tegwick
574bb11db6
Demonstrates infospace composition: the Wealth of Nations infospace is used as a discipline, applying Smith's economic framework as a lens to analyse modern supply chain management concepts. New example: examples/supply-chain-vsm/ - infospace.yaml binding WoN as discipline (../infospace-with-history) - 3 source documents: coordination mechanisms, capital & inventory, market structure (~400 words each, original content) - supply-chain-entity-schema-v1.0.md with WoN Concept required section - won-mapping-schema-v1.0.md with Conceptual Continuity rating - artifacts/won-reference/core-entities.md — 12 curated WoN entities for injection as discipline context - 8 hand-crafted entity files demonstrating LLM output format - 3 mapping files with full rationale and VSM inheritance chains - Viable: YES (5/5 thresholds) Key mappings demonstrated: Demand Signal → Effectual Demand (Strong, S2) Vendor-Managed Inventory → Division of Labour (Strong, S1/S2) Just-in-Time Inventory → Circulating Capital (Strong, S1/S3) Bullwhip Effect → Natural Price (Moderate, S2) Platform Intermediary → Merchant Capital (Strong, S2/S4) Monopsony Power → Combination of Masters (Strong, S3*) Platform fix: entity_parser.py now recognises ## Supply Chain Domain as a domain alias for ## Economic Domain, enabling composed infospaces to use their own domain section name. Tutorial §13 rewritten with real commands, real output, and the full mapping table from the demo. Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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WoN Mappings — Market Structure
Generated from: artifacts/sources/market-structure.md
Platform Intermediary → Merchant Capital
Supply Chain Entity
Platform Intermediary
WoN Entity
Merchant Capital
Mapping Rationale
Smith analyses merchant capital as capital employed to buy in one market and sell in another, earning profit from controlling access to exchange rather than from production. He notes that merchants are mobile — they have no necessary attachment to any productive system — which gives them structural leverage over producers who are geographically fixed. Platform intermediaries are a high-leverage form of the same structure: they control access to exchange (the matching infrastructure) without bearing inventory risk, earning profit from transaction fees and data rather than from buying and reselling. The merchant's physical mobility translates into the platform's structural mobility — the platform has no fixed attachment to any producer's fate, yet producers cannot exit without losing network access.
Conceptual Continuity
Strong — Platform intermediaries are the modern form of merchant capital: the mechanism (control of exchange access, leverage over producers, profit from intermediation rather than production) is identical. The innovation is eliminating inventory risk while retaining coordination power, which makes platforms a more concentrated and profitable form of merchant capital than Smith could have envisioned.
VSM Inheritance
Platform Intermediary inherits S2/S4 via Merchant Capital (coordination infrastructure with intelligence function — aggregating market data while intermediating transactions).
Monopsony Power → Combination of Masters
Supply Chain Entity
Monopsony Power
WoN Entity
Combination of Masters
Mapping Rationale
Smith describes the combination of masters as the coordinated exercise of employer power to suppress wages below the competitive level. He notes these combinations are common, rarely discussed publicly, and facilitated by the smaller number of employers relative to workers. Modern supply chain monopsony operates through the same structural mechanism: a concentrated buyer (or industry norm among buyers) facing atomistic suppliers systematically extracts terms — lower prices, extended payment, cost absorption — that suppliers cannot individually refuse without losing the customer. The power asymmetry (concentrated vs. atomistic; each party's outside options) is identical. Smith's analysis predicts the modern outcome: margin compression, underinvestment, and fragility on the supplier side.
Conceptual Continuity
Strong — Monopsony power in supply chains is Smith's combination of masters applied to the buyer–supplier relationship rather than the employer–worker relationship. The market structure (concentrated power facing fragmented supply of a factor) and the mechanism (systematic extraction below competitive returns) are the same.
VSM Inheritance
Monopsony Power inherits S3* via Combination of Masters (distortion of the S2 coordination signal through coordinated anti-competitive behaviour at the management boundary).
Single-Source Dependency → Monopoly in Trade
Supply Chain Entity
Single-Source Dependency
WoN Entity
Monopoly in Trade
Mapping Rationale
Smith argues that monopolists always charge the highest price buyers will bear, because no competitive alternative disciplines them. A single-source supplier during a supply disruption is a temporary monopolist: the buyer has no immediate alternative, demand for the component is inelastic in the short run, and the supplier can extract above-natural prices. Smith's account of monopoly — restricted supply, elevated price, distorted resource allocation — applies precisely to the disrupted single-source scenario. The difference is that single-source dependency produces episodic monopoly power (during disruptions) rather than Smith's continuous monopoly; but the mechanism and the welfare consequences are the same.
Conceptual Continuity
Moderate — The monopoly pricing mechanism is shared, but Smith's monopoly is a stable market structure while single-source dependency produces temporary monopoly only during disruptions. The strategic implications also differ: Smith focuses on restricting supply to maintain high prices, while single-source power is an inadvertent consequence of concentrated specialisation rather than deliberate supply restriction.
VSM Inheritance
Single-Source Dependency inherits S4/S5 via Monopoly in Trade (intelligence failure creating conditions for policy-level market distortion when disruption occurs).