An Economic Constitution of Possibility: Producing Real Freedom, Settling Contributions, and Renewing Authority

What kind of life an income can buy depends on whether services exist, whether routes of access are open, and whether people can refuse the controls that providers attach to them. Taking the results on real exit, the settlement of responsibilities, and continuing renewal in The Canonical Society Theorem, together with its normative argument, as its starting point, this paper extends constitutional scrutiny to all public and private control that affects other people's feasible futures. It develops four institutional entitlements, each requiring separate justification: basic participation rests on human needs and equal standing; contribution claims rest on undertakings accepted in advance; the use of scarce resources is subject to actual budgets and public allocation rules; and governance powers rest on continuing authorization. Beneficiaries, service providers, and those responsible for budgets may be different people. Basic participation therefore requires no prior contribution, while provision must still be delivered through real resources. Eight principles connect capability evaluation, innovation finance, public production, and revocable governance: identical capability readouts may require different repairs; two rounds of exploration under uncertainty can each pay their costs while preserving an old debt; cumulative receipts for one contribution cannot regenerate through transfer; reusing a method can save labor while preserving every previously legal action; and public responsibilities can continue while an existing term of office ends on schedule. Within the given menu and evaluation scope, policy comparison covers every permitted adaptive response: when an acceptable candidate exists, it returns a deployable choice that is no worse across the full responsibility profile; otherwise, it retains the reasons for rejecting each candidate. The actual work of search and verification is charged item by item. The paper thus develops the economic constitution through institutional relationships that can be checked: who pays, who receives a share, who can leave, and who may decide the next rules. Debates in the capability approach, constitutional economics, and polycentric governance are carried forward through these concrete relationships.