Routability is the framework’s central metric for ownership concentration, and it names the failure condition directly: a participant or institution becomes impossible to route around. It is where two functions meet — traversability asks whether a path remains open, and connection asks whether greater capacity remains reachable — so when every road into an essential capability runs through the same tollbooth, both are compromised at once.
Routability is why the framework insists on traversable exit rather than merely formal exit: “you are free to leave” is fictional when every employer, hospital, school, bank, and government depends on the same provider, so alternatives must be materially viable, not just legally permitted. And it is why ecological redundancy — multiple independent carriers for critical functions, deliberately preserved even at some cost in efficiency — is treated as protective rather than wasteful. Living systems do not place every vital function in one fragile node; a civilization keeping its essential capacities routable is doing the same thing.