Propose: Wise Speech in Commerce

On-behalf-of: Ben Stull <ben.stull>

rfcs/agencyantimanipulation.md

@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+---
+slug: agencyantimanipulation
+title: Agency & Anti-Manipulation
+state: super-draft
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-01'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters: []
+tags:
+- ethics
+---
+
+A Human's Agency is only real if the platform refrains from manipulating the choices it presents. This RFC draws the line between legitimate persuasion and manipulation — no dark patterns, no drip pricing, no manufactured urgency, no lock-in disguised as a reward — as a first-class commitment derived from RFC-0001's Agency. It is the most direct expression of building for humans rather than for extraction.
+

rfcs/commercial-relationship.md

@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+---
+slug: commercial-relationship
+title: Commercial Relationship
+state: super-draft
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-01'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters: []
+tags:
+- commerce
+---
+
+Commerce in OHM begins not with a transaction but with a relationship between two Humans exchanging value, with the platform standing between them as a steward rather than a party that extracts. This RFC defines that relationship as the root commerce concept, so that Orders, Listings, and Payments are understood as moments within a human relationship rather than as isolated conversions. It serves Relationality and frames the platform's core duty as stewardship of the people on both sides of the exchange.
+

rfcs/epistemicauthority.md

@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+---
+slug: epistemicauthority
+title: Epistemic Authority
+state: super-draft
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-01'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters: []
+tags:
+- governance
+---
+
+When the system and a Human disagree about reality — did the payment settle, was the item as described, who is right in a dispute — whose account counts? This RFC applies OHM's commitment to the Human as the authority on their own life to commerce, including the deliberate, argued exceptions where a human claim is demoted (for example, 'shown is not settled' demotes a buyer's claim to have paid). Those exceptions must be principled and narrow, not a general license to override the person.
+

rfcs/flourishing.md

@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+---
+slug: flourishing
+title: Human Flourishing (The Optimization Target)
+state: super-draft
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-01'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters: []
+tags:
+- ethics
+---
+
+Every platform optimizes for something; when that target is left implicit it silently becomes engagement, GMV, or time-on-site, and the mechanics follow it into harm. This RFC makes the optimization target explicit and contestable: what does this platform actually steer toward for the Humans in it? It is the affirmative answer the other ethical concepts are in service of, and every ranking, default, and notification cadence should be traceable back to it.
+

rfcs/human.md

@@ -1,15 +1,17 @@
 ---
 slug: human
 title: Human
-state: super-draft
+state: active
-id: null
+id: RFC-0001
 repo: null
 proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
 proposed_at: '2026-05-26'
-graduated_at: null
+graduated_at: '2026-05-26'
-graduated_by: null
+graduated_by: ben.stull
-owners: []
+owners:
-arbiters: []
+- ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+arbiters:
+- ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
 tags: []
 ---
 

rfcs/informed-consent.md

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+---
+slug: informed-consent
+title: Informed Consent
+state: super-draft
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-05-29'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners: []
+arbiters: []
+tags: []
+---
+
+RFC-0001 (Human) names Informed Consent as one of the entities that every subsequent RFC depends on, and grounds it directly: a Human holds epistemic authority over their experience, body, needs, and intentions, and is the inherent expert on their own meaning. Informed Consent is what turns that authority into a usable constraint. If a Human is the authority on themselves, then any system that models, stores, acts on, or speaks about a Human must have a defensible account of when it is permitted to do so — and that account is consent. This RFC establishes that account as a first-class entity in OHM rather than leaving each downstream RFC to reinvent it.
+
+The need is concrete. Identity asks what may be recorded about a Human; Relationality asks what may be shared between Humans; Agency asks what may be done on a Human's behalf; Wise Speech asks what may be said about or to a Human. Each of these is, underneath, a consent question — and without a shared definition each RFC would answer it differently, leaving the framework with no coherent position on the single question that most determines whether OHM treats Humans as subjects or as data. Consent is also the entity most likely to be flattened into a checkbox if it is not defined carefully, so it deserves the same substantial treatment RFC-0001 gave to the definition of Human.
+
+This RFC will define what consent *is* in OHM and what any valid representation of it must account for, without enumerating every mechanism a deployment might use to obtain it. The intended scope includes: the necessary conditions for consent to be informed (disclosure adequate to the decision, comprehension, and the absence of coercion); the requirement that consent be specific to a purpose rather than blanket, and time-bound rather than perpetual; revocability as a property of the Human and not a favor granted by the system, including what the model owes when consent is withdrawn after data has already been acted upon; the distinction between consent, assent, and authorization-by-proxy for Humans who cannot consent for themselves (children, the incapacitated, the deceased), which RFC-0001's Personhood position directly conditions; and the asymmetry of power between a Human and a system, which means consent obtained under a meaningful imbalance is not freely given. It will also take a position on what consent is *not* — not a one-time gate, not transferable, not inferable from silence or continued use — so that downstream RFCs and deployments inherit a definition that resists the usual erosions.
+
+With Informed Consent defined as a stable entity, the RFCs that follow can be proposed and evaluated against a shared answer to "is this permitted, and by whom," rather than re-litigating the permission question on each one's own terms — the same coherence argument RFC-0001 makes for the definition of Human, applied to the constraint that protects them.

rfcs/non-human-entities.md

@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+---
+slug: non-human-entities
+title: Non-Human Entities in OHM
+state: super-draft
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-01'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters: []
+tags:
+- foundations
+---
+
+OHM is the Open *Human* Model, yet any real platform must also model things that are not humans — commerce nouns, instruments, systems. This RFC establishes how OHM may define a non-human entity at all: always in relation to the Human it serves, never as a free-standing abstraction. It is the conscious hinge on which the model broadens to hold commerce vocabulary without losing its human center, and it gives every later commerce concept a rule to be defined against.
+

rfcs/participants.md

@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+---
+slug: participants
+title: 'Participants: Customer, Merchant, Operator'
+state: super-draft
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-01'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters: []
+tags:
+- commerce
+---
+
+Every commerce interaction involves Humans in distinct roles — the Customer, the Merchant, and the Operator who runs the platform — and the power between them is unequal. This RFC defines these roles as Humans-in-role (a legal entity such as an LLC is not a Human but is controlled by one), and names the power asymmetry plainly: the Operator holds deploy, data, and float power over everyone else. Naming that asymmetry is what lets later RFCs constrain it; the concept serves Agency and Dignity.
+

rfcs/privacydataminimization.md

@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+---
+slug: privacydataminimization
+title: Privacy & Data Minimization
+state: super-draft
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-01'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters: []
+tags:
+- ethics
+---
+
+A Human has an interior life and the standing to keep most of it private; a platform that hoovers up data treats the person as a resource to be mined. This RFC commits the platform to knowing only what the exchange genuinely requires and no more — surveillance is not the business model. It serves Interiority and Dignity, and sets the default against which every data-collecting mechanic must justify itself.
+

rfcs/stored-value.md

@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
+---
+slug: stored-value
+title: Stored Value / Credit
+state: super-draft
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-01'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters: []
+tags:
+- payments
+---
+
+Stored Value is the root money concept the ecommerce platform's credit model hangs on: value a Human has loaded and now holds on the platform, deliberately constrained — not cashable, not transferable out, and explicitly not a stablecoin. The constraint is not incidental; it *is* the definition, and it must be defined in relation to the Human whose money it is. Removing cash-out closes the redemption-fraud vector and the money-transmission trigger — but it also removes an exit the Human would otherwise have, so the concept must hold that tension in the open rather than hide it behind 'store credit.'
+
+Establishing Stored Value as a first-class OHM entity lets every downstream mechanic — Load, Settlement, Discount, Breakage, Float — cite one contestable definition of 'what the balance is' instead of each re-deriving it. It serves Agency (the Human's own money, with its exit deliberately removed) and Temporality (a balance persists, and a person's relationship to it changes over time). It is also where OHM broadens to hold a commerce noun, defined in service of the Human rather than the ledger.
+

rfcs/wisespeechcommerce.md

@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+---
+slug: wisespeechcommerce
+title: Wise Speech in Commerce
+state: super-draft
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-01'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters: []
+tags:
+- ethics
+---
+
+Listings, prices, and reviews are speech the platform either keeps honest or lets deceive. This RFC applies OHM's foundational Wise Speech value to commerce: descriptions that are truthful, prices that do not mislead, and a platform that does not amplify deceptive speech for its own gain. It protects a Human's ability to choose on the basis of true information.
+