Fractal:	=
A solution to transacting will have at least two "fractal" dimensions. Fractal means that a closer look at something looks a lot like a broader look. That is, it's turtles all the way down. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal	=
The first and most important dimension in which a solution to transacting is fractal relates to participants. An individual seeking to transact and manage their own transacting will want a comprehensive picture of their transactions - those prospective, current and completed. To have that, the individual's trading partners will need to use the same vocabulary and messaging (APIs). For those trading partners to be able do that, they in turn will need a comprehensive view of their transactions and of their relations with their trading partners.	=
This gets more apparent as we shift to an enterprise perspective. To have an adequate (comprehensive) view of its affairs, an enterprise needs for its various agents to work in a common vocabulary and messaging system, and they need to work with the enterprise's trading partners in a conforming model, and that out across the respective supply chains.	=
This also happens at the full economy level. A government regulator needs to work with its regulatees (sorry) in a common vocabulary/API, and the regulatees can only be really compliant if their internal vocabularies conform to the reporting vocabulary, which .... For instance a central bank - e.g. the European Central Bank - whose direct regulatees are banks and financial institutions, is essentially a portfolio of portfolios (banks) of portfolios (enterprises) of portfolios (customers, trading partners, other regulators) of contracts, all of which criss-cross in a fabric of obligations (contracts).	=
Authorship of transacting paradigms (templates) is a second dimension in which transacting infrastructure is fractal. The end-user - a business person or individual doing a transaction - relies on experts immediately at hand - their colleague, lawyer, friend, boss, community - to guide them. The experts rely on other experts, teachers, deciders (judges, administrators), and so on down a chain. An example of a semi-automated chain would be an e-commerce website. It has an interface for electing a transacting that has a few options and some guiding data. That may have been created by a web-developer in reliance on software code developed by more expert communities and on business and legal advisors, fractally all the way down to an operating system and a constitution and legal tradition.	=
The templates themselves have a substantial fractal element. A contract agreement is made of sections which are made of subsections, which exist in various alternatives and address subject matters that can be further and further narrowed, connected to the legislative and decisional drivers, commentary, and practice. Including priors, big data.	=
This is obvious. The important part of pointing this out is that each level involves making it easier for the next level to leverage the work. So the solution isn't to make the solution so simple that the end-user fully understands - that would involve giving them a full education in software, law, data security and the direct subject matter (e.g. toaster ovens). Or giving them a Swiss Army knife and best wishes. The end solution can be superficially "simple" even as the machinery is complex.	=
But this layering embeds a problem. The layers of experts worked without knowledge of the user's specific needs, desires, problem and setting. Even when the user informs their immediate expert, that expert may not have the knowledge, authority or access to tweek the next layer of the system to fit the user's situation.	=
A really good system would allow tweeking by the user/expert at each level. This is the origin of Ward Cunningham's "wiki" notion (if the user thinks there should be content at a certain URL, let them make it!). Also of the GNU initiative.	=
Indeed, a really, really good solution must allow the intermediate user/expert to directly manipulate the sources all the way up the chain. To the extent that a brave intermediate user can formulate their own solution, the system work from the bottom up, accommodate difference, find its way gently to adapt to local customs, needs, expectations.	=
This idea connects to Zittrain Generativity. It could also connect to self-govenance, community-based governance, subsidiarity, federalism, deference.	=
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The critical point of this is that the system remain free in both senses (open and costless), and simple in its logic.	=
There is a reverse principle in play here, which is roughly "HumanAutonomy.md".	=
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