Autonomy Erosion and Measurement Capture: A Formal Model of Counterproductivity

This paper develops a narrow formal model of one counterproductivity mechanism drawn from Ivan Illich's institutional critique. The mechanism has four links: (1) autonomous capacity is a scalar state variable; (2) institutional engagement can covertly reduce it; (3) self-assessment and audit noise increase as autonomy falls; and (4) the institution obtains larger undetectable reporting rents at lower autonomy. Three core results are established. A finite-horizon precision-collapse theorem derives a Le Cam/Hellinger lower bound on the detectability of autonomy erosion under state-dependent monitoring noise, with an explicit relative-erosion floor and a proof that the bound cannot be extended to infinite horizons. A Gaussian audit microfoundation derives the observability budget from an exact Neyman-Pearson power calculation for a noisy signal of report drift. An exact disabling-inversion theorem compares front-loaded and back-loaded erosion paths, establishing that front-loading strictly dominates if and only if the discounted value of the erosion-and-capture block is positive. The model does not claim to formalize Illich's full corpus. Themes including deschooling, convivial tools, transportation equity, medical iatrogenesis, shadow work, and the critique of systems language are explicitly placed outside the model's scope.