Therapeutic Economies: Protective Selection, Endogenous Capabilities, and Institutional Dependence

This theoretical-computational preprint examines whether unconditional institutional protection can make protection-seeking locally adaptive while productive capability declines. It combines a two-strategy replicator-mutator model with an endogenous capability stock and compares unconditional protection, conditional support, open exposure, and a sequenced transition against a fixed-capability baseline. Across 200 seeds, the reference parameterization produces protective selection inversion only under unconditional protection; the sensitivity grid contains both positive and negative regions. The simulation is an existence proof, not an estimate, forecast, or empirical validation for Argentina or any other jurisdiction. The deposit includes the paper and a public, dependency-free replication package with tests, generated data, figures, and integrity hashes.