Tag Archives: authority

White Paper: Selective Institutional Survival: How People Decide Which Institutions Should Endure—and When Participation Itself Becomes a Moral Act

Posted on January 2, 2026 by nathanalbright

Executive Summary Institutions do not survive merely because they exist, possess legal authority, or perform technical functions. They survive because people choose—consciously or tacitly—to participate in them. This white paper examines how individuals and groups decide which institutions they want … Continue reading →

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White Paper: The Typology of Simulated Agency: How Modern Systems Produce the Appearance of Choice While Pre-Structuring Outcomes

Posted on January 2, 2026 by nathanalbright

Executive Summary Modern institutions increasingly rely on simulated agency: situations in which individuals are formally granted authority, choice, or responsibility, while the surrounding system pre-structures outcomes, constrains refusal, and localizes blame. This paper develops a typology of simulated agency, distinguishing … Continue reading →

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White Paper: Practical Implications of the Supreme Court’s “Immunity” Non-Decision in the Epstein Co-Conspirator Dispute (Maxwell)

Posted on January 1, 2026 by nathanalbright

Executive summary A lot of headlines have described the Supreme Court’s recent action as “ending” or “removing” immunity for Epstein “co-conspirators.” Strictly speaking, the Court did not issue a merits ruling about immunity at all—it declined to hear Ghislaine Maxwell’s … Continue reading →

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White Paper: How 25,000 Barrels of DDT Waste Could Be Dumped Near Los Angeles—and What That Reveals About Regulatory Failure

Posted on January 1, 2026 by nathanalbright

Executive Summary Reports emerging since 2020 indicate that industrial waste associated with DDT manufacturing was disposed in deep waters off the Los Angeles–Catalina corridor, including a debris field that early sonar interpretations suggested might include tens of thousands of barrel-like … Continue reading →

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White Paper: Confession, Authorization, and Exposure: The Tension Between Approved Narratives and Unauthorized Revelation

Posted on January 1, 2026 by nathanalbright

Executive Summary This white paper examines the enduring tension between two broad categories of communicative works: authorized or confessional accounts, which operate with institutional or personal approval, and unauthorized or expositional works, which seek to reveal information that is hidden, … Continue reading →

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White Paper: When Rewards Undermine Purpose: The Perversity of Incentives and Why Incentive Design So Often Goes Wrong

Posted on December 31, 2025 by nathanalbright

Executive Summary Incentives are among the most powerful tools available to institutions, markets, and governments. Properly aligned, they can encourage diligence, innovation, and cooperation. Poorly designed, they reliably produce distortion, moral hazard, gaming, corruption, and collapse of trust. This white … Continue reading →

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White Paper: Powerful Yet Fragile: The Institutional Paradox of Overwhelming Influence and Structural Vulnerability

Posted on December 31, 2025 by nathanalbright

Executive Summary Modern institutions often present themselves—and are experienced by individuals—as overwhelmingly powerful, opaque, and unassailable. They appear capable of shaping behavior, controlling narratives, enforcing compliance, and outlasting generations of leadership. Yet history repeatedly demonstrates that these same institutions are … Continue reading →

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White Paper: Formation and Its Failure in Contemporary Society

Posted on December 31, 2025 by nathanalbright

Modern societies are increasingly marked by dysfunction in attention, self-regulation, moral reasoning, vocational stability, civic trust, and interpersonal responsibility. These failures are often attributed to individual psychological weakness, political polarization, or the disruptive effects of technology. While each of these … Continue reading →

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Innocence, Transgression, and Moral Knowledge: A Biblicist White Paper on Humanity’s State in Eden and the Biblical Meaning of Innocence

Posted on December 30, 2025 by nathanalbright

Executive Summary This white paper examines the biblical concept of innocence, focusing first on humanity’s original state in Eden and then expanding to a broader scriptural theology of innocence across redemptive history. From a biblicist perspective, innocence is neither moral … Continue reading →

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White Paper: A Biblicist Framework for Engaging the Political Nature of Contemporary Life Without Partisan Capture

Posted on December 29, 2025 by nathanalbright

Executive Summary Contemporary life is unavoidably political. Questions of authority, justice, coercion, property, family, speech, education, war, and welfare permeate daily existence. Yet Scripture nowhere authorizes believers to subordinate moral reasoning to secular ideological systems—whether partisan, nationalist, revolutionary, technocratic, or … Continue reading →

Posted in Bible, Christianity, Church of God, Musings | Tagged , , , , | 15 Comments