Theory of Retributive Value

Retributive Value

Positing a theory of retributive value is crucial for understanding the physics of political-economic dynamics; of managing the natural relationships of cause and effect toward predictable, desireable consequences.

Two plus two equals four. Simple, universally understandable, logically positive. If somehow value is removed from the simple, natural equation without adding its value to the natural, necessary, balance of it, the universal balance of the eqation is unstable and naturally acts to correct itself, and will be corrected, without active intervention of the expropriator of the value.

Classical economists were well aware of retributive value. Adam Smith argued nature always equilibriates with the sanction of profit and loss toward continuous improvement much as Darwin observed in nature. Both thinkers posit the theory based on empirical, ontological observation. It was not to support any teleological belief or ideology, but just the pursuit of knowlege from the the particular to the general--the scientific method, a process of induction. It is an exercise in Logical Positivism.

Smith and Darwin are not devoid of moral value. Quite the contrary. They both observed the ontological result of natural forces was a continuous improvement to environmental conditions. It is naturally, teleologically, positive.

If someone removes value from the equation and declares that doing so has rendered the naturally stable and logically positive equation to now be 2+2=5, the eqation is now naturally unstable and illogical. The expropriator will constantly have to act to "conserve" the value removed from the equation to prevent it from returning to its natural condition.

While it is possible to expand the pie, transform nature into wealth, the physics--the logically positive attributes--are naturally conserved. Creating wealth does not create more matter or energy to be utilized: 2+2=5 can only be maintained by political proclamation and practice--by an abstraction of the sociological imagination.

There is a retributive value, a cost, that is accumulated over time as society suffers the unnatural equation of 2+2=3 and the political dissonance of a cognitively abstract 2+2=5 legitimacy. Conserving the removed value can be by brute force, legal proclamation, bureaucratic management. It can be theorized, systematized and monetized many times over, but still, something has got to give.

We are in a highly progressed phase of bureaucratic management. Without it, we regress to legal proclamation and then to brute force, much as our founding fathers observed and has characteristized much of the 20th Century, moving back and forth between the phases of managing the accumulated, surplused, retributive value.

The fundamental empirical measure of this surplused retributive value, always being mortgaged to the future, is the nominal value of the accumulating public debt. Progress will be the simple, fundamental function of a progressive tax code to surrender the retributive value to distributive justice. A simple calculus that is easily verified by the outcome, the evidence.

A simple, progressive tax code, with no exceptions, is clearly and verifiably fair and equitable. Rather than the subject of political parsing, fallacious rhetoric and pious frauds, the legitimacy of power is rendered simple, universally understandable, and scientifically unambiguous. The difference betweem belief and knowlege, validation and verification, is rendered an easy, naturally occuring operation of common life rather than the abstruse, safely impractical and accessibly limited domain of deliberate, scholarly pursuit.

Although the reactionary tendency to regress has been mitigated by improved organizational technologies, the natural tendency to correct the equation naturally, inexorably, persits and can be observed in persistent pluralistic tendencies that take the form of bureaucratic power and public authority as markets are allowed to consolidate and maintain an unstable equation.

The Federal Reserve argues its function is to organize, manage, chaos. It is not! What we see is the private sector preventing the organized efficiency of free markets to produce a stable social environment and a genuine, easily verifiable legitimacy. The result is inherent instability that requires management of a highly centralized authority with a false legitimacy of protecting us from what we would naturally have without it--a peacefully prosperous pluralism.

Assuring a peaceful and prosperous pluralisitic market environment always holds the possibility for choosing to live a collectively moral life that is individually motivated. In the mean time, the struggle for survival and the ambition to power can occur as a productive competition within a peaceful context. Until we find utopia, or utopia finds us, a free and unconsolidated marketplace will make that progression a peaceful and prosperous one.

We do not have to suffer the conceits of power to realize the good life if we do not choose to. Our Constitution provides the means if we choose to go the way of what we are all naturally endowed: freedom.

The next step is to build a broad based coalition from the rubble of the failed legitimacy of a collapsed neo-conservative coalitional regime. Build a coalition for Mr. Obama to solicit his leadership skill. The function of the moral ends will properly and legitimately follow the form of the moral means to power.

Very best wishes.