the basis for the Christian Bible New Testament, which was actually compiled by a different set of prophets.

An interesting characteristic of religious organizations emanated from the Protestant Reformation; secular mechanisms were instituted to deal with what we might term the more mundane aspects of religious congregation governance. In some instances, the entire congregation of a local church may act on certain issues such as the selection of a new pastor for that church. For issues such as keeping physical facilities in good repair and making sure all the bills get paid, an elected body is often selected by the congregation. For some religious organizations, a hierarchy of such elected bodies serves to coordinate the more secular policy considerations for a large collection of churches. Thus, within protestant Christianity we see the mechanism of both religious and secular governance social systems.

Solon was a Greek philosopher, statesman and politician who lived around 600 B.C. Due to his widespread popularity among all the social ranks of the city-state of Athens, he was tasked with revising the political system of the day. He did this by writing a well-defined constitution and then adapting the laws to this constitutional framework. His system replaced heredity as the basis for being or selecting the leadership with a social structure where, according to Encyclopedia Britannica (1910 edition), “Solon made property the measure of political power, and confined the higher offices of state to the wealthiest citizens; but election to these offices was to be made by the whole body of the people, the tenure of office was limited as to time, and an account had to be rendered publicly as to its exercise.” Naturally, as he developed the first tenets of democracy, there was still a long way to universal suffrage from citizens with equal rights. However, while the constitutional government that he established was ultimately overthrown, much of the set of civil laws that he established survived. Today, we tend to refer to the legislators that we elect to our various policy making bodies as “solons.” Moreover, the name of the Athenian public assembly, “Ecclesia,” has come to mean church (“Église” in French), a matter not without importance for ontological discussions later in this chapter.

Within a democratic domain, the source of policy is the collective action of the solons representing some assembly of people. A variety of mechanisms are found around the world for elected representatives to effect policy. In the United States, unicameral and bicameral federal and state legislative systems encompass both a law making body as well as a parallel administrative function. In the United Kingdom, the parliamentary system has both legislative and administrative functions. In the United States, state institutions have their own trust and policy infrastructures, with parallel administrative functions, and those institutions are subject to policies established by the federal government. Additionally, non governmental entities like public companies also come with their trust and policy infrastructures, in the form of board and management, subject to state and federal policies.

Arbiters of Interaction Rules

The governance of consequences is central to any social ecosystem. Beyond a purely objective identification and enforcement of consequences, a social ecosystem has at the pinnacle of its controlling architecture an arbiter with ultimate authority for the application of consequences. There are three distinct variants of such arbiters found within the primary social ecosystems of the United States. Within religious systems are found the clergy, often organized within some ascending hierarchy that culminates in a controlling figure or group within respective religious denominations. There is no all encompassing trust infrastructure for all religions, nor is there a

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