Maintaining Beta Volatility (Getting More for Less)

Intuitively, the Zen of volatility maintenance is to reduce it. Reducing volatility is beneficial, presumably, because it reduces angst (if that's the objective, anyway). Being unemployed and economically insecure (competing to keep a job to avoid default) as the result of economic instability is, however, the incentive to work more for less.

With a more-for-less identity of the risk, wages and salaries competitively disinflate by objective, expanding the marginal profit and, supposedly, the extent of economic security. There is, however, less income to reduce the supply (what is paid to expand the margin, or pay the economic rent). Rather than a disinflationary effect, the effect is objectively deflationary (falling income against rising prices to expand the margin), producing the risk supposedly being avoided.

Capitalist theory maintains that economic volatility increases the profit margin (it produces risk-value--the creative-destruction that Mitt Romney has described to explain the benefit of private-equity firms). Overproduction (the bust that follows the boom) results in more labor value for less rent, cures shortages, and controls inflation by increasing the amount of rent paid to gain capital.

(Remember that the savings rate for investment requires austerity. Hedge-fund and private-equity firms exact austerity from labor in the form of unemployment because labor is not otherwise thrifty. The detriment exacted is described and explained as a naturally recurrent risk, meaning that the capital accumulated does not cause the detriment, but provides the opportunity to create value--capital--for reinvestment. It only looks like a deliberate expropriation because the risk is being deliberately organized to use the opportunity that naturally derives from the need to surplus value and cure shortages--that is, to reduce volatility.

Paradoxically, being thrifty to surplus value causes the risk to be avoided--what capitalists know is the "opportunity" to get rich and stay rich in zero-sum. If the risk distributes in a 99-1 proportion, however, arguing the benefit is indivisible is patently false--it is a disconfirmed hypothesis, which means government is required to give the outcome the force and legitimacy of indivisible, public authority.)

Increasing the rent in order to ensure the financing to pay it (increasing the risk of default in order to reduce it) is a contradiction. It is not a paradox as capitalist theory describes and explains it because the cost of labor (the rent job creators pay) is declining while the rent job holders pay is increasing. The result (predictably) is a liquidity crisis--the inability to pay the economic rent, which results in default (a declining rate of profit) like in Greece, for example.

In the bust phase of the business cycle, labor pays higher prices and taxes (keep in mind that job creators enjoy tax breaks to create jobs, which leaves labor with higher taxes). Labor's rent increases (literally paying the employer to have a job in the form of taxes) while its income is declining, which according to the theory of capitalism forms the capital that keeps people employed and prices affordable--in other words, it purports to prevent the risk (the detriments of inflation and unemployment) that plagues us on a regular basis.

Not only does labor literally pay the "job creators" to have a job, but then has to give up personal freedom, as well. Drug tests, for example, are increasingly common to get a job. So, not only does labor pay more to rent a job, but must increasingly subordinate the "self" to the image of the job creators because, apparently, they literally think they own the labor they rent. (The subordination is supposedly beneficial, and objectively identified with the noble intentions--the intuitive knowledge--of elite authority, because the masses are too ignorant to know how to productively organize and manage themselves without being structured into the risk--the zeitgeist--that creates the quantum value called "capital"). Keep in mind that this sense of ownership is the direct result of increasing the supply of labor in an economy-of-scale, quantum proportion. It is a function of organizational size and influence, which takes the form of higher taxes and rising prices--detriments that, remember, the accumulation of capital in an economy-of-scale proportion is supposed to prevent, and capitalists conveniently blame on government.

Not only does labor have to bear up to the angst of a declining income and certain unemployment to afford an accumulation of capital that is postulated to prevent it, but it then has to subordinate the image of its "self" (its "objective identity," as Ayn Rand describes it) to both big business and big government. So, where's the freedom?

According to capitalism, freedom is maximized by curing shortages, for example. We are not slavishly bound to the dictates of nature if we intelligently organize to manage (or pre-dict) risk in an economy-of-scale proportion, which as we know all too well results in inflation (rising prices) and unemployment (declining consumer income). Instead, by intelligent design, labor is naturally subordinated to the job creators (which according to Rand is its objective identity) who create volatility (the conditions for boom and bust) to manage "the risk," which under these conditions is highly retributive and predictably unstable.

According to capitalism, volatility forms the capital to expand the pie (by default) from which employment and economic security derives, but (paradoxically?) we cannot have economic security without maintaining its insecurity. We cannot have certainty without maintaining the volatility (the certain uncertainty) that, intuitively, we want to avoid.

(The paradox intuitively appears less as a puzzle than just being totally crazy...and that's because it is!

Causing the risk in order to avoid it is just insane! It is full-blown psychosis, and in order to manage the psychosis we have people like Eric Cantor acting to manage the risk and Randly confirm the psychoses of our objective reality.

Supposedly, representing the special interests of the job creators first--getting more for less--indivisibly represents us all...it is the objective reality to which we all aspire. Representing the interests of the job creators is sure to trickle down to reduce the angst we rely on to create it, and if this seems counter-intuitive, then you do not have the level of understanding required to be among the best and the brightest who manage the risk. This is not, however, a function of the best and the brightest, but who is the most psychotic, which is then described as, "we get the government we deserve.")

We are living (empirically verifying) the practical result of maintaining beta volatility. We get more capital accumulated for less economic rent. What it costs to derive the accumulated value and create wealth for the "job creators" is reduced by default, which creates plenty of labor in oversupply to serve the wealth up while the cost goes down (verifying the objective of getting more for less). The result is an expanding service economy in which the vast majority of consumers rely on debt to pay the rent. (What we then have is an economy designed for servitude, creeping ever closer to representing ownership of your "self" by means of default. Requiring, for example, being tested for controlled substances whether employed or unemployed is nothing but fascism masquerading as public health and welfare--it is full blown psychosis of people who, by classified exemption, will be fully intoxicated with the right of self-determination by default.) What we have is a demonstration of value in which the job creators get what they want to provide less of what the market needs (the income) to sustain it, rather than the market providing the job creators with what they need (the profit) to provide consumers what they want on demand.

The cost of deriving the accumulation is effectively zero. Entities that are too-big-to-fail are expanding the economy at an effective zero rate of interest. The objective, in other words, is not economic expansion, but volatility. Expansion and contraction maintains the accumulation without risk of retribution because the vast majority are immediately preoccupied with reducing the angst of an uncertain future (and remember, the Commodity Futures Trade Modernization Act, for example, is supposed to be reducing the volatility, and the angst, that plagues us by, paradoxically, causing it).

Managing the retributive value is a function of complex, monetary and fiscal policies and programs. The risk becomes so entangled within this space that it requires a high level of expertise to manage it. These high priests manage the surplus value that occupies ninety-nine percent of us with angst--the quantum value to be retributed and thus to be managed without risk. "The risk," however, as we know, can not be avoided, but it can be transferred to the future, which makes volatility all but uncertain.

Managing retributive value (political risk in the gamma dimension) is fundamental economics. It is a function of price relative to quality--economic rent (the price you pay for economic participation) relative to the quality of life (the amount of angst to be reduced or retributed, which is otherwise political risk divisibly managed in the alpha dimension by means of direct accountability that truly--objectively--represents everyone's self-interest).

In a free-market economy, risk is directly presented rather than indirectly represented. The ambitions of elite authority are directly subordinated to the risk, which provides the incentive for productive innovation (economic growth and employment) to make a profit instead of representing an insubordination with value that is politically retributive. Rather than being preoccupied with class warfare, for example, status is positioned to be fully occupied with the ambition of productive innovation and the full employment required to get there.

Without a free-market legitimacy (the productive incentive, and less need for government, that comes with direct accountability), we go to the high priests to manage the risk and reduce the angst, divining, through intelligent design, an objective reality from a universe of infinite probability.

Price (what we pay, or the value to be retributed, like "getting the government we deserve") is essentially relative to the risk (how intelligently it is managed by organizational design).

Getting more for less is highly improbable, not without a lot of retributive value, anyway, which then has to be managed.

When we innovate with labor-saving technology, for example, we don't really get more for less. More labor was put into the technology to produce more savings which is transformed into the quantum called "more capital accumulated." If the value accumulated does not distribute to reduce the rent by the same value, a crisis ensues to correct for, or retribute, the missing value--the economy is unstable, or volatile.

Retributive value is the "dark matter" of our political-economic universe. It is value managed in dark markets where it is quantified and emotionally charged with angst, which then becomes the visible risk to be consumed by position--occupying the space that intersects with the risk at any particular time.

Mutual Risk and Occupation of the Policy Space

Ensuring that consumers have integral value (like a free market provides), rather than derivative value, is what capitalism will not do by technical design.

Our being plagued with a "jobless recovery" is no accident. Nor is it the product of a cyclical ontology derived from a natural, stochastic tendency to extract value (capital) for reinvestment.

(Remember that even though capital accumulates with each boom and bust, the cycle is the result of deliberate economic action. Capitalists want us all to believe it is derived from nature--a natural law--but it is really intended to derive detriment by technical design.

The risk of default is more by human, intelligent design than a crap shoot, delimiting the concept of "risk" to "being stuck with the detriment."

The successful capitalist innovates techniques for avoiding "the risk," which means it is left for others to consume by "default"--it's survival of the fittest. The crude, selfish exploits of Homo habilis may be derived from intelligence, but it is not to be confused with the self-interest of the wise man who realizes sticking others with the detriment is but to hoist the "self" on one's own petard.)

While the detriment exacted--the austerity--is supposed to provide a benefit, according to neo-classical economics the benefit is derivative. (In other words, the benefit--the reward--is fully assumed with the risk of loss. Hence the risk and reward are integral components of the derivative process but are considered neo-classically to be the natural, and thus legitimate, outcome that derives over time which, as we know, occupies space. While we typically consider space to be an empty nothingness, this space, understand, is the "quantum" that the quants on Wall Street work with to calculate the risk of loss fully assumed and, remember, occupying this space directs the detriment, positioning "the risk" for consumption. In a free market, the risk is consumed in the alpha dimension--it is calculated by the consumer with the quantity "income," which is value accumulated over time. In the world of Wall Street quants, risk is consumed in the beta dimension. Volatility--cyclical frequency--creates the opportunity to apply the risk, or detriment, which reduces the income, or the quantity, needed to apply risk in the alpha dimension which prudently regulates, or legitimately derives, the outcome. Without fully occupying this space, the consumer--the prudent regulator--is at a loss, and this loss is the quantity of government needed to control the proportion of risk accumulated that I call, "the gamma-risk proportion"). The benefit (which fully assumes the detriment), neo-classically derives from the accumulated capital and the demand for its consumption, not the value of labor input. So, for example, when we hear analysts describe and explain the Euro crisis, it's all about consumers (the populus) needing to undergo austerity. If capital is stuck with the risk, which according to popular analysis reduces its demand for consumption (investment), then we all suffer. Hmmm...doesn't that mean only the popolaccio (the little people) should suffer detriment?

The benefit, you see, is supposed to be mutual (integral). It is supposed to benefit both labor (the physical energy needed to create value, including the intellectual energy and labor-saving property put into it) and capital (the symbolic, highly portable value that seeks the lowest risk at the highest possible return to support its integral value--the labor that adds supply and reduces risk with adequate income, and savings, to demand its consumption). Neoterically, however, risk, rather than being integral to its value, is derived from the reward.

(Keep in mind that philosophers conservatives typically refer to--Hume, Burke, Locke, Adam Smith--classically regard labor as integral value from which capital investment--adding supply, or productivity--is derived. Smith, for example, regarded consolidation of savings derived from the value of labor into the hands of a few people--which became known as "the capital"--to be a moral hazard. In other words, he regarded consolidation of value, like we have now, to not be normal, and Marx certainly did agree with that. Except for Marx, who is credited with giving capitalism a bad name and whose philosophy is identified with the tyranny and oppression he so avidly argued against, these classical philosophers are neoterically cited without regard to the integral value of labor.)

Capitalism is expected to charge the highest possible price at the lowest possible cost, which means there will always be demand insufficient to pay the price. Consequently, we should always expect there will be crises that measure overextension of that marginal product--the inability to demand the supply--as a natural condition for expanding the pie (which in a post-industrial, neo-classical environment is largely a function of labor-saving productivity gains).

Normatively, we should always expect for "the capital" to foreclose on the marginal product. It is normal for the rich to buy it up, providing the liquidity necessary to pay for it, recycling the marginal risk (the unproductive waste--the productivity gained or, that is, derived) into future, accumulated value (the expected value of productive, economic expansion being held in reserve and normatively described as "the paradox of thrift"). Naturally recurrent crises (or the risk of loss fully assumed) always makes us stronger. Without it, capitalists say, paradoxically, we cannot all have the opportunity to share in the prosperity.

The virtue (the normative, moral strength) of recycled marginal risk, understand, is an accumulation marginally excised from labor but neoterically valued as consumer demand. Depriving consumers of the value needed to avoid foreclosure (the risk of default) is the moral hazard to be avoided, not the normative value to be expected.

Instead of providing strength, the cyclical value (the beta) of the marginal risk is really the source of systemic weakness. It is used to command the marketplace enough to determine its direction while, at the same time, claiming it is free and open as long as government does not intervene.

When labor suffers the detriment of capital formation ("the risk" fully assumed), the loss, you see, paradoxically, is not really a loss. It is not necessary for government to intervene and spoil the benefit. When the Great Recession deflated the housing market, for example, and forced millions out of their homes, which hedge funds subsequently bought cheap and are now renting dear to the foreclosed until eventually their homes are sold back to them for a capital gain, there is a net benefit that accrues to consumers as long as government does not try to modify it. Measuring the detriment, you see, according to capitalists, has a late-order benefit that is described as "paradoxical" because it is really a net loss in zero-sum to the vast majority of consumers.

Since, capitalists claim, labor does not have the capacity to understand this paradox, labor erroneously tries to retribute the loss (a liability that is really an asset) by unionizing and engaging in other means of collective action. According to reactionaries, demanding government intervention is the problem and not the solution in a marketplace that is fully assumed to be free and open to anyone willing to take the risk (or as it consolidates more and more with each business cycle, to freely avoid it). The really big error here, however, is that reactionaries claim big government adds risk. No, it adds regulation missing from organizing to avoid the risk; and instead of resisting consolidation of the risk, government regulation tends to support it. Dodd-Frank, for example, is now forcing small banks to merge in order to absorb big, too-big-to-fail compliance costs, which forces them to be "too big to fail." So, here we are, accumulating risk by erroneously trying to avoid it being added. This is not paradoxical, it is, rather, a cognitive deficiency that results from an affective disorder--a full-blown ideological psychosis that fully assumes selfishness is the wisdom that prudently regulates the risk, and then when it doesn't, but goes hog-wild crazy...well, isn't that paradoxical?

(Remember, the "fully assumed risk" is a pre-ordained ontology--it is the gamma risk that catastrophically presents when it is always being avoided. For capital, it is a function of resisting consolidation of labor; for labor, resisting the consolidation of capital. The risk factor is mutual. In both cases, the natural "objective" is to resist the consolidation of power, but in both cases, paradoxically, resisted by its consolidation.)

The measurable error, according to capitalists (which includes consolidated labor that organizes to equally share in the profit margin), is inflation and unemployment, like we have now. "Surplus value" (accumulating risk of a declining rate of profit derived from a rising marginal rate) as classically described is characterized, neo-classically, as a fundamental misattribution, which is a symptom of psychosis--specifically, according to reactionaries, the psychosis of giving up the "self" (selfishness) to the tragedy of the commons.

Acting in self-interest, labor organizes to share in the profits. Since the marginal profit is demanded by earned income (labor value from which the marginal value fundamentally derives), labor does not try to derive value, but to retribute, or reintegrate, the value held in reserve. Bear in mind, the more labor shares in the profit, the more the rate of profit, paradoxically, declines; and remember, a declining rate of profit is what deflation is.

Deflation, remember, is to be resisted at all cost by keeping value held in reserve at the expense of labor (which, as is plain to see, supports the risk by trying to resist it). This is what capitalism is and does--it relies on crises to increase the economic rent. As the cost of labor falls, the cost of living increases, and if we do not bail it out with the value in reserve (the risk to be consumed), we experience general economic crises.

Without the bailout that follows every crisis (in which economic leverage--the rent--exceeds the quantity of currency in circulation, like the trillions of dollars currently occupying dark markets), the full quantity of risk assumed in priority (the gamma risk) will be measurably consumed. Consumption of the overextended value (payment of the extended rent in late order, which capitalism refers to as "needed austerity") reintegrates the derivative value in a crisis (gamma-risk) proportion. This full reintegration of value (in which labor value fully converges with consumer value) is what capitalism must prevent at all cost.

If capitalism does not prevent full consumption of the risk (typically with war and welfare in various proportions, which essentially fits, or measures, the risk proportion), capitalism meets its demise (the convergence occurs). However, full consumption of the gamma risk (by resisting it with austerity measures that serve only to support it) does not necessarily have to take the highly consensual mechanics of a peaceful and prosperous pluralism (a free market) with it.

Supporting the risk by trying to resist it is the "gamma-risk proportion." It is the risk ontology fully assumed in priority. Declaring, for example, "We hold these truths to be self evident..." is to declare, in priority, empirical occupation of the policy space that determines the self; that is, government, in priority, is what allows us to freely choose our objectives, which means "We the People" divisibly define our objective reality based on self-interest.

Our founders made it clear that government, in priority, occupies the space of risk that is fully assumed. This prior assumption of risk was, and still is, based on experience. It was clear then, as it is now, that the sovereign has the power to independently define the objective (and, keep in mind, pursuing an objective gives existential identity, both divisibly and indivisibly, to our "objective" reality). Where there is an objective there is purpose.

Objectively, however, the risk ontology does not care what our ideology is. It assumes nothing--it just "is" (as Ayn Rand described it, for example, "A is A"), which is what it means for it to be a fully assumed quantum (the value to be retributed) that will fully consume us (or reintegrate) if we do not heed the indicators of impending crises.

Understand that our founders intended to empower government with all "the risk" in priority. This "risk," you see, is the fully assumed gamma risk--the angst the kings experience by always having to shift all the detriment to their subjects in order to maintain their status, empowered with self-determination. Today, want-to-be kings operationalize this working, revolutionary hypothesis with conserving consolidation of wealth and power--the essential attributes of self-determination.

Today's power elite consider themselves the keepers of the Revolution and are entrusted with keeping its morals (essentially avoiding "moral hazards," like the power to self-determine from the bottom up) by essentially ensuring a reactionary, binomial, republican form of government ("A" is always A by ensuring that the process is "A" therefore B therefore "A" therefore B...). They must always react ("A" therefore B therefore always objectively "A") to what they consider counter-revolutionary objectives, which are typically characterized as "socialist or communist" tendencies that threaten the natural, Constitutional right of self-determination.

Toggling between "A" and "B" always centers on the size of government, which essentially operates to control the risk proportion, as we previously discussed, in priority. When the risk is off (identifiably "B"), conservatives consider the risk to be "on" (too big) and liberals consider the risk to be in abatement or "off." Being always either on or off, you see, conserves the risk in a crisis proportion--it is risk prone by being operationally risk averse, which is just nuts! It is completely psychotic, but then we have people like Ayn Rand to let us know that being selfishly psycho is not at all abnormal. It is a normative identity in which our concept of good and evil is pathologically delusional.

The only objective, verifiable morality, according to conservatives (which, by process, we have to include the "B" side) is the moral hazard of government being so big that it occupies the power of self-determination--the power of the prudent regulator to occupy his or her own space. Government does not allow, but disallows, ownership of the "self" by occupying its space.

While the occupation is supposed to be mutual, Constitutionally endowed with the consent of the governed, reactionaries are always limiting ownership of the policy space in the representative form. So, you see, while businesses that are too big to fail (which occupies the space of the prudent regulator) are the model of efficiency (capable of demutualizing the risk so that only the non-elite occupy that space), government that is too big in reaction spoils the efficiency.

Government, conservatives argue, referring to Rand's Objectivism, for example, is actually the reactionary element--it wants to go back to when the king (the sovereign power) feudally occupied the space of prudent regulator with the power of self-determination. Government, they argue, reacts to diminish the austerity (the ownership) required to occupy the space of elite status, which according to capitalists is the objective (the productive incentive) that causes economic growth and expands the opportunity to earn wealth and gain power. Government, not big business, then, presents the risk to be consumed.

Even though big business axiomatically operates to increase sales with as few employees as possible (which is a contradiction, not a paradox, because increasing sales requires employment--a distribution, or more ownership of income, not less), the reaction is to always blame the size of government for the fully assumed crisis proportion. "The risk" fully occupies the space of the prudent regulator in the form of austerity in the gamma dimension rather than the income required to consent in the alpha dimension. This is big business occupying the space of the prudent regulator, not government, and keep in mind, this occupation does not "add" risk.

(Keep in mind that a paradox, by nature, resolves. A contradiction, however, derives by objective. A contradiction will not resolve without throwing it out by objective.)

In a consolidated, corporate environment, with a massive government authority to control its extent, risk is being constantly misattributed ("A" therefore "B" therefore "A"...). Constant fundamental attribution error indicates a persistent, organizational pathology, and rather than being addressed as an accumulation of errors, it is deliberately described and explained by the high priests of consolidated capitalism, and routinely believed by the laity, to be added risk.

What is added by corporate consolidation is not risk, but government authority (bureaucratic power) to mange its accumulatively derived (gamma-risk) proportion (a' posteriori). "Government is," then, fallaciously considered, "the problem and not the solution" (post hoc). If we want to create jobs, you see, all we have to do is get government out of the way.

In a neo-classical, high-efficiency, economy-of-scale corporate environment, proponents of consolidation maintain that government does not add integral value. Instead, government adds risk from which derives a failure of expectations and civil unrest.

Occupy Wall Street, for example, conservatives contend, is not a function of economic failure because, remember, systemically influential industries and markets are neo-classically designed so that they are "too big" to fail. (Being "too big" to fail means, unparadoxically, operating with pricing power that subjects the consumer--the prudent regulator--to the producer, unlike a free market, which is why, for example, we need a Consumer Finance Protection Bureau that the corporate says is antithetical to free-market mechanics.)

The economy is deliberately organized (with subjugating pricing power) so that "the best and the brightest money can buy" controls our destiny from the top down (as Alexander Hamilton envisioned it). It is when government (consent of the sovereign) occupies economic space (like the king did) that we can expect failure. So, you see, it stands to reason, conservatives contend, the problem isn't "big business," it's "big government."

(Remember that while Hamiltonians react to consent of the governed as the tyranny--the risk--to be avoided in the interest of the general welfare, the argument relies on there being a free market. There is supposed to be a clearly defined, economic space in which consent--a pure, democratic form of governance by objective that is highly divisible and thus easily measured right down to each and every individual--operates without encumbrance. It is a space fully assumed by the prudent regulator with the full faith and credit of the Federal Government. Thus, for example, we have the Federal Open Market Committee, and thus we must have a free market--the democratic form--because we have it efficiently consolidated and operating by organized committee.)

Reactionaries argue that government gets so big it occupies the space needed to grow the economy (and, as Rand argues, because it tries to operate contrary to our highly divisible, objective, self-interested nature, government naturally limits our liberty, and thus our productivity, which leads to crises). Quite the contrary, however. By consolidating, business gets so big that it occupies the space that we call government, and then government is co-opted, promulgating regulations that support rather than resist the demand for big government--consolidation.

By allowing the consumer to fully occupy the policy space in priority, the objective (our objective reality, as Rand describes it) is redefined in a highly divisible, pluralistic manner that allows for a government that governs least.

As long as the prudent regulator is subjected to the objectives of consolidation, the consumer always occupies the toxic space where risk is dumped (de-mutualized) to presumably protect us from its aversion.

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.