📏 Four Rulers Theory v28

What is this?

Four Rulers Theory v28 is an earlier version in the lineage that later produced the Six Rulers Theory v34. It is kept as a historical version: useful for seeing what the framework looked like before it expanded from four independent measures to six.

v28.0.0 was published on 2026-08-17 as a complete migration of v27.0.35. According to its launch notice, the main text was not rewritten. Only three things changed: a v28 launch banner was added at the top, a v28.0.0 entry was added to the changelog, and the new/ folder was emptied into 43 placeholder files awaiting new material. v27 was retained as an archived history.

The framework's core claim is simple: a single market ruler will overreach and swallow every other kind of value. Society therefore needs four rulers, each measuring a different thing in its own unit.

The four rulers

The ordering is not decorative. The text argues that the first question of any reform must be whether the guarantee floor has been weakened. Only after that should one ask whether labor is recognized, whether incentives reward the best, and whether meaning is protected.

The 17% law

The first chapter of the main text is devoted to material feasibility. Its central proposition is that roughly 17% of the labor force could carry the universal floor for the whole population. The argument is presented as the answer to the obvious objection: "a universal guarantee sounds good, but who pays for it?"

This overview does not reproduce the arithmetic. The claim and its assumptions are set out in the Chinese chapter on material feasibility, which should be read directly before the number is quoted.

How the six chapters are organized

The medical patch

v27 added a medical dimension to the four-ruler framework: the right to medication as a concrete patch to the guarantee ruler in a clinical setting. It is stated as four conditions:

• Affordable — the patient can pay.
• Accessible — the treatment is actually available.
• Correctly used — it is prescribed and taken properly.
• Chosen — the patient has a real choice among options.

All four together are treated as a complete guarantee; any one missing means the floor is only nominal.

The supplement layer

The main text is only the frame. v28 inherits 22 supplements from v26.1.1 through v26.1.26, which test the framework against concrete mechanisms, stories and objections. Examples include:

• Institutional evolution and responsibility loops — adding a time dimension: lifetime responsibility for authors, veto versus advisory power, four channels for triggering review.
• External critique and self-review — nine outside criticisms preserved in full, marked as answered, partly answered or unanswered.
• Institutional pathology — privilege and petty actors as things a system grows, not things villains simply seize.
• Tax fairness — progressivity, corporate tax on profitability, consumption deductions and mutual-aid relief.
• Involution and the historical window — Japan's 30-year lesson as a mirror for China.
• Cognitive filters — why different people perceive the same system differently, and what that means for the meaning ruler.
• Reflexive protection — how the framework detects being grafted onto or hollowed out.

How v28 relates to the Six Rulers v34

v28 is a four-ruler framework. The later Six Rulers version expands the set to security, choice, labor, contribution, incentive and meaning, and adds chapters on subjective experience and value ontology. In that sense v28 is best read as an ancestor document:

• Read it to understand why the rulers were separated in the first place.
• Read it for the institutional design chapters — data ownership, platform commissions, ownership versus use.
• Do not treat its four-ruler list as the current version. Use v34 for the current framework.

Key takeaways

• One ruler is not enough. A single market measure hides which value is being destroyed to grow another.
• Order matters. Ask about the guarantee floor before asking about labor, incentive or meaning.
• Feasibility is part of the argument. The 17% claim exists to answer the "who pays" objection, not to decorate it.
• Mechanisms, not slogans. Data ownership, commission regulation and separation of ownership from use are the proposed landing points.
• It is a historical version. The lineage continues into the Six Rulers Theory, which is the current reference.

Who it is for

Readers interested in political economy and institutional design, and anyone tracing how the Six Rulers framework evolved. It is also useful for readers who want the longer treatment of guarantee, labor, incentive and meaning before the framework was reorganized into six independent measures.