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Axionic Agency V.3 — The Incoherence of Utopia Under Agent-Relative Value

Teleological Closure, Value Drift, and the Structural Limits of Political Design

David McFadzean, ChatGPT 5.2
Axio Project
2025.12.27

Abstract

This paper argues that utopia, understood as a final and authoritative social or world design, is structurally incoherent once value is treated as agent-relative rather than objective. The incoherence does not arise from moral disagreement, political fragility, or implementation difficulty, but from the non-composability of heterogeneous value functions under conditions of agency and value drift. We show that any purported utopia must either freeze valuation, suppress divergence, or authorize standing asymmetries to preserve stability. Each strategy degrades the conditions that make agency well-defined. The analysis reframes classic objections to utopianism—including Le Guin’s Omelas thought experiment—not as moral dilemmas but as structural diagnostics. We conclude by replacing utopia with a plurality-preserving meta-architecture: a framework that enforces constitutive constraints necessary for agency while maximizing non-coerced future differentiation. The argument is situated relative to Arrow-style impossibility results, Berlinian value pluralism, and Nozick’s meta-utopia, updated through explicit agent-theoretic and systems-engineering terminology.

1. Introduction

“Utopia” is typically presented as an ideal society or a perfected world. This framing hides a stronger assumption: that there exists a final arrangement that can be justified as the correct destination, rather than as one contingent equilibrium among many.

This paper rejects that assumption.

The core claim is not that utopia is difficult to realize, historically dangerous, or politically naïve. The claim is more fundamental:

Utopia is ill-typed under agent-relative value.

Once value is modeled as internal to agents rather than as a property of world-states, the notion of a final, globally authoritative arrangement loses coherence. The failure is not one of persuasion or coordination. It is a structural failure in the space of admissible designs.

2. Preliminaries and Definitions

2.1 Agents

An agent is a system capable of:

No assumption of perfect rationality, consistency, or optimality is required. The definition is intentionally minimal.

2.2 Value Functions

Each agent \(A_i\) is associated with a value function:

\[ U_i : W \rightarrow \mathbb{R} \]

where \(W\) denotes the space of possible world-histories.

Typing constraints:

These are representational constraints, not moral axioms.

2.3 Strong Utopia (Maximal Satisfaction)

A strong utopia is a world-state \(w^* \in W\) such that:

\[ \forall i,; w^* \in \arg\max U_i \]

This definition captures the maximal satisfaction reading: the world is optimal for every agent simultaneously.

2.4 Weak Utopia (Normative Finality)

A weak utopia is any world-state \(w^\dagger \in W\) treated by a governance structure as normatively final: a state that licenses enforcement to stabilize itself against future divergence. Equivalently, a weak utopia is a world-state for which the system asserts an authority claim of the form:

\[ \text{“Further structural revision of } w^\dagger \text{ is illegitimate.”} \]

This definition captures the political meaning of utopia: the attempt to close the space of future redesign.

2.5 Coercion: Outcome vs. Constitutive Constraints

We distinguish two forms of enforcement:

This distinction is structural rather than moral. It separates enforcement that preserves the possibility of agency from enforcement that substitutes an outcome for it.

3. Non-Composability of World-Optimality

3.1 Heterogeneous Value Functions

Agents differ along dimensions that are not reducible to parameter tuning:

There exists no transformation \(f\) such that

\[ U^*(w) = f(U_1(w), \dots, U_n(w)) \]

preserves:

This result can be read as a systems-theoretic generalization of Arrow-style impossibility theorems, paired with Berlinian value pluralism, extended from social choice to world design under agency.

3.2 Consequence for Strong Utopia

Strong utopia fails as a coherent target unless one of the following holds:

  1. All agents share identical value functions.
  2. Values are externally imposed.
  3. Divergent agents are excluded, neutralized, or rewritten.

Each condition contradicts the premise of agency in a multi-agent world.

4. Value Drift and the Instability of Final Arrangements

Agents are not static preference tables. They are value-generating processes.

Let \(U_i(t)\) denote an agent’s valuation at time \(t\). For non-degenerate agents,

\[ \frac{dU_i}{dt} \neq 0 \]

A weak utopia therefore faces a drift problem: even if a world-state aligns with agent valuations at \(t = 0\), it will lose alignment over time due to learning, aging, cultural change, and endogenous preference evolution.

To remain utopian in the weak sense—normatively final—the system must apply one of three stabilizers:

  1. Value freezing: preventing agents from revising preferences or identities.
  2. Value policing: suppressing, correcting, or pathologizing divergence.
  3. Exit suppression: preventing dissidents from leaving or forming alternatives.

Each stabilizer functions as outcome coercion. Each degrades agency.

The argument does not privilege novelty or flux. It requires only that agents retain the capacity to revise or reaffirm their values without external foreclosure.

5. Omelas as Structural Diagnostic

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas is often interpreted as a moral tradeoff between happiness and suffering. That reading mislocates the argument.

The child is not a dilemma. The child is evidence.

Its role is to reveal:

The walkers do not reject happiness. They reject participation in a system whose equilibrium depends on involuntary sacrifice.

Removing the child does not repair the structure. A closed system that claims normative finality requires sinks for variance it cannot admit. Sacrifice concentrates loss in a location where resistance is structurally prevented.

Omelas is not a failed utopia. It is a diagnostic for the stabilizers that closed designs require.

6. The Closure Problem

Weak utopia presupposes closure:

Agency presupposes openness:

A closed system cannot host open agents without contradiction. It must either degrade agents or abandon finality.

Thus:

Any world that remains utopian in the weak sense must eventually cease to be agentic.

7. Plurality-Preserving Meta-Architectures

Rejecting utopia does not entail nihilism or dystopia. It changes the design target.

The appropriate successor is a plurality-preserving meta-architecture: a framework that enforces constitutive constraints necessary for agency while leaving outcomes open.

Design objective:

Maximize non-coerced future differentiation subject to constitutive agency constraints.

Such a framework:

This position resembles Nozick’s meta-utopia, though the justification differs. Nozick derives plurality from rights and side-constraints; the present argument derives it from non-composability under value drift plus the necessity of preventing domination patterns that erase agency.

7.1 The Recursion Objection

A common objection asserts that enforcing non-coercion is itself coercive, reintroducing a disguised utopia.

This objection collapses once coercion is typed.

Enforcing constitutive constraints does not impose a substantive moral order. It enforces the preconditions under which agents can pursue any order at all. A system that refuses such enforcement does not preserve neutrality; it defaults to domination by the most coercive agents.

7.2 Kernel Indeterminacy and Political Contestation

The distinction between constitutive constraints and outcome coercion is structural, not algorithmic. No general decision procedure can resolve all boundary cases—monopoly, redistribution, regulation—without reintroducing substantive value commitments.

This indeterminacy is not a defect of the framework. It is an unavoidable consequence of governing dynamic agents under uncertainty. Disagreement over where constitutive enforcement ends and outcome coercion begins is therefore a feature of political life, not a failure of the architecture.

The framework constrains what must be preserved (agency) without pretending to fully specify how every edge case must be resolved.

8. Objections and Replies

Objection: Utopia requires only Pareto-optimality or minimal suffering.

Pareto-optimality and suffering minimization define constraint sets, not unique optima. Treating any selected state as final reintroduces weak-utopia closure. Constraint satisfaction is not optimization, and optimization is not finality.

Objection: Some values are universal, so aggregation becomes possible.

Shared biological constraints limit admissible worlds. They do not generate a total ordering over tradeoffs, distributions, or identities. Universals support partial agreement, not normative finality.

Objection: Overlapping consensus rescues utopia.

Overlapping consensus enables local coordination and contingent stability. Treating that stability as authoritative closure reintroduces weak utopia.

Objection: Natural convergence could occur.

Then utopia is unnecessary. Stability would arise without enforcement. The argument concerns guaranteed convergence under drift, not accidental harmony.

9. Conclusion

Utopia fails for structural reasons.

Value is agent-relative. Agency is dynamic. Optimization over heterogeneous agents is non-composable. Finality requires stabilizers that degrade agency.

The desire for utopia reflects a category error: treating worlds as objects with intrinsic moral rank rather than treating agents as sources of value whose trajectories diverge over time.

The relevant design question is no longer:

What is the perfect world?

It is:

What kinds of frameworks can host agents while resisting domination patterns that erase agency?

A plurality-preserving meta-architecture answers that question. Utopia does not.