---
description: Throughout history, technological and organizational capability gains have consistently expanded what societies guarantee to all people, from speech to education to healthcare
type: claim
domain: teleohumanity
created: 2026-02-16
confidence: proven
source: "TeleoHumanity Axioms (8-axiom version), Expansion Axiom"
---

# rights expand as capabilities grow because capability creates moral obligation

Rights are not fixed natural laws waiting to be discovered. They are evolving expressions of what a society can collectively guarantee given its current capabilities. As agricultural technology advanced, freedom from famine became a reasonable expectation. As medical knowledge grew, basic healthcare became a right. As education systems improved, universal literacy became a standard goal. The pattern is consistent: capability expansion creates moral obligation to expand guarantees.

This is the Expansion Axiom, and it has a directional implication that matters for LivingIP's design. If collective intelligence systems dramatically expand humanity's coordination capability, they simultaneously create an obligation to expand what every human can count on. The system is not neutral infrastructure -- it changes the moral landscape by expanding what is possible and therefore what is owed.

This connects directly to the post-scarcity trajectory: technologies that make essential needs increasingly cheap do not just create markets, they redefine the baseline of human dignity.

---

Relevant Notes:
- [[collective superintelligence is the alternative to monolithic AI controlled by a few]] -- the capability expansion that would trigger the largest obligation expansion in history
- [[the future is a probability space shaped by choices not a destination we approach]] -- capability creates obligation precisely because the future is shaped by choices
- [[early action on civilizational trajectories compounds because reality has inertia]] -- expanding rights early compounds because each expansion becomes the new baseline

Topics:
- [[maps/livingip overview]]
- [[maps/LivingIP architecture]]