Democracy Cannot Vote Away a Gauge: Weiss's Mutual Strategy for Clock Ensembles, What It Inherits from Two-Way Time Transfer, and the Bilateral Question It Can Answer

Marc Weiss classifies clock synchronization architectures as anarchy (free-running clocks), despotism (master and slaves) and democracy: a mutual strategy in which "anyone can be the master" and every clock runs the ensemble algorithm. He names the democratic case on moving platforms as unsolved, and states its precondition plainly: "Currently we require that the propagation delays and the path asymmetries are measured." We show where the difficulty lies. In any network of clocks that exchange timestamps in both directions, the data determine every round trip and the cycle part of the asymmetry field, and leave n-1 relative offsets traded one for one against n-1 gradient asymmetries that no exchange reveals. Master and slaves fix those n-1 numbers by convention on each link; a mutual ensemble inherits exactly the same n-1 and fixes them the same way. What democracy adds is detection: every link beyond a spanning tree adds a cycle on which asymmetry becomes checkable, though it adds nothing to accuracy. One consequence is sharp: replacing a transceiver on one platform produces data identical to a step in that platform's clock, so an ensemble will steer a good clock to correct a changed cable. Frequency is different: rate differences are determined in-band, so a democratic frequency ensemble is well posed where a democratic time ensemble is not. We propose asking each link the question it can answer, a bilateral agreement, and treating membership changes as bilateral transitions with defined outcomes, which answers the question of rules for joining and leaving that Weiss left open.