"Public support" is just a way to lower enforcement costs.
When enforcement tech gets better and cheaper, the system can afford less consent.
This is why governments have put strong emphasis on improving enforcement tech, especially in recent years.
Because improved enforcement tech = consent substitution.
Gross Consent Product (GCP) - Treat a nation's aggregate "consent" as a measurable stock like GDP.
Consent is the cheapest enforcement input; when it's scarce, systems spend more on tech + law (think Palantir, Microsoft).
How to measure:
- Build a GCP proxy: combine approval indices, protest intensity, compliance fines, emergency decree count.
When GCP falls, rails (identity/cloud/audit) outperform.
From my previous post: "When enforcement tech gets better and cheaper, the system can afford less consent."
Which can be inverted to "When consent is scarce, systems spend more on tech + law".
I never thought that way. But it makes so much sense
