There are two fundamentally different layers at which power operates.

The first is the reality layer:

power that is executable.
It comes from sovereign states, courts, contracts, and enforceable property rights.
When a dispute escalates into this layer, outcomes are binary and irreversible. Assets move, injunctions apply, and narratives stop mattering.

The second is the symbolic layer:
power that exists through legitimacy, consensus, moral framing, and community narratives.This layer can create friction, delay, reputational pressure, and psychological cost—but it cannot ultimately execute. It relies on voluntary compliance and collective belief.

Most conflicts persist because participants mix these layers.

This confusion becomes especially dangerous when discussing Internet infrastructure.

Internet number resources, routing, and addressing are global utilities.
They underpin communications, commerce, emergency services, and national security.
Their reliability depends on predictability, neutrality, and legal clarity, not on political emotion, moral positioning, or identity-based narratives.

Political emotion is inherently local.
Internet infrastructure is inherently global.

When emotional or ideological considerations are injected into infrastructure governance, the system degrades. Decisions become ambiguous, enforcement becomes selective, and operators are forced to price in non-technical risk. At scale, this leads to fragmentation, instability, and loss of trust—precisely the opposite of what critical infrastructure requires.

For infrastructure to function globally, it must be governed at the lowest common denominator of enforceability:
contracts, law, and technical coordination—nothing more.

In technical governance spaces, this layer confusion is particularly common. Organizations without sovereign authority often behave _as if_ symbolic legitimacy can substitute for executable power. This works—until it doesn’t. The moment a dispute is forced into the reality layer, symbolic authority collapses by definition.

This is not an opinion. It is a structural boundary.

When I state that a registry, association, or coordination body is legally just a company or non-profit entity—without supra-sovereign power—this is not an attack. It is a description of where that entity exists in the global power graph. Courts cannot recognize powers that states themselves do not possess. Contracts cannot grant authority that parties do not legally own. No amount of historical narrative can change that.

What often causes resistance is not that this statement is wrong, but that it removes meaning.
Symbolic systems rely on ambiguity to function.
Clarity collapses ambiguity.
Once ambiguity collapses, many roles lose their protective function.

This is why discussions become emotional, repetitive, or circular. One side is arguing execution; the other is defending symbolism. They are not disagreeing on details—they are operating on different layers.

My approach has always been simple:
move disputes to the lowest possible layer where execution is unavoidable.

Contracts instead of consensus.
Courts instead of committees.
Processes instead of personalities.

When this happens, outcomes tend to converge quickly. Not because anyone is “right,” but because the system no longer allows narrative substitution.

This is also why I avoid presence-based persuasion.
Face-to-face politics, emotional alignment, and performative legitimacy belong to the symbolic layer. They raise psychological costs without improving executability. Written rules, diagrams, procedures, and legal paths reduce friction and lower risk for everyone involved.

Support does not require affection.
Alignment does not require admiration.
Execution does not require belief.

The mistake many organizations make is assuming that being questioned threatens their existence. In reality, only being executed against does. Symbolic authority can coexist with reality constraints—so long as it does not attempt to override them.

The world does not run on who is liked.
It runs on what can be enforced.

Understanding this distinction is not ideological.
It is operational.