Unnecessary Odds

Technical and philosophical aspects of our economy are not necessarily at odds. These analytical dimensions do not need to be artificially forced together. It only appears that way to prevent us from taking an antinomian approach to politics that allows us to verify, rather than validate, the hypothesis that we are all self-determined.

When confronted with both the technical and philosophical aspects of an issue, odds are a person will pick evidence that technically validates a set of philosophical principles.

When confronted with political-economic questions we tend to validate our philosophical principles first. At the same time, however, in the age of science, we also tend to dismiss philosophy as an unreliable, outmoded way of knowing things.

To ensure a sense of objective reliability, analyses tend to focus on the technicals--objective data to verify the knowledge of something rather than a critique of pure reason like Aristotle used. (Ayn Rand, for example, favored Aristotelian logic. By means of pure reason "truth" can be rendered independent of the evidence. While Aristotle postulated a "thesis of independence"--that reality exists independent of perception--Rand uses this working, epistemic hypothesis as a means of synthesizing "the truth" that "objectively" fits her notion of political-economic reality, which is something Aristotle, considered to be the father of science, would have strongly objected to.) Philosophical aspects of the risk proportion beyond what is conventionally prescribed as dogma are conveniently ignored, which diminishes the capacity to conform the technical truth with legitimate, consensual confirmation. (Remember that science relies on replication of the results. If we all experience the same thing by testing and retesting, we consensually experience "empirical" confirmation of a hypothetical that "by the numbers" we objectively, technically, "know" to be true. This is completely different from, for example, Ayn Rand's method for discovering objective truth.) Instead, the legitimate, verifiable means of confirmed self-determination is condemned to a process of validation, until now.

(Understand that there is considerable dispute surrounding whether philosophy is really a determining variable when engaged in technical analyses. When I was defending my Master's thesis, for example, postulating that philosophy determines a probable trend, rather than a trend determines a probable philosophy, was in serious doubt. Since then, we have the example of monetary and fiscal policy technically following the philosophical tenets of Ayn Rand. While philosophical guidance can be argued as an ad hoc component of the risk, it nevertheless predicted the odds--the conviction--of a probable deflationary trend.

While philosophy may not have caused The Great Recession, but adopted ad hoc to justify the means to ends, philosophical guidance signaled the probable direction of a technical trend. The practical philosophy of the risk now in operation accurately predicts the future trend as well, indicated by a changing philosophical aspect.

Understand that Aristotle, like Plato, postulates an ideal reality that exists independent of our temporal perception--the way things are naturally tends, teleologically, to the way things really should be. In other words, reality is the way things should be, not the way they are. Rand postulates, on the other hand, reality is the way things ontologically are despite the way we think they should naturally be. Both expostulate truth as a process of discovering an independent, objective reality, but the objective is fundamentally at odds, which indicates a paradigmatic shift that epistemically conforms to a philosophy of science that in our time, to the dismay of aristocrats, accepts the critique of practical--technical--reason.)

We now have the concept of risk (probable loss legitimately assumed) being operationalized with a philosophical analysis that rationalizes its distribution as a universally objective reality. Capitalists have always maintained that capitalism is at the pinnacle of human development--history ends and because we cannot progress any further we experience the unavoidable risk (the objective reality) of boom and bust (probable loss legitimately assumed). Even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, its verifiable legitimacy is, nevertheless, seriously in question.

Despite both liberal and conservative arguments that consolidated capital technically provides the utility of economy-of-scale efficiencies, the utility of cyclical, accumulated risk--probable loss and massive debt--in catastrophic, too-big-to-fail proportions--technically ensuring huge profits for the top one percent--is highly questionable. Technically measuring the utility (the practical legitimacy) of programs and policies that encourage consolidation (often with the ridiculous argument that it promotes a free-market, economic legitimacy when it really resists it) reduces to whose philosophy of the risk conforms to an objective, verifiable reality. (When that objective binomially fails, then the test reduces to who has the most power to demonstrate the detrimental value of the risk, which verifies who rules.) Philosophy (the concept of reality) becomes a critical component of technical analyses predicting the probable direction of the risk. (Keep in mind that if both political parties favor consolidation then the debate reduces to the allowance of deregulation rather than deconsolidation, like we have now. The level of risk is then a measure of bureaucratic control and its probable direction has a more elitist than a pluralistic tendency, which requires a philosophical construction that rationalizes the utility of maintaining an elitist model.)

Evaluative measures have been philosophically stuck in the Middle Ages. Dogma (aristocratically derived and determined to be the objective truth) rules political reason, which validates (conserves) the status quo. The "iron law" (the status quo cast into an autonomic, binomial, bureaucratic reality) tends not to be philosophically tested beyond conventional dogmatic influences, which prevents it from being applied in alternative ways, and technically always begs the question.

We cannot on the one hand claim that class is a function of self-determination and on the other claim its deprivation is the measure of success. We can aptly describe this conflated philosophy of self-determined deprivation as "twisted." It is so twisted (it is so irrational) that conservatives must condemn class-identity of the risk as hate speech while maintaining, at the same time, that striving for what cannot be simultaneously achieved is of the highest moral value. It is an 18th Century, utilitarian philosophy of the risk practically maintained today, as it was then, to reconcile the necessity of elite power (a feudalistic, ruling "class" identity) with the revolutionary philosophy of self-determination. The practical effect, as we see today, is to identify the ruling class to be without liability because, as Congressman Ryan puts it, the elite earned their station by taking risk (like feudal lords did), and depriving them of the fullest extent of the reward (like bankrupting everybody else into serfdom) is theft, which is a crime.

The people that occupy Wall Street, then, you see, according to conservative philosophy, intend to commit a crime, and deterring criminals (avoiding "the risk" of liability) requires hard power where sophisticated, philosophical persuasion (right thinking that only elites properly understand) has failed (which is descriptively fascist, and in terms of our American heritage, counter-revolutionary). The protestors, the right wing contends, have only themselves to blame for their deprivation. The victims, you see, are, in reality, the criminals--unenlightened, unruly rabble running the streets like the animals they really are. The perpetrators are not.

According to Ryan and company, protesting the way things are is to oppose the way things should be. The opposition puts us unnecessarily at odds and prevents us from realizing the American dream, which is, as Rand describes it, the only true "objective."

Not only is our practical philosophy of risk contrary, but the practice is fully reflected economically. It is hard to be confident about a system that is inherently twisted, and so we end up playing a game of political confidence. Eventually we forget about the underlying, guiding-philosophy of the risk and focus on the technical signs that indicate the direction of the risk to avoid it.

Being relentlessly risk averse is cause for high anxiety, so we are always looking for ways (technical means with specific indicators) to reduce the risk. Anxiety, then, is being constantly reduced to the gamma (political) dimension where risk accumulates by trying to avoid it. Government, then, despite every effort to reduce it, tends to be a means of reducing anxiety by avoiding consumption of the risk.

Risk, however, cannot be avoided--it is constant and coefficiently presents with the reward no matter how hard we try to avoid it with irrational, philosophical constructions, or technically structured indicators. Class warfare will present whether we refer to it stochastically or philosophically. Nature corrects for ignorance without regard to intention or technical accuracy. The risk of loss is fully assumed--it is fully gamma--in priority.

Consolidation of capital consolidates risk. Not only is the risk economically overweight, but it is also critically political. When risk becomes critically political (when it is not allowed to be managed through the divisible, objective utility of an unconsolidated marketplace, but managed in the aggregate), odds are there will be civil unrest, which causes demonstration of hard power in equal proportion (in the aggregate). These are unnecessary odds. The fully assumed risk of loss does not have to demonstrate with extreme detriment in the aggregate.

Unfortunately, when power consolidates it is forced to demonstrate how powerful it is (this is the gamma-risk proportion). Analysts can give whatever identity to Occupy Wall Street they philosophically want, but technically (objectively, unavoidably) the risk of loss is fully proportioned (it objectively verifies rather than validates). It is ninety-nine percent.

Technical and philosophical aspects of our economy only have the appearance of being at odds. The way it is and the way it should be naturally converge to verify the hypothesis of our self-determination.