Neurotic Governance

The article's Beer-derived name (from the Viable System Model) for a governor who will supply nothing to a machine they could not reconstitute outside it. In a Class 1 factory this is free, because the governor sets the pace. In a Class 2 factory the factory runs on its own clock, and the governor's rate r — how far the factory is allowed to outrun them — becomes a dial: performance p rises and then plateaus at the rate of objective-setting, risk s steepens, and governance cost g grows as its usefulness shrinks. The "control tower" of human-in-the-loop AI deployment is that cost decaying from total review to unread audit log to a kill button, which is why the optimum r* is greater than zero. In a Class 3 factory the dial sits inside the factory and neurotic governance becomes a contradiction in terms; what remains is an unpriceable surplus P against a ruin cost S, handled as Knightian uncertainty. Compare the Paradox of Simulation and Momentum over Motive.