Input Capture

Who controls supply controls behaviour. This is AP01 (extraction) applied to input infrastructure.

Choke points. Inputs move through narrow channels: distributors, supply chains, regulatory gates. These are choke points — leverage points where control does not require force, only access. A parasite does not overpower its host.

It inserts itself into the host’s supply chain. A monopoly does not outcompete its market. It controls the input the market depends on.

Artificial necessity. The system is trained to require specific inputs. Branded feed. Proprietary formulations. Patented compounds.

Natural alternatives become unviable — not because they are inferior, but because the system’s coupling infrastructure was built for the proprietary input. Dependency is framed as optimisation.

The language of efficiency obscures the geometry of extraction.

Economic lock-in. Inputs are not free. They require capital, repetition, increasing operating cost. The system does not starve the organism. It feeds the organism until the organism cannot survive without feeding.

The subscription model — whether for fertiliser, pharmaceuticals, cloud computing, or social media — is input capture made economic. The organism appears alive. It is dependent. Growth becomes a subscription.

The structural measurement: any input relationship where the supplier can withdraw and the dependent system collapses is extraction, regardless of how it is marketed.

Cooperative coupling (AP01) produces mutual dependency — both parties lose if the coupling breaks. Extractive coupling produces asymmetric dependency — one party can withdraw; the other cannot survive withdrawal.

The test is structural: who can walk away? If only one party can walk away, the coupling is extractive. The Ledger records it. The buffer fills. The audit comes.

You have seen this in your own life. You know which subscriptions you could cancel tomorrow and which ones would break something. That asymmetry is the measurement.

The test is not whether the feed is useful. The test is whether you can survive without it.

Control is not deprivation. Control is supply.