Determining the Extent of Entitlement

Notice that the word "determine" contains the word "deter," denoting a limitation to the terms. Rather than let nature decide the limitation (a laissez-faire ontology), we consciously limit the probability of the risk to moral sentiment (a calculated, categorical deontology).

Thus, testing the limit of the probability derives the technical means of governance, or government intervention, logically (ontologically) determined to deter the extent of the risk. Ontology is not dispensed with, it is conserved, as is the risk that is to be "determined." (This conservation of natural ontology is what Hegel, for example, describes with his dialectical determinism in which freedom is an illusion subordinate to nature. It is a logical reduction that I empirically reject for the philosophy of natural rights that logically determines the extent of freedom, taking Hegel off his logical head and putting him on his empirical, deontological feet. While it is true there is no escaping nature, or God, nature provides us with the cognitive capacity to freely de-ontologize the risk, what Hegel described as the phenomenology of the mind, or God.)

For the analyst, understanding Hegel is to know the extent of ontological risk. The old saw, "the technicals do not lie," for example, expresses the expected extent of ontological risk. This ontology finds technical expression in the E and K waves, for example, or the Markov chain in which the analyst is "naturally" forced to discount the probability with the risk of loss fully assumed (i.e., truth can only be known by null hypotheses and never known to its fullest extent). President Obama, for example, found himself accepting tax cuts for the rich despite its technical benefit being a thoroughly disconfirmed hypothesis. While the truth is compromised, which is an expected value of a republican form of government, the argument is maintained by Republicans, nevertheless, that tax cuts for the rich are truly good for everyone, as best can be determined. The hypothesis also got purely tactical support, being tested against a time limit that would very clearly be bad for everyone, effectively limiting the liability for all classes.

Compromise is more an art than a science. The Great Recession (a massive zero-sum accumulation of wealth into the top two percent of income classes that resulted in a massive deficiency of aggregate demand) rendered "tax cuts for the rich benefits everyone" a clearly disconfirmed hypothesis. Although it is a primary cause of the defaltionary trend, the hypothesis will be sustained in the interest of reversing the trend, nevertheless. In terms of applying a political agenda, it makes sense. Supporting the deflationary trend (the cost-benefit it yields in zero-sum) is, and will be, an empirically confirmed hypothesis.

Compromise is used to force disconfirmed hypotheses into public policy. It is less a necessary condition of a democratic-republic (an expected ontology) than a function of applying an empirically unpopular agenda with a democratic legitimacy (the force and legitimacy of public authority that is supposed to be the empirical value, the market-like ontology, the governance, of a popular consent).

Public policy that governs the deflationary trend is being inappropriately reduced to bargaining for a price in the marketplace, and the economic rent has settled at a price that is "too damn high!"

A settlement price by compromise substitutes for the democratic, empirical legitimacy of a popular consent. Reduced to bargaining for a price in the marketplace by proxy (with the proxies mostly disagreeing on the method for assigning you the burden of debt), public policy is methodically reduced to a false popular legitimacy with the settlement price (like tax cuts for the rich) being the exculpatory, empirical proof of a bid-ask differential that is considered to be a valid social contract. The result is a limited liability that is only partially true by means of a power to bargain that is exceedingly inequitable both politically and economically.

Since determining truth determines the extent of liability, and truth is different depending on the method for determining it (or finding the limitation to deter the risk of liability), determining the ontology, like whether a free market is in operation and to what extent, for example, delimits the risk of liability.

For example, in Plato's Republic, in order to de-ontologize defects and ensure the public health, the ruling class (the gold class) secretly selects who reproduces by public lottery. While it appears to the public to be ontologically legitimate, who is entitled to reproduce is determined on the inside by the power elite.

Substituting economics for reproduction, we see a close resemblance between the Republic and the way free-market economics operates within the context of consolidated capital. We see foremost how ontology figures prominently for the legitimacy, the social security, of determining entitlement.

Recall, for example, McCarthyism. It bears striking resemblance to the republican paranoia and extremism of the French Revolution, which our founders labored to prevent. McCarthyists believed that any person critical of capitalism is not loyal (just as the king regarded the American Revolutionaries). A non-patriot should be allowed to wither on the vine, legitimately deprived of gainful employment (income) as an enemy of the state (a counter-revolutionary).

The legacy survives. It hounds the cynics and skeptics of today, limiting the critique to court jesters at the fringes of media entertainment. Serious cynics and skeptics that point us to real solutions are either deprived of gainful employment or gainfully banished to the frivolous fringe of a benign jocularity and marginal entertainment that is not to be seriously considered in prime time.

Although the critique is much less limited than the McCarthy era, the non-conventional critic is nevertheless received as unpatriotic, if not subversive, and unentitled. The entitled critic, you will notice, politically advances the party line, limiting the critique to being recursively--patriotically--binomial; and the economic critique is limited to Ivy-League analyses that, whether from the left or the right, are characteristically Hamiltonian. Hence we have a realpolitique that is conservatively biased and an independent element that is systematically limited to that bias.

It is no surprise then that the left wing has capitulated to a conservative bias on tax cuts to which we are all entitled (assuming, of course, that incomes are equal, which they are not, and being unequal determines an inequitable bias, which is also why a flat tax is flatly unfair). This "compromise" rather than "a fight" (class warfare) is systematically determined to avoid the risk of liability in which the cause of deflationary crises (with the effect of losing your home, for example, due to unemployment) is the basis of public policy that supports the trend rather than reversing it. The risk is being deferred--transferred to the future--as an expected value, binomially conserved.

The only reason the Republican party will agree to this deal is because it is a net gain for its constituency: the non-elite have been extended the means to pay the debt and the elite have the means (tax cuts for the rich) to extend it into a deflationary crisis. The risk of liability is successfully avoided (accumulated) and the risk of loss (the extent of entitlement) is fully assumed.

The extent of entitlement is accumulated into a gamma-risk (too big to fail) proportion. According to current public policy, by means of compromise, a person is not entitled to income, or even the means to acquire it considering that unemployment compensation is dependant on providing the means of depriving it. This defines a class to which income is entitled--the top two percent in a proportion that is confirmed, by public policy, too big to fail. According to this public policy, the rich are entitled to determine the extent of tax policy (the extent of the risk--who owns the debt and who pays it). The fact is accomplished, and the liability limited, not by popular consent, but by compromise with what is too big to fail (extortion).

Confirming too big to fail (consolidated control of the equity and extension of the risk) is the problem, not the solution.

The tendency, the need, to extend the equity with the risk is deterred by direct access to public authority (the ability to directly bargain for the settlement price, or the economic rent; and in the absence of the counterparty, to fix it). Distribution of risk and reward clearly indicates the public process is in command of a wealthy power elite. Most of the legislators entrusted to apply The Will of the People to confirm a legitimate, popular consent are in the top two percent, busily limiting (deterring) the liability that extends with the risk and accumulates with the reward.

Risk is being supported in the gamma proportion. For the analyst, this means that crisis is pending (increased up-side call activity). A double dip is an expected value not to be deterred. The risk of loss is fully assumed and discounted to fit the Hamiltonian model in which the rich are entitled to foreclose on the lower class.

The loss, and the gain (the upside call activity), is argued to be ontologically determined--it is the result of the business cycle (now in high frequency, making it more difficult for the small investor to stay ahead of the trade--the next "big" market move--and participate in the equity instead of being left holding the risk). It is like the hydrological cycle (accumulation-distribution). It just happens and there is no stopping it. Sometimes it's too wet, sometimes it's too dry, but on average, it's just right (the expected value--the "law" of averages--ontologically determined).

While the economy is "naturally" deflating, the top two percent is gaining equity, turning the equity of The People into debt, to which, according to the elite, they are entitled, and will be commissioned to pay.

By technical, but what they describe as ontological means, the rich turn debt into equity, taking title to assets by default in a deflationary cycle (nature achieving the average, ontologically "normal" distribution through cycles of boom and bust).

According to conservative philosophy, interrupting the normal distribution of the business cycle with counter-cyclical (counter-revolutionary) measures, or trying to de-onotlogize the risk, just makes it more painful. Trying to re-distribute the risk (the liability) results in a compromise (price settlement) that stengthens the deflationary trend, like we have now. The non-elite foolishly expect to be entitled--an expectation that the working model does not assume and will, therefore, fail. The result is a fiscal and monetary crisis, like we have now.

For small investors and the employed who thought it might be possible to Tea Party their way into entitlement...nice try.

The practical model fully assumes the risk of loss, de-ontologically discounting the debt into equity, deterring the extent of entitlement.

The rich intend to take a double dip. If you were not discounted last time around, maybe this time. You are not likely to avoid that which you are fully entitled. Both Republicans and Democrats will make sure of that.

By compromise, with the force and legitimacy of public authority, democratically determined, everybody gets what they are legitimately entitled to, right?

With the prospect of extending the Bush-era tax cuts, if you are not in the top two percent you are currently at the very highest probability of risk. Cutting taxes for the rich is the determining variable. The cuts, despite the compromise, will turn whatever equity is promised to the lower classes into debt, to which, according to the Hamiltonian model, the non-elite are naturally entitled.

The terms of the bargain are limited to the assumptions of the working model which falsely relies on a laissez-faire ontology to measure the legitimate extent and entitlement to the risk.