Continuity and Duty

Legitimacy Foundations — Paper II

This paper examines systems that occupy a direct gatekeeping position between a person and basic survival conditions. Specifically, services that include electricity, water, and gas—commonly referred to as utilities—which are necessary for heat, sanitation, food preparation, and basic bodily safety.

In these domains, service is not optional.

Utilities are frequently delivered by private or quasi-private entities operating within market structures. Yet they are not treated as ordinary consumer goods. Withdrawal of service is regulated rather than automatic. Disconnection typically requires advance notice and is constrained under specific conditions such as extreme weather, declared emergencies, or documented medical risk.

These constraints do not arise from generosity or policy preference. They arise from recognition of harm. Once a system is positioned between a human being and a survival necessity, withdrawal is no longer treated as a neutral market outcome.

It doesn’t matter who’s providing the service. What matters is whether they control access to something a person needs to survive. If someone can’t realistically get around that control, then cutting them off causes predictable harm.

The law does not protect utilities because they are inherently special goods. It protects them because the loss of heat or water under ordinary conditions predictably produces bodily harm.

When someone loses housing, healthcare, or food, the result is predictable: exposure, untreated illness, and physical breakdown. The body doesn’t sort harm by legal category.

The law is drawing a line. In some places it steps in to keep people alive. In others, it lets the market decide.

That’s it.

There’s a weak point here—a contradiction the system already knows how to recognize. I’m here to point to it clearly enough that it can’t be unseen.

2026