Economic Stagnation as Archival Paralysis: Registration Regime Theory and the Ontology of Economic Freeze

Mainstream economic theories interpret stagnation primarily as a malfunction of supply–demand equilibria, monetary policy errors, or declining productivity. This article advances a fundamentally different diagnosis grounded in Registration Regime Theory (RRT). From this perspective, stagnation is not merely an economic imbalance but an ontological paralysis produced by excessive registration. The accumulation, persistence, and interoperability of records generate what this paper conceptualizes as archival overload, freezing economic time and inhibiting risk, mobility, and value formation. The argument is developed through four analytical components: registration as friction rather than transaction cost, algorithmic caste formation and credit blockage, registration inflation and the freezing of value, and the temporal foreclosure of economic agency. The article concludes by proposing a policy framework of “registration detox” as an alternative to conventional stimulus-based approaches.