Self-Determined Hypotheses

The political-economic conundrum we face is as much technical as it is philosophical, which essentially means they are the same thing in different dimensions. The answer always begs the question in the form of a paradox, but that does not mean it is technically unresolvable.

The status-quo, "iron law of oligarchy" does not have to be conserved in its present form. Remember, for example, our founding fathers recognized that the organizational ontology political scientists refer to as the "iron law" can be recast to fit a changing objective.

Instead of allowing it to operationalize with monarchy, founders of the U.S. Constitution intended to make natural law (empirically verified knowledge rather than truth aristocratically determined) operate toward a peaceful and prosperous pluralism. They forged a republican form of government with democratic values, operationalizing "liberty" with the legitimate, self-determined value of the consent of the governed to ensure its verifiable attainment (to converge philosophical principles with technical identity). When we hear Republicans say they will apply their principles regardless of popular consent, because the masses do not have the wisdom of aristocracy, their policies and programs fail the test of legitimacy and we have political movements like the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street.

Keep in mind as well that there is a dialectical process involved here. A natural process occurs that pushes (vectors) the risk proportion into a popular, policy space, and resistance to this natural movement only serves to pull the risk in, while it is being pushed, to occupy the space.

The change we really need (the energy needed to physically occupy the policy space) is naturally endowed (the motive--the natural right--is ontologically progressive and self-interested). Despite all manner of resistance (including capturing the bureaucratic organization of power by co-opting the interests of the top one percent), the law is cast in iron. The probability the risk of loss will be fully assumed (goes fully gamma) is ninety-nine percent.

That the top one percent do not need to be co-opted is a likely assumption. Consider, however, that only a fraction are richer than the other members and not all members of the class buy-in to a hard, conservative philosophy because it is not in their self-interest. Identity is not "A is A." The identity is not a fully self-determined hypothesis as Rand describes it but, rather, is an objective risk of fully assumed loss (which results in identity crises we call class warfare). There is an assumed culpability that is not directly identified with (and thus not verified by) the reward as it would legitimately be if the marketplace was really a free market, which it should be. (Keep in mind, moving to a more socialist model of legitimacy will not eliminate crises of identity because the risk proportion is not reduced. Risk is consolidated as a public good, which results in goods positioned to indicate class and privilege, as Robert Michels presciently describes and explains in his classic book, "Political Parties").

Realizing that the risk of loss is fully assumed, or naturally endowed with a measurable probability of about ninety-nine percent, the majority of upper-class members know full well their fate is cast in iron, and their fate is co-opted to conserve the value of the risk proportion. Remember, for example, Progressivism emerged from the Republican Party as an expression of conservative values when socialism and communism were not yet dirty words but a real threat to the operant philosophy of risk--Herman Cain's "blame yourself" philosophy--of common currency at the time.

Progressivism was later co-opted by the Democratic Party, which softened the effect of conservative philosophy. Its co-optation effectively keeps it alive by casting it in iron, permanently installing the tenets of progressivism into a binomial, bureaucratic, party structure, achieving a false verification of identity.

We see then that the current class struggle is a perennial, philosophical struggle over natural identity. (Socrates, for example, advocated seeing the light, which meant that the demos would no longer need the aristocracy to give them an identity that was but a fraud perpetrated to keep them from seeing the truth--the aristocracy, not the gods, were determining their fate.) If we perceive a false identity, there is going to be trouble. It is then necessary, especially in the nuclear age, to manage the risk (perceived identity verified by distribution of its proportion) so that it does not go fully gamma and burst.

Today, given the potential for conflict that mutually assures destruction, conservative philosophy advocates we all need to see the light (ironically invoking the classical, moral theme of the Enlightenment which diminishes the natural right of aristocrats to rule as gods that can do no wrong despite how wrong it may be). According to Ayn Rand's philosophy, for example, and conservatives generally agree, the outrage we are currently experiencing has an improper moral identity. Morality is not functionally categorical, it is an unchanging, natural principle governed by the laws of nature.

Nature, conservatives argue, which includes many liberals, selects the most powerful to rule, ensuring productive use of nature's resources and our ability to survive. The profit margin measures not only the success of our productivity, but indicates the survival of the species. Thus it follows that whatever diminishes the margin of profit indicates, uncategorically, a moral hazard. Whatever diminishes the capacity to make a profit is immoral, not the outrage of unaristocratic rabble (whose capacity to profit is immorally diminished by consolidating the means--the risk--to make a profit).

So, here we are, confronted with a conflicted philosophy of risk that technically threatens the survival of the species--a philosophy that we can neither live with or, according to conservatives, without.

Not only is indignation not a reason for violence, in the nuclear age it is prohibitive. In other words, our moral intelligence is being technologically pulled (empirically tested) to match the quality of our technological progress (suggesting the "categorical" imperative Kant, for example, postulated).

Ayn Rand, as previously discussed, recognized that her philosophy of objective identity results in violent resistance but did not consider that indignation signals her philosophy is wrong (that it does not properly, or categorically, fit the current, moral need as a function of practical reason as Kant postulated). Instead, she advanced non-violence as morally imperative rather than diminish the values that are likely to cause a gamma burst (a catastrophic expression of accumulated risk proportion).

Resistance to property extended beyond the normal needs of the proprietor is an identity that is gaining natural currency. While extension of the risk is a functionally productive identity that rapidly innovates the means of production, its moral identity is technically dysfunctional--it has become a moral hazard.

To overcome the moral hazard, we "naturally" bureaucratize the risk proportion with a stable, routine process that yields a predictable outcome. Our two-party system, for example, while it appears to pluralistically yield outcomes with the legitimate consent of the governed, we nevertheless have an apparent risk that is ninety-nine percent probable.

Despite the effort to teleologically cast the distributive value of the risk in iron, the iron law tends to an organizational technology that ontologically fits the moral exigencies. Today, not only is the good life philosophically desirable, but technologically imperative.

The moral life is no longer a product of pure reason (a utopian vision), but a function of practical necessity. Identity in the age of science and rapid technological development relies on practical reason to operationalize the iron law toward a peaceful and prosperous pluralism.

It is possible to build an organizational technology that ensures a legitimacy of power right down to each and every individual. Identity does not have to be a valid function of a fractal, aristocratic proportion, but real freedom through the formulation of verifiable hypotheses in the pursuit of self-determination.