THE AGENCY MYTH: Quiet Governance, Structural Constraint, and the Collapse of Real Choice

Title: The Agency Myth: Quiet Governance, Structural Constraint, and the Collapse of Real ChoiceType: Conceptual Research PaperAuthor: SignalRuptureDate: March 2026 Description:The Agency Myth presents a unified framework for understanding how modern societies constrain human action through friction, scarcity, and infrastructural design. Integrating Quiet Governance, the Eroded Subject, and the Agency Realization Ratio (ARR), the paper argues that agency is not a universal human trait but a structurally rationed resource. The work introduces a methodological foundation for mapping the gap between theoretical options and real options across the six pillars of the Society Blueprint. It defines operational criteria for T (theoretical options), R (real options), and deviation capacity, and demonstrates how structural pressures collapse agency for low‑income and middle‑income populations. The paper reframes agency as conditional, unevenly distributed, and highly sensitive to economic, temporal, and cognitive constraints, challenging the assumption—embedded in over a million academic papers—that individuals possess stable, baseline autonomy. Keywords:agency, structural constraint, Quiet Governance, scarcity, cognitive load, infrastructural power, systemic erosion, SignalRupture, Eroded Subject, Society Blueprint, ARR