The Domination Fractal

A game theoretic and thermodynamic model of networked coercive organizations

Abstract

This paper introduces the domination fractal (DF, german: Herrschaftsfraktal) as a scale-invariant pattern by which coercive organization reproduces across levels of society: households, firms, administrations, and states. This work does not deliver an analytical formalism yet but a first draft and empirical motivation. The model treats society as a graph of interacting open systems. Each node exchanges information and resources, and its effective decision space is shaped by constraints imposed by other nodes and physical reality. We define violence as the process of shrinking another node’s decision space, power as the capacity to do so, and responsibility as the identification of such power relations. Exploitation becomes feasible when power gradients inflict on exchange interactions, while mediator nodes can extract rents via information asymmetry. Domination is modeled as a control loop: optimization of a cost function that compares “desired” and “actual” states and uses coercion (force, incentives, penalties, and narratives) as means of influence over the future of a subset of the physical reality including society. Under competitive selection, such control loops become autopoietic and self-reinforcing, yielding self-similarity across scales. This paper connects the model to empirical anchors such as hierarchy and compensation, critique of human-capital narratives, statistical physics analogies in wealth distributions, and macro-scaling relations between energy and material stocks alongside affluence-driven impact.