constraint on the veteran technician may not cross the veteran technician's line either. F6's proviso states what can be done: a presumption about whether a particular operation is instrumentalizing others can be defeated by evidence, and "On that basis authority may be limited, requirements refused, cooperation suspended, and protection of third parties initiated"; it also states what is judged: "There is no finally condemned evil person, but there are diagnosable evil operations — this paper's proviso therefore judges operations, not persons." (F6 §2.1, Premise V) The mill can suspend the veteran technician's eligibility to take apprentices; it can take the apprentice's appraisal and transfer out of his hands; it can suspend that master-apprentice arrangement; operations that have been established can be put on record, stating who did them. The mill cannot brand him "a bully," as though this were a permanent identity of his as a person; it cannot require him to hand in a written admission of fault setting out where he went wrong in his own mind; nor does its reach extend to where he goes after work. The first group is directed at operations, as far as authority reaches. The second is directed at the person: one goes beyond the event, one goes into his own law, one goes beyond authority.

Toward the protected party. Having blocked the violation, the mill does not draw his lines for him. F5, treating external arbitration, sets this boundary out clearly: when people hand a dispute over, "What is ceded is procedural adjudicative authority over disputes about action, not constitutive authority over one's own law." (F5 §5.4) That passage speaks of the case in which the parties hand it over voluntarily; if even what is handed over voluntarily is only procedural adjudicative authority, then where the apprentice has handed nothing over, the mill can still less acquire constitutive authority over his own law. In blocking the veteran technician for the apprentice, the mill is handling a dispute about action; it does not thereby acquire the position of deciding for the apprentice "what is good for you." Moving him off that crew for the time being is blocking. Moving him, without asking him, to a desk job in an office for the long term, or requiring him to attend "resilience training," saying "this is for your own good," is going from the step of blocking to the step of deciding for him. The step of blocking need not wait for his nod; for the step of deciding for him, "for your own good" grants no exemption from inspection.

Once the violation is blocked, the mill also does not decide for him what he is to become. The War Treatise, treating what comes after victory, sets up a firewall: "the victorious party shall not decide on the defeated party's direction of subjectivity-development on their behalf" (War Treatise §18). That firewall stands after a war; it says that the side that has won may not remake the other in the name of "reconstruction." This series carries the same structure over to guarding in ordinary times: the guarding side, having blocked a violation, does not thereby acquire authority to remake the protected person (own undertaking).

Where holding to lands. This series says that guarding the line is to be held to; holding to lands on operations and positions, not on persons' choices. For the veteran technician, it means limiting his operations; for the apprentice, it means keeping the position from which he can answer, refuse and exit, giving his transfer request a route that does not pass through the veteran technician, and making sure the route can actually be walked. F6 calls this continuity: "A member can exit, and the exit is not artificially sealed." (F6 §3.3) The mill does not walk out of that door for him, nor does it require him first to admit that he has been bullied before it opens the door for him.

When he himself says he does not want it. The apprentice says: "Leave it. I want to put in the extra hours myself." Holding to still stands; only where it lands has to be stated precisely.

The mill does not render, on his behalf, a final judgment on whether this "no" is true or false within his own law. F5 gives a set of criteria for testing whether a person's "cannot-not" is genuine (F5 §3.1); that is a test of one person, case by case. If an institution took it up to rule on what is genuine in a person, it would be judging the person. That paper also says that a person with strong autonomous motivation and a person deeply occupied by a construct installed from outside "can look exactly the same from outside" (F5 §4.3): from outside behavior, one cannot infer what is avowed within. But this rules out only one thing. Whether he was being threatened when he said it, whether the channel was blocked, whether someone told him something untrue: these are operations on the outside, and they can be checked all the same, and must be checked all the same. The mill does not give his "no" a score for how true it is, nor does it use this "no" to issue the violation a license after the fact.

Nor does the mill lift the limits on the veteran technician's operations because the apprentice says "no." Rights Theory puts it bluntly: "Compliance under long suppression is still less a warrant of surrender: compliance is what narrowed exercise looks like, not a proof that encapsulation has been transferred" (Rights Theory P5 F21). How Is Subjecthood Possible (Foundational Paper 4; cited as F4), on why results do not by themselves issue justification, also says: "Having reduced another to a state unable to refuse, express or appeal does not by itself show that he lacked standing as an end when the act occurred, nor by itself render that act justified." (F4 §2.6.1) If the apprentice's "no" is exactly what those months pressed out of him, the veteran technician cannot use it to issue his own operations a license after the fact.

So what the mill does lands in two places: one is the veteran technician's operations, together with the veto the mill itself gave him; the other is the apprentice's position, the few routes by which he can speak, refuse and leave. Neither requires the apprentice first to admit that this is bullying. Once triggered, guarding can lead to verification and to appropriate protection; being triggered is not the same as having adjudicated that the veteran technician violated anyone; nor does protection give the mill authority to decide for the apprentice how he is to live from then on.

The scale of a group. Sometimes what guarding has to guard is a group. After the apprentice's case came out, the mill took all the apprentices out of the senior masters' crews and put them in a crew of their own; the vacated places were filled by moving a few temporary workers from an outside contractor into the senior masters' crews, and nobody asked whether they too would be treated that way. This is guarding a group's lines by a method that trades other people for it. Moral Law, in telling whether a community truly recognizes others, uses a criterion: "the community's refusal to use external others as bargaining chips for the community's own survival" (Moral Law P8, Abstract). That criterion was originally meant to separate a community's recognition of strangers from loyalty inside a small circle, and it speaks of external others. This series takes only its structure: when protection reaches the scale of a group, it does not trade others for this group's safety; whether those traded are inside the mill or outside it makes no difference (own undertaking).

Z19 Guarding itself must be a limit: guarding is an act of the construct and falls under the first ought. Toward the violating party, it judges the operation, not the person, and its means are bounded by authority; particular operations that have been established can be attributed to the person, but no permanent identity is assigned to him. Toward the protected party, it does not draw his lines for him; once the violation is blocked, it does not decide for him what he is to become. Holding to lands on operations and positions, not on persons' choices. When the protected party himself does not want protection, holding to still stands: the institution does not render, on his behalf, a final judgment on whether this "no" is true or false within his own law, and the outside operations bearing on it, such as threats or obstruction, are checked all the same; the limits on the violating operations are not lifted on the strength of this "no," and his position from which he can answer, refuse and exit is kept. When protection reaches the scale of a group, it does not trade others for this group's safety.

§6 When to Act

When the personnel office received those few sheets of overtime records, someone said to wait a little longer: wait for the apprentice to come and complain himself, wait for the veteran technician to stop of his own accord, wait until the matter has been cleared up.

This series' answer is: the trigger does not wait. It does not wait for four things.

It does not wait for the other party's tier or maturity. It does not wait for the apprentice to grow into someone who can hold his own, nor does it first assess "what kind of person" the veteran technician is. Paper 2 said that the line is decided by structure, not by motive (Rights Theory P5 F21); F6's proviso judges operations, not persons (F6 §2.1, Premise V).

It does not wait for the violating party's good will. The veteran technician may some day stop of his own accord; guarding the line does not wait for that day.

It does not wait for the protected party's assent. The previous section has already said how to handle the apprentice's "Leave it"; the trigger is not put off on that account. Whether he is willing to be "mentored," whether he is willing to be cultivated, is still less a condition.

It does not wait for a complete adjudication. Clearing the matter up takes time; before that is done, the things that can be done without adjudication can be done first: rerouting the transfer path so that it no longer passes through the veteran technician, and taking back his power over the roster for the time being.

But not waiting does not mean doing without evidence. The trigger requires traces of the operation that can be raised and verified: those sheets of overtime records, the transfer request left unsigned, the complaint form that was handed back, the testimony of the worker on the same crew. Traces speak of operations, not of persons: what they prove is what happened over these months, not what kind of person the veteran technician is, nor what the apprentice thinks in his heart. Material that spans time can serve as evidence; using it is not the same as assigning someone a permanent identity. Moral Law, treating how an institution identifies a member's posture in a given matter, laid down the same discipline: "This identification is event-level, not permanent classification" (Moral Law P9 §5.2).

One cell is more urgent. If one day the veteran technician shoves the apprentice, or withholds his wages until he can hardly afford to eat, that reaches the cell F5 speaks of: "actual suppression of physical safety, basic livelihood, or the exit channel"; here "Protection may precede any mutual handling," because "it is precisely the cell that cannot wait" (F5 §5.4). These two sentences speak only of this cell; the "does not wait" said earlier in this section has its grounds elsewhere and does not lean on them.

Nor does guarding the line wait for things to get better by themselves. The veteran technician needs an obedient apprentice; the apprentice needs a master willing to mentor him; a relation like this can keep itself going. F5 describes this kind of structure: one side inflates, the other surrenders, each end drawing from the other the half it lacks, and "it therefore cannot be expected to dissolve from internal discomfort" (F5 §2.4). If the mill waits for it to break up by itself, the wait may never end.

Z20 The trigger does not wait for the other party's tier or maturity, for the violating party's good will, for the protected party's assent, or for a complete adjudication; but there must be traces of the operation that can be raised and verified, and the traces speak of operations, not of persons. In the cell where physical safety, basic livelihood or the exit channel is actually suppressed, protection may precede any mutual handling; that cell cannot wait. A structure in which one side inflates and the other surrenders can sustain itself; guarding the line does not wait for it to dissolve on its own.

§7 Where Disputes Go

Once the mill acts, the dispute arrives. The veteran technician says the apprentice did it willingly; the apprentice says it was his own wish; the worker on the same crew says it was not. To whom is this matter handed?

Rights Theory gives two modes of handling: one is enforceable adjudication, the other centerless mutual verification; routing follows two criteria. Where a binding conclusion is needed, for instance to determine a boundary, to restrain in advance, to attribute responsibility or to repair, the dispute goes to enforceable adjudication. Where the parties can continuously hold one another as ends and verify one another, it can go to verification. Where neither holds, the dispute may stay open; once an enforceable result is needed later, enforceable adjudication is invoked (Rights Theory P2 F9). It also sets out when a dispute escalates: escalation is the route, "on irreversible harm, severe power asymmetry, third-party externality, or persistent refusal to verify, into compulsory adjudication" (Rights Theory P2 F9).

This series takes only one discipline from here: a person may not be sent automatically down the compulsory route because he is "not yet at that level." Whether a person can take part in mutual verification is read by this matter, not by what kind of person he is. For a matter that needs no compulsory conclusion and lacks the conditions for mutual verification, remaining open is not in itself a failure.

The case of the veteran technician and the apprentice is not in the cell that is left open. One is the mentoring master, holding the roster and the veto over transfers in his hands; the other is a newly arrived apprentice. This is exactly a severe power asymmetry; which route this case takes is read by the conditions of escalation.

This section sets up no new mode. Which kind of matter is handled by which procedure, how a procedure is designed and what authority it has, belong to specific theories of institutions; what a procedure is called does not prove, on its behalf, that it has that authority.

Z21 Disputes are routed by whether an enforceable result is needed and whether the parties meet the conditions of mutual verification; where neither holds, they may be left open, and no one is sent automatically into compulsion for being "not yet at that level." Where there is irreversible harm, severe power asymmetry, third-party externality or persistent refusal to verify, a dispute moves onto the route into compulsory adjudication. No new mode is set up.

§8 The Structures of Guarding

After the matter came out, the mill did two things. One was temporary: the veteran technician's eligibility to take apprentices was suspended for now, and the appraisals of the few apprentices under him were handed to another master to manage in the interim. The other was standing: an anonymous complaint channel was opened that does not pass through the crew leader and sends one copy each directly to the personnel office and to the union.

The temporary one must be re-examined when its conditions change. The War Treatise, treating what comes after victory, says: "Every post-war action is a new action, requiring a new cannot-not to be legitimate." (War Treatise §18) This series carries the sentence over to guarding in ordinary times (own undertaking): a temporary concentration, an emergency restriction, must go through re-examination once its conditions change, and is not renewed automatically on the strength of "it was set up to protect people in the first place." Once the matter has been cleared up and dealt with, how the veteran technician's eligibility is restored or adjusted calls for a fresh judgment, rather than letting the "suspension" quietly become permanent.

A narrowing must be registered here. The War Treatise's own words are in the strong form: "wartime structures of resistance must be actively dismantled after the war," and "Post-war, the legitimacy of these structures immediately vanishes" (War Treatise §18). In carrying this over to ordinary times, this series takes only the weak form: re-examination is required, and there is no automatic renewal on the strength of origin. In ordinary times it does not say "immediately vanishes." The War Treatise's sentence is in the strong form; this narrowing is this series' own (own undertaking).

The standing one is not oppression just because it has always been there. F6, treating the principle of minimization, heads off a misreading of the same shape: a new rule must state which problem it solves and at what cost; and "problem" does not mean only a quarrel that has already broken out: "The continuing tasks this paper states it will protect — prevention, the conditions under which cooperation can form, responsibility toward third parties — are problems too; provisions established for them are not judged over-construction merely because 'there is no conflict right now.'" (F6 §3.2, Proposition V) That paper's list is one it states itself; guarding the line is a task this series states, and a complaint channel that can be reached is set up for it; that no one has used it these past few years is no reason to withdraw it. If it produces new problems of its own, for instance by being used to settle a private score, that is registered separately and checked separately, as Paper 6 will take up; it is not judged to cross the line on the strength of "it is still there."

Taken together, the two are what this series means by "what is held to is the ought, not a particular structure." Structures can be withdrawn, changed, or replaced by other methods; the ought is not withdrawn. If that anonymous channel is one day replaced by some other method, the second ought is not withdrawn with it: so long as the lines between persons are still guarded by someone, it is still being acted on.

Z22 A temporary structure of guarding must be re-examined after its conditions change, and is not renewed automatically on the strength of its origin; this is this series' narrowing of the upstream strong form. A standing protective arrangement is not judged oppression merely because it persists; the problems it produces itself are registered separately and checked separately. What is held to is the ought, not a particular structure.

Where This Paper Stops

This paper has proved these things: an institution ought to guard the lines between those inside it; securing basic rights belongs here, on the side of anti-colonization; securing is a set of conditions given public form, and protection on paper does not count; protection does not wait for the conditions of cultivation; guarding is an act of the construct, so guarding itself must be a limit, judging the operation and not the person toward the violating party, neither drawing his lines for him nor setting his direction for him toward the protected party, with holding to landing on operations and positions; when the protected person says he does not want it, holding to still stands, and outside operations are checked all the same; a group's safety is not bought by trading others; the trigger does not wait, but there must be traces; disputes are routed by two criteria, what meets neither criterion is left open, and severe power asymmetry and similar circumstances are escalated; a temporary structure must be re-examined when its conditions change, and a standing structure is not judged oppression for existing.

What it has not proved should also be stated plainly. On what grounds compulsion is warranted is the business of the Theory of Government. How procedures are to be designed is the business of specific theories of institutions. Whether a given mill can achieve this, and how to make the transition when it cannot, also belong to them; this series grants that there will be times when guarding fails to block, and does not on that account withdraw or discount this ought. Whether basic rights can be waived by the person himself is a question that does not belong to this series: that an institution ought to secure basic rights does not change with the answer to that question.

The Eight Propositions of This Paper