Failure Privacy and Safe Collective Expression

Widely held views can go unspoken when speaking out alone invites retaliation.

I recast such silence as a problem of safe coalition formation.

When safety comes in numbers, there is a largest group that could speak safely.

Open organizing must stay safe every step the way, making for a cascade of speaking up that stops short of that largest group.

Social assurance contracts need safety only at the destination, and get there by keeping commitments private until enough people have joined: a tunnel to the largest safe group.

If no member may ever regret joining, such failure privacy is necessary, not merely sufficient.