Increasing returns and positive-sum have two faces: one compounds capability for the players who create the surplus, the other compounds dependence on an intermediary who captures it. The test has two halves: where the surplus goes, and what is quietly taken that never shows up in a price.
Every platform monopoly is positive-sum on paper while the intermediary captures the surplus. And extraction is not only monetary; data, knowledge, attention, time and agency are siphoned just as quietly. A fair split of the money can hide an unfair take of everything else. The other face is the one Realisation Infrastructure is built for: increasing returns that flow back to the players who create them.
So the test has two halves, and a system must pass both. Distribution: does the surplus go to the players who create it, or to the middleman? Fair value sharing and joint governance decide this; a promise in the terms of service does not. Extraction: what is taken that never shows up in a price? A plural system leaves data, knowledge, attention, time and agency with their owners: no data taken beyond the purpose, no learning kept from the people who generated it, no attention harvested, no exit blocked.
The distinction matters because a realisation flywheel with a data network effect will face this fork by construction. The Plural Constitution is what keeps it on the right side of both tests: openness, agency, fairness, regenerativeness, by design, not by promise.