The Five Expert Boards
Congress sets quantitative corridors and triggers. Boards execute within those corridors. Same architecture as the Federal Reserve, extended to healthcare pricing, housing standards, financial stability, digital safety, and national statistics. All boards carry 10-year sunset clauses requiring affirmative congressional renewal.
NSB — National Statistical Board
COMPASS administration, AARA development, MERIT dashboard, Regional Cost Index, Automation Exposure Index. Power of measurement, not policy. The NSB publishes data; other boards and the macro-governors act on it.
AHQB — American Health Quality Board
VHA-E Master Fee Schedule, pharmaceutical reference pricing, new technology assessment, externality schedule calibration. The most powerful board—genuine discretionary authority over healthcare pricing within the 115% OECD median cap. The AHQB is the mechanism that determines whether VHA-E costs $5.55T or $6.5T.
FHSB — Federal Housing Standards Board
Unified national building code. ZRIG compliance assessment. Factory-built and modular housing design pre-approval (FAA-style type certification). Housing adequacy targets per MSA. The FHSB is the mechanism that determines whether factory-built housing achieves 30–40% cost reduction or 15–20%.
FSDB — Financial Stability Deployment Board
Counter-cyclical SIFI levy multiplier (0.5×–2.0×). Financial Stability Reserve governance. Three pre-authorized deployment triggers: Trigger 1 (automatic): interbank rate exceeds target by 200bp for 3 business days → secured overnight lending. Trigger 2 (3-of-7 vote): imminent SIFI failure with systemic contagion → preferred equity injection. Trigger 3 (unanimous + Presidential): systemic emergency → full fund deployment. Seven Senate-confirmed members, staggered 7-year terms, rotating 2-year chair. Strictest revolving door in the Accord: 10-year pre-service and 5-year post-service SIFI employment prohibition.
DOSB — Digital Online Safety Board
Digital Operations License for platforms meeting three criteria (1M+ US users AND algorithmic curation AND data monetization). Safety staffing ratios, response time standards, algorithmic transparency audits, age-gating (under-16 no curated feeds). Algorithmic Amplification Harm Index modulates Digital Ad Levy ±3pp. FCC-model graduated enforcement: fines (0.1–2% US revenue) → consent decrees → license suspension → revocation. Operates within the FCC.
Stress Test: Board Capture and Political Interference
The central risk of expert boards is regulatory capture: the AHQB staffed by former hospital executives, the FSDB staffed by former bankers, the DOSB staffed by former platform lobbyists. The mitigations are structural: staggered terms prevent any single president from replacing a majority; financial disclosure requirements expose conflicts; the FSDB's 10/5-year revolving door is the strictest in the federal government. But the AHQB has no comparable revolving door prohibition—and it is the most powerful board. A former Pfizer executive on the AHQB has direct authority over drug reference pricing.
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