Every system that decides — a cell, an army, a bank, a business — produces outcomes through two gates:
1. How much it can process
2. How correctly it responds
Throughput alone is not power. Speed without accuracy compounds error. Accuracy without throughput creates paralysis.
When both gates open, performance scales non-linearly. Not linearly. Quadratically.
This is the law.
The law holds across the broadest span of coordinated life we can currently measure.
α approaches zero in bacteria
Coordination doesn't matter. Random walk is good enough.
α surges toward two in enzyme complexes
Molecular machinery synchronizes responses at speed.
α stabilizes near two in advanced social systems
Football clubs, military coalitions, AI ecosystems, sovereign banks.
Living systems converge on the same architecture as human organizations. Coordinated performance scales like squared accuracy across domains.
There is no reason to believe companies are exempt from physics.
The squared term does not come from curve-fitting. It emerges from three independent theoretical traditions.
Information Theory
Two channels must succeed: selection and execution. Joint capacity → (signal-to-noise)²
Control Theory
Quadratic loss minimization. Small coordination errors compound multiplicatively.
Evolutionary Dynamics
Dual-module fitness. Recognition × response → survival probability squared.
Three different languages. One mathematical structure. You cannot unsee this.
When environments move fast, metabolic advantage becomes destiny.
English Premier League clubs predicted with R² > 0.90
Holding resources constant, metabolism separated champions from collapse.
The Six-Day War predicted at 23× advantage ex-ante
Coordination amplified capacity more than tanks or territory.
Nuremberg processed 84× more information than Tokyo
Same rules. Different decision architecture. Predictable outcome.
Across independent systems the pattern does not break. The law holds.
Consider banks.
SVB + Credit Suisse
Large assets. Low metabolism. Accuracy decay → liquidity shock → collapse.
JPM + DBS
High throughput. High accuracy. Velocity + vitality → record performance through crisis.
The difference was not capital. It was metabolic capacity.
In 2023, two global banks died while two expanded. The divergence was not luck. It was predictable.
Systems with low coordination decay from inside before markets notice.
Systems with high coordination convert shock into dominance.
Markets reward metabolism.
Data abundance eliminates information privilege. Execution melt-ups now define winners and failures.
Coordination speed is the new leverage.
Accuracy is the new alpha.
Metabolism is the new moat.
Strategy becomes physics, not folklore.
An organization is no longer what it owns. It is what it can decide.
When information was scarce, advantage came from knowing.
When information is free, advantage comes from deciding.
The future does not belong to the smartest institutions. It belongs to the most coherent.
Metabolic inequality will replace resource inequality.
High-metabolism firms compound. Low-metabolism firms degrade.
Collapse is no longer mysterious — only unmeasured.