The Cheapest Sacrifice: A Genealogy of Attribution Protocols

Abstract

The payoff studied across this programme has always carried a term that prices unattributed failure: every agent bears $\Phi/2$ per unit of blame assigned to no one. This paper names that term — a demand for attribution — and shows the name is exact: the marginal valuation of attribution rises with the diffuse burden at the protocol-free, state-free rate $\partial^2 U / \partial c_0 \partial \Phi = 1/2$. Holding the demand constant, the historical succession of blame institutions — sacrifice, witch trial, pillory, negligence, safe harbour — becomes the comparative statics of one program: attribute where the era’s attribution cost is lowest. A retaliation metric selects the peripheral; an evidentiary metric selects the record-rich monitor: the meticulous auditor is the cheapest sacrifice of the evidentiary era. The transition between metrics is priced: binding the adjudicator’s posterior to evidence forces the excusal $\alpha_0 \to 0$, maximizes the blame–reach coupling, and minimizes the trap floor — inference discipline ends reach-free blame and arms the penalty paradox in one move. Unconditional self-attribution survives inside conscientious monitors, whom the evidentiary corner then consumes. What is conserved across eras is the demand, never the bill.