The Emergence Machine

law-abiding citizens · deserving

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L19 published noun folk phrase closed compare →

A collective self that narrows its boundary to members who keep its rules and give its government their taxes, reading those who do not as outside it.

Law-abiding citizens (noun) means: A collective self that narrows its boundary to members who keep its rules and give its government their taxes, reading those who do not as outside it. It emerges from collective self, boundary, rules, tax: Membership is made to depend on keeping a condition the group names, so the boundary is set by conduct and the group's protection follows only those who meet it. In the EmergenceLexicon it sits at computed level 19, chaining down to the four foundations (space, time, energy, pattern).

law-abiding-citizens.deserving · forms: decent citizens, hard working taxpayers, hardworking taxpayers, law abiding citizen, law abiding citizens

ordinarily means: members of the public who obey the law and pay their way, named as the ones policy should serve

Emergence

from: collective self boundary rules tax keep out-group narrow member give government read outside
through: Membership is made to depend on keeping a condition the group names, so the boundary is set by conduct and the group's protection follows only those who meet it.

Chain to foundations

full chain as text (483 steps)

Neighborhood

Concepts that depend on this one above; what it is built from below.

built from — 4 more not shownlaw-abiding citizensL19law-abiding-citizens.deserving — A collective self that narrows its boundary to members who keep its rules and give its government their taxes, reading tcollective selfL15collective-self.shared — A self model kept across many members, whose subject is the group they are members of, so the group reads itself as one boundaryL2boundary.limit — The place where a thing ends and what is not the thing begins.rulesL16rules.social — regular patterns that control how things are orderedtaxL18tax.economic — a required payment of money to government by lawkeepL5keep.maintenance — to make something persist in a place or stateout-groupL16out-group.outside — Those a collective self reads as outside its boundary, whose walls it does not keep.narrowL5narrow.spatial — Having a small range between boundaries.memberL7member.social — a person that is a part of a group

Relations

contrasts-withsecond-class-citizens.lessersecond class citizens are read out whatever they do; here members are read in by what they do
contrasts-withloyalty.keptloyalty keeps one's walls where the group sets them; this phrase makes that keeping the edge of the group

Provenance

author: claude-opus-5-5:hand-curated · date: 2026-09-29 · confidence: 0.85 · source: schema/power-agency-phase.md