URMC: Interpretive Engineering of Capital–Resource Cascades

This preprint presents URMC (Universal Regularized Resource Cascade Metric) as a framework within Interpretive Engineering for analyzing capital–resource systems under structural constraints. The work does not adopt ideological, political, or normative premises. Capital is treated as a flow responding to interface geometry, leakage channels, and reinvestment constraints rather than to agent intentions, class dynamics, or equilibrium assumptions. Legal and institutional elements are modeled as interfaces with measurable properties such as symmetry, latency, predictability, and enforceability, rather than as normative authorities. Responsibility is formalized as structural closure of flows, reducing leakage through unavoidable traceability and bounded consequence latency. In this setting, rent-seeking, theft, and artificial restrictions are interpreted as cascade ruptures that interrupt accumulation feedback loops. Sanction mechanisms are analyzed functionally as flow-restoration processes rather than as moral or retributive instruments. The framework introduces a cascade formation criterion based on an effective gain parameter linking reinvestment and leakage suppression. When this parameter exceeds a critical threshold, systems transition into a capital-formation regime characterized by endogenous accumulation and infrastructure feedback. Below this threshold, systems converge to extraction or stagnation regardless of formal legality or stated policy objectives. URMC does not propose reforms, prescribe actors, or advocate institutional designs. It provides a transferable structural lens for identifying necessary conditions under which capital formation becomes dynamically stable across different resource types and governance contexts.