“What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every government which has ever existed under the sun? The generalizing and concentrating all cares and powers into one body.”
— Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Joseph C. Cabell, 1816
“Usufruct,” an oddly important word
Most Americans have never heard the word usufruct (to use for profit without harm). Thomas Jefferson used it in his 1789 letter The Earth Belongs to the Living to describe our duty when using any shared resource: we may profit from it, but we must return it in like or better condition for Posterity.
Jefferson’s letter established that no generation may mortgage the next. No person may consume a resource without accounting for the cost of its depletion. No institution may profit from what belongs to the living by transferring the harm to those not yet born.
This is usufruct capitalism — free markets operating within the constraint that the full cost of resource consumption, including burdens to Posterity, must be capitalized into current use. Without this constraint, free markets produce the tragedy of the commons; sacrificing the future burden of children for short-term profit. Governments must make a “best guess” at the future costs to Posterity and require those costs to be capitalized into current use. Laws need sunsets to re-assess harms regularly. But those safeguards are not enough. Governments are frequently captured by those they are supposed to police. Behaviors must also be held accountable to Citizen Sovereignty to sue for harms and juries providing retrospection by punishing the users and the governing for unassessed harms.
Usufruct (to use for profit without harm): the right to use and profit from a resource, provided it is returned in like or better condition for those who follow.
Usufruct capitalism: a free market system in which the full cost of use — including harm to Posterity — is capitalized into the price of use. Government enforces usufruct to prevent the tragedy of the commons, operating on a “best guess” at sustainable costs. Sunsetting laws requires retrospection. Juries provide another level of retrospection — citizens exercising their sovereignty sue those profiting and the governing alike for unassessed harms when the best guess proves weak.
The Usufruct Violation
Every time you use a platform — search, post, navigate, communicate — you contribute data that the platform converts into profit. Your attention, your relationships, your location, your habits, your beliefs: these are resources the platform consumes. Under usufruct (to use for profit without harm), the platform would be required to return your data in like or better condition — or compensate you for its depletion.
They do not. Your data is extracted, aggregated, sold, and weaponized. The platform profits. You bear the harm: manipulated attention, fractured privacy, identity that exists only inside a system you do not own and cannot leave without losing everything.
This is the digital tragedy of the commons. Your identity is the commons. The platforms are the grazers. There is no fence. There is no jury. There is no usufruct enforcement.
Government is necessary to enforce usufruct (to use for profit without harm) — to prevent the tragedy of the commons. But regulatory agencies are routinely captured by the entities they were created to police. The FTC approved platform mergers that destroyed competition. The FCC removed net neutrality protections that prevented monopoly control of the network itself.
Captured government does not enforce usufruct. It protects the captor. The same process that allowed Federal highway agencies to sacrifice state sovereignty to highway lobbies is allowing Federal digital agencies to sacrifice individual sovereignty to platform lobbies.
Government coerces compliance. Innovation is a compliance failure. Without a Bottom-Up corrective — without juries assessing harm — captured government blocks the very innovation that would break the monopoly.
Innovation Is a Compliance Failure
This is the paradox at the heart of usufruct enforcement: government is necessary to prevent the tragedy of the commons, but government coerces compliance — and innovation is always a compliance failure.
The Internet existed as ARPANET since 1968. Federal communications monopolies kept it from commercializing for decades. When AT&T’s monopoly was broken in 1982, the Internet commercialized. Email, the Web, e-commerce — all of this was compliance failure that became civilization.
JPods solar transit has existed as a viable technology since 1972. Federal highway monopolies have kept it from commercializing for fifty years. Every JPods franchise ordinance, every local government that chooses to issue rights of way for efficient transit networks, is a compliance failure that builds toward civilization.
The remedy is not to eliminate usufruct enforcement. It is to enforce usufruct with retrospection — to force laws to be measured against outcomes, and to use juries rather than captured agencies as the Bottom-Up corrective when government fails.
The Jury as Usufruct Enforcer
As documented in the Report of 2026, Post 6: Jury Rebellion, the Founders designed the jury as the Fourth Branch of government — the branch closest to the people, the branch with souls, the branch whose job is not to enforce the law mechanically but to determine whether the law’s application to these specific facts is just.
Jefferson called the jury “the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which government can be held to the principles of its constitution.” The jury is the Bottom-Up corrective to captured government. It is the institution that cannot be consolidated by an executive order, cannot be captured by a lobby, and cannot be overridden by a regulatory agency.
Citizens must have standing to sue platform monopolies for usufruct violations (to use for profit without harm). When a platform extracts your data, manipulates your attention, and returns your identity depleted — that is a harm. It is a harm that criminal courts cannot fully assess. It requires civil juries, evaluating the specific facts, assessing the specific harm, and determining whether the platform’s profit came at an unacceptable cost to the individual and to Posterity.
The four-verdict system proposed in the Divided Sovereignty Act extends this power to the digital domain:
When juries in state after state find platforms liable for usufruct violations (to use for profit without harm), that pattern becomes common law. It becomes the law of the land — built from the Bottom-Up, by citizens, one case at a time. This is exactly how jury nullification ended Federal support for the Fugitive Slave Act in the North before the Civil War.
The Digital Remedy: MyCarryon
The constitutional remedy for Federal highway monopoly is to restore state sovereignty over internal improvements — as established by the Constitutional Convention’s vote of 8 states to 3 on September 14, 1787, and enforced by 21 Presidential veto messages. The technical remedy is JPods and the 5×5 Standard — Bottom-Up, locally governed, solar-powered transit that is five times more efficient than the Federal mandate.
The digital remedy follows the same pattern. The constitutional remedy is to restore individual sovereignty over digital identity — to establish that your data, like your labor, is not available for unlimited extraction without consent and compensation. The technical remedy is MyCarryon — a portable, owner-controlled identity container that enforces usufruct (to use for profit without harm) at the individual level.
The carryon is a written constitution between the individual and the systems they interact with:
- The identity section establishes the individual as sovereign — stable across all systems, owned by no platform
- The apis.allowed list is enumerated permissions — systems may only access what is explicitly granted
- The apis.blocked list is the right of refusal — the individual may deny access to any system
- The authorizations section is limited delegation — people and systems may act on behalf of the owner only within defined scope
- The pending section enforces return — interactions must return summaries to the owner, raw data stays at the system
- The settings.privacy section enforces usufruct — share_medical_with_emergency_only, auto_expire_log, require_consent_before_present
The carryon does not require a legislature to act. It does not require a platform to comply. It is the individual exercising their sovereignty — packing what they choose to carry, presenting it voluntarily, and taking it home when they are done. It is the digital equivalent of the well-armed lamb contesting the vote.
The Ecosystem of Digital Sovereignty
Divided Sovereignty is not only a constitutional principle. It is an architecture. Physical sovereignty, commercial sovereignty, and digital sovereignty are three expressions of the same idea: the individual is the sovereign. Institutions are agents with enumerated permissions, not owners with unlimited authority.
What Must Be Done
The same steps that would restore physical sovereignty over transportation apply to digital sovereignty:
First, establish that citizens have standing to sue platform monopolies for usufruct violations (to use for profit without harm). This requires state legislation — following Madison’s model — that creates a cause of action for data extraction harms assessed by civil juries, not captured regulatory agencies.
Second, restore state sovereignty over digital infrastructure. States should not defer to Federal agencies captured by platform lobbies. States should enact data usufruct laws — requiring that any entity profiting from a citizen’s data must return it in like or better condition, or compensate the citizen for its depletion.
Third, adopt the MyCarryon standard as a public interest infrastructure — the same way states issue franchise ordinances for JPods. Any platform operating within a state’s jurisdiction that accepts a citizen’s MyCarryon presentation must honor the permissions and restrictions the citizen has packed. Platforms that violate those restrictions are liable for usufruct damages.
Fourth, enforce retrospection. Laws permitting data extraction must be measured against outcomes — the same way the 21 Presidential veto messages documented the harms of Federal highway monopoly. Citizens must have access to the evidence of harm. Juries must be trusted to assess it.
“The jury is the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which government can be held to the principles of its constitution.”
— Thomas Jefferson, 1788
The Federal highway monopoly was built over a century. It will take time to dismantle. The digital monopoly is younger — but it is consolidating faster. The window to enforce usufruct (to use for profit without harm) and restore Divided Sovereignty to the digital world is open now. The jury is the anchor. The carryon is the instrument. The sovereign is you.