C3.5 Failure-Mode Transparency
System Resilience. Can the system maintain function under stress and adapt to change?
Pass threshold
Failure detection within 1 week, diagnosis success ≥80%, correction success ≥70%, externalization <10% of total costs
Clause by clause:
- Failure detection within 1 week
- diagnosis success ≥80%
- correction success ≥70%
- externalization <10% of total costs
What it asks
Failure states legible, diagnosable, and correctable rather than hidden or externalized
Why it matters
Hidden failures enable exploitation and prevent adaptive response. The 2008 financial crisis demonstrated catastrophic hidden failures. Transparent failures enable correction before catastrophe.
How it is measured
Clause 1 (detection) is aspirational: the time from a failure's occurrence to its official identification can be shown from the dated record of the entry's most consequential failure in the scoring window (an official inquiry, audit or evaluation) or, for a design, from its monitoring rule, and the scoring document must name that record. Clause 2 (diagnosis) is aspirational: no agency publishes the share of failures whose cause is established; it can be shown only from a design's documented diagnostic record or an independent evaluation that reports it. Clause 3 (correction): the share of the supreme audit institution's recommendations implemented, as the US Government Accountability Office and other INTOSAI members publish, or for a design its correction record. Clause 4 (externalization): unpriced environmental costs of fuel use as a share of GDP, the implicit subsidies in the IMF's Fossil Fuel Subsidies Data, a lower bound on externalized cost, with GDP standing for total costs; for a design, projected.
Indicators
clauses 1–2, aspirational; clause 3, supreme audit institutions' recommendation-implementation rates; clause 4, IMF Fossil Fuel Subsidies Data (implicit subsidies, % of GDP).
How scores are anchored
1.0, pass
Systematic, comprehensive monitoring with no major category of cost or failure hidden. CCO-PTF-CIP-SZH (1.0): "CCO flows visible through blockchain transparency... CIP provides dashboard tracking system performance across all metrics."
0.5, partial
Some failures are visible (often internally, e.g., to firm members) while others (typically ecological or diffuse social costs) remain externalized. Market Socialism (0.5): "Worker ownership makes firm failures visible to members immediately. However, market externalities (environmental costs) are still hidden."
0.0, structural failure
Systematic externalization or active suppression of failure information. Libertarian Minarchism (0.0): "Market externalities maximally hidden... no mechanism for making systemic failures legible." Stakeholder Capitalism (0.0): "ESG metrics susceptible to greenwashing... systemic failures obscured behind public relations."
Normative roots
From N10 (Failure Transparency) + N7 (Anti-Capture).
Judgment calls on this criterion
How the systems score
0.5, partial
CCO-PTF-CIP-SZH, Participatory Economics, Integral, Degrowth Economics, Nordic Social Democracy, Market Socialism, Sovereign Wealth Fund Statism, Georgism / LVT, Ostrom Commons, Islamic Finance, Mutual Credit / LETS, State Capitalism / Singapore, Status Quo Market Capitalism, Fully Automated Luxury Communism, Stakeholder Capitalism, State Capitalism / Qatar, Doughnut Economics, Libertarian Minarchism, Centrally Planned Socialism
0.0, structural failure
Universal Basic Income, Universal Basic Services, MMT + Job Guarantee, State Capitalism / China
Sources
Definition: Paper Section 6; restated in v2.0 (NEEC_Criteria_v2_s45.md, Appendix V). Anchors: Paper Appendix H.7.