Held in Reserve

Modern economic analysis tells us that there is no savings (no reserve) because we are a consumer society.

The value of the prudent regulator is objectively identified by modern economics primarily as a consumer--a spender rather than a saver making enough money to hold value in reserve. Instead, the missing value is held, and measured, in the form of personal wealth--private property possessed by the upper class who, as consumers, provide income on demand for the lower class who, as labor on demand, do not, for the most part, make enough to save for investment, or prudently regulate.

Measuring value as a consumer implies that labor is value derived from capital (consumed on demand) rather than capital derived from labor. Regarding labor as an integral value implies class warfare, and that, as reactionaries are quick to posit, is a moral hazard that threatens civil order.

(Here we discover how power is structured with consumer demand, which according to free-market economics rules civil society with the consent of the governed. Power is modeled with a demand dimension to build an elite power structure--filled with the best and the brightest--that appears to have the pluralistic legitimacy of a popular consent.

The on-demand dimension is a means for elite recruitment. With labor value dependant on discretionary income, which is governance by consent, the capacity of the upper class to demand its value is, well, consumer driven. It is consumer-driven governance by elite consent. Class mobility, loyalty, and compensation of upper-class laborers, like the big salaries and bonuses of corporate CEO's, is value derived from consumer demand.)

In order to maintain civil society (by consent of the governed from the top down), labor value (wages and salaries paid to demand products and services produced by investment of capital) is value (neo-classically derived) to be minimized by highly technical, bureaucratic processes and authorities (like the Federal Reserve and the investment-banking system). Through these highly structured processes and authorities, labor value is minimized. It is value held in reserve and administered with minimal, if not inscrutable, accountability, except, of course, what is demanded from the top down. It is value minimized, except when recruiting the labor to minimize the value.

Labor, primarily valued as either consumed or not consumed to produce savings, is value deliberately minimized to exact detriment. The exception is, of course, elite recruitment. In that case, labor value is maximized with a class identity that is typically anti-labor and pro-consumer since that is what the upper class, with the power of discretionary spending, demands.

Value demanded from the top down is, you see, value held in reserve, which according to reactionary philosophy of risk management is our civilized "identity" (as Ayn Rand would describe it, for example). So, demand from the bottom up is uncivil behavior--it is class warfare.

In order to secure civil society, it is necessary, conservatives maintain, to minimize labor value with large, reactionary, political structures (like large, economy-of-scale corporates) from the top down. Economies of scale effectively control the ability to demand investment, or the ability to prudently regulate (the missing value we call "savings"--the private property classically referred to as "the means of production," or capital investment). Without labor value being fully included in the capital invested, however, the result, as we see time and time again, is deficient demand--economic contraction, or what is classically described as "overproduction."

We no longer refer to overproduction because it smacks of Marxist analysis, which is classical economics. No, we use neo-classical analysis in which the way things are (Rand's objective reality) is "on demand"--by popular consent (the empirical means of the prudent regulator that ensures civil society with productive capacity through private ownership of the means of production). The more savings labor has, the more it owns the means of production and profits from the capital invested in the form of income that is "the wealth of the nation."

Hence, capitalism resists the value of labor (the empirical value of free-market economics) at all cost and clearly (objectively) identifies the classical risk proportion we neo-classically derive. If the value of labor is not systematically reduced (consolidated, or marginally compressed, through the business cycle), the surplus value (the labor-saving means of production) will not distribute to the upper class.

According to conservatives, if surplus value (labor savings) does not distribute to the upper class (and cause overproduction, what they refer to as "adding supply"), the result will be civil disorder--kind of like we see now with worldwide protests but, ironically, without the distribution (the savings) reactionaries predict will cause it.

It is important to understand that labor-saving capital investments are used to reduce the value of labor and increase the profit margin. The demand reduction that occurs--overproduction--results in what modern, business analysts call "margin compression."

While it may not be readily apparent, when analysts refer to margin compression, they are referring to the measure of labor-saving value that did not accrue to labor, which is the systemic risk--the quantum value--demanded and consumed in dark markets with devices called "derivatives." The value derived, you see, is not the value consumed by labor, which is what Marx and other classical economists referred to as "surplus value."

Value held in surplus--in reserve--is then used to demand consumption of the risk which is systemically endowed with labor savings. When Bain Capital, for example, buys an existing firm with what is called a "leveraged buyout," loads it with debt, lays off employees, and deducts the interest on the debt from its taxable income, equity is being transformed into debt with the assistance of public finance. Labor equity is effectively swapped for risk which is then hidden in dark markets. In the dark, the value is swapped even more, rather than invested to expand the economy. The economy then contracts and the money borrowed has thus been used to gain a profit by causing loss in the form of a "default swap."

When the savings is consolidated into risk-value--the gamma-risk proportion that is detrimental to everybody--the value ultimately consumed is a dead-weight loss. The result of this risk-value is, predictably, civil unrest, with warfare being the scenario in the worst case.

The loss, as Marx explained, for example, is to be expected of capitalism. So when we hear neo-conservatives denouncing as Marxist any call for a more adequate distribution of wealth, while at the same time marching our forces off to war, they stupidly confirm what is so vehemently denounced--something that is characteristic of power that is too consolidated.

The risk of loss is fully assumed in priority, it's just a matter of when, but by ensuring a free market in priority, the labor savings--the gamma-risk proportion--goes from catastrophic detriment to an overwhelming benefit that accrues to everyone. We go from a philosophy of privation that demonstrates power from the top down to a philosophy of privatization from the bottom up that is neither deprivationally Marxist or capitalist with value held in reserve. That is, value that is "savings and investment" does not result in demand reduction because it accrues to labor in the form of integral rather than derivative value, which is exactly what capitalists do not want and thus falsely attribute the detriment of minimizing labor value (demand reduction that is classic "overproduction") to "the paradox of thrift." By not reducing labor value to its derivative consumption, the paradox "naturally" resolves.

The more the value of labor is reduced, the more capital is available for investment. So, mistakenly, we are always engineering markets to accommodate capital and investment strategies, like free-trade agreements that serve as accoucheur for global economic development and ever-larger economies of scale, to reduce the value of labor.

While minimizing the value of labor is supposed to increase supply and reduce consumer prices to the benefit of consumer demand, the result is a demand deficiency that expresses as a liquidity crisis (insufficient income to demand the supply to be consumed). The neoteric, economic measure of integral value (consumer demand) results in the classic crisis of overproduction, which is the opportunity to consolidate assets, wealth, and power.

With opportunity comes risk. So, the more frequently we cycle into recession, the more wealth and power can be consolidated over time (and the more risk is consolidated and packed into the policy space that governs the crisis proportion, like central banking, which manages the surplused value--consumer value in the form of capital--held in reserve). With higher frequency, the policy space that governs the risk becomes saturated with the selfish imprudence of capitalism rather than the self-interest of the prudent regulator. Value that derives from a free market--providing a sufficient, fully legitimate, peaceful and prosperous, income distribution (wages and salaries paid)--is insufficient to demand it. The value demanded and consumed, then, is debt, which depletes savings (the ability to pay the debt) and results in liquidity crises.

The ability to pay the debt is fully liquidated, or at least liquidated enough that the only funding available to pay the principle and interest are those who own the debt and thus are not expected to pay it. This is what capitalism is...this is what it is expected to do: liquidate equity (the ability to pay--the reward) into debt (the inability to pay--the risk that is integral to, but at the same time derives from, the reward). The lack of payment is "the risk"--the risk of default which, neo-classically, is swapped to hide the extension of the risk proportion until it reaches a critical mass within the policy space (the risk goes gamma). If the mass is not deconsolidated its reactionary tendency becomes critical (a gamma burst--the fully assumed risk of loss--will consume the consumers). The natural condition is indeed, as Nietzsche says, well beyond our notions of good and evil.

Nature doesn't care about the right ideology, it just does what comes naturally. Doing the right thing is left up to us, it's called "free will." The consequences experienced (the empirical value of what we freely will or will not do), consciously enjoyed or suffered, is the measurable difference between good and evil (Keep in mind, detrimental value derived and hidden in the future, with the risk of loss fully assumed in priority, or held in reserve, is not a function of probability that exculpates the risk by misattributing it to the "objective," natural order of things. It is a function of ignorance and full-blown stupidity--psychosis of consolidated power that regards a consensual critique of fundamental misattributions as insubordination).

The power to avoid self-consumption (self-determination) is being held in reserve. It is intentionally alienated, technically "sequestered," from its prudent regulation, depriving us of the direct accountability (the wisdom, the power, and the providence) that comes with the empirical confirmation of a popular consent (what ensuring a free market provides in priority). We have the power to self-determine if we deconsolidate its critical mass and unleash the power of the prudent regulator...what the free market is, and what capitalism obviously is not.

To control the impending reaction, "We" need to actively seek risk instead of hiding from it...what holding it in reserve (allowing for its continued accumulation) will not do because that is what it cannot do.

By occupying the critical policy space, in which the "critical mass" (popular consent) naturally exists, "We the People" can turn the moral hazard of selfishness into the peaceful prosperity of self-interest, prudently regulated by the freedom to choose in a free and open market where opportunity is created for ourselves, independent of the so-called "job creators."

The Prudent Regulator

In order to prudently regulate in a free market, the prudent regulator requires income, and the more income acquired the more ability to regulate--to govern--with a prudence that is self-determined.

As you may have guessed, this is a philosophy of equilibrium. As soon as someone has more income than others, odds are the outcome will favor the accumulation of income, not its distribution, which according to free-market capitalism is a virtue that provides for economic strength, not a weakness.

If we all pursue the strength of accumulation, its virtue becomes a source of deprivation. It is easy to then reason that deprivation (in pursuit of life, liberty and happiness) is a virtue. Capitalism, for example, calls this the paradox of thrift, and in a free-market environment is the strength--the austerity--of self-deprivation that forms capital. When invested (or if invested), the capital (the deprivation) expands the economic pie to provide for others.

It is easy to see, then, how the philosophy of risk inherent to capitalism becomes a philosophy of deprivation--austerity that surpluses value to prevent shortages. (It is important to note here that proponents of capitalism always site, for example, that its participants do not cue-up for goods in short supply like they did in the former Soviet Union. No, instead, participants do not have the money to demand it. There is no reason to stand in line for something you can't buy, and not being able to buy assures ample supply. While Russian citizens no longer visibly cue-up, the reduced demand, added to the top income class, is divisibly less visible than the accumulating supply, and because the demand is added at the top, prices marginally rise to meet the marginal consumer demand--the ability to pay--at the top. Characteristic of capitalism, then, prices rise against a falling demand until the alpha risk--the ability to self-determine and prudently regulate--is so accumulated that the only way to reduce the risk is to issue debt, which reduces buying "power"--the alpha risk--even more, and increases supply.) More and more, over time, the surplus occurs less by adding supply than by reducing demand (classic overproduction), which conservatives falsely refer to as "supply-side" economics. Who sacrifices to gain the surplus is "the risk" to be philosophically constructed and is essentially the debate we currently have over policies and programs that will keep us out of recession.

In order to determine the direction of the risk (the capacity to self-determine), it is necessary to occupy the policy space in the gamma dimension where risk is systematically managed (governed) in the representative form. Since we see a divergence of philosophy and practice over time, we see a kind of quantum entanglement of the risk that clearly identifies the position required to avoid taking the risk.

For example, when Occupy Wall Street occurs, there is a quantum-mechanical entanglement that conservative philosophy reacts to with rhetorical hyper-tropisms. Governance becomes a function of dogmatic rigor...we need to return to our roots, our foundation, our heritage, conservatives proclaim, and we hear things like, "the protesters don't know how wealth is created," which infers, in true Hamiltonian form, they are too ignorant--too uncivil--to know any better. It is "us" and "them" by construction of the argument, but admitting to it is a moral hazard. Not submitting to higher authority (governance of the best and the brightest), the one-percent contends, is to solicit class warfare and wantonly endanger civil society.

Quite the contrary. Occupy protesters know very well how wealth is created, and they know very well that capital is not productive if they are not at work producing it. They know very well that the capital to reduce debt-to-equity is not being used to create jobs (supply), it is being used to create debt. They know all too well that unemployment is the objective (the value of their austerity surplused as the private property of the upper class), not shared prosperity.

Debt (unemployment due to unproductive use of capital) is the supply being added, effectively raising the economic rent. Raising the rent turns equity (self-determination) into debt, and the vast majority into credit-score slaves.

Unproductive use of capital despoils the consumer...the prudent regulator with the power to determine (the quantum, pluralistic power of numbers to apply risk, which in the case of the upper class is value surplused disproportionate to their numbers). The consumer is demoralized, willing to do the bidding of the master for economic security and social mobility. The Occupiers are more than just animals, though, willing only to despoil the debt with productivity and make sure despoilers get their due.

Robbing labor of the value (the power) of self-determination is the objective, the reality, of capitalism, not the shared prosperity a free market provides (which assures despoilers get their due in short order). To tell victims they do not deserve an equal share because they are unproductive, because they lack the value (the civility) of those who manage the capital to victimize them, is to invoke the moral hazard (the incivility) capitalists say it is imperative to forswear--class warfare.

Instead of creating jobs and adding supply, capital is being distributed to create unemployment. Capital neo-classically demanded and consumed in speculative markets is where the risk is entangled, positioned, and arbitraged with the desired quantum effect. By focusing its value on the demand and consumption dimensions, rather than the value of labor (the power of the prudent regulator), capital is deliberately (systematically) horded to accumulate the wealth and power (the quantum effect) necessary to self-determine.

The Occupiers very clearly observe a quantity that is not "supply-side" driven, but a demand-side deprivation falsely postulated as benefiting them. They detect a con game to exact a detriment by promising prosperity--what criminals do, but because it is all entangled on Wall Street the detriment is exacted without the assumption of liability because it is presumed to function with the legitimacy (the philosophy of risk) a free-market provides.

(Remember that a free market requires full participation. If you did not participate and you, thus, have no income, it is your own fault. Hence, the marketplace is freely self-determined, ontologically entangled, and because of this unpredictable, probabilistic, quantum entanglement, the result is legitimately derived. Since the result is probabilistically ontological, the results are "objective" as Ayn Rand describes it, for example, and as Nietzsche explains, the results are "Beyond Good and Evil").

Understand, when Wall Street quants transfer risk, the quantum exchanged is entangled. Default swaps, for example, are a means of transferring risk (which, by the way, is a measure of risk that is exchanged in the dark). The quantum effect is not limited to the swaps market, which few people understand beyond its participants. It is a way to apply risk to the lower classes (the ninety-nine percent) in the dark.

The risk is applied in the dark so that it is not detectable (a quantum uncertainty) until it has an effect. Application of the risk can then be argued as ontologically derived (a quantum mechanism, unpredictable and probabilistic, like a free market), and thus legitimately free and open to anyone willing to take the risk. If the reward is taxed away or the market regulated, conservatives say, the incentive to produce what consumers demand (the will to take risk) is diminished. (Of course, this argument is nonsense. Most of the risk inherent to capitalism is consolidation of income--buying power. The incentive to produce inversely correlates with the accumulation of the income to demand it, and since it is the goal of capitalists to make money, not necessarily produce--which adds supply and disinflates prices, "the risk" consolidates with income. This income-deficit is falsely argued by reactionaries to be a deficiency of risk-taking. The incentive to take risk is not, however, value that is missing or lacking, but simply consolidated--misdirected--into a too-big-to-fail proportion that is fully assumed, in priority, to be lost without government intervention. What results is state capitalism, what Marx called "anti-socialist socialism," and what capitalists falsely refer to, post hoc, as imprudent regulatory authority that kills the incentive to create jobs. Understand that this fully assumed risk of loss is the feeling--the thrill...the quantum risk--capitalists have of gaining wealth and power, and keeping it, in defiance of the law of large numbers.) Declining demand (the lack of productive investment that adds supply and the income--the employment--to demand it), conservatives explain, is the entangled, quantum effect (the falling income of the ninety-nine percent) that expresses as populist sentiment, not a decline of income. (Income is rising just fine, all be it for the top one percent, but remember, according to conservative philosophy, this is not a zero-sum because it provides the incentive for labor to be more productive, which resists shortages, and thus hyper-inflation.)

Declining demand does not derive from the lack of income, according to conservative philosophy of the risk, because it implies that labor is its integral value. Declining demand, rather, is the result of low productivity--the more productive labor is, the more money it makes, which leads to hyper-tropic, reactionary rhetoric like, "get a job" when unemployment is at depressionary levels. (In other words, that's why conservatives never make much sense. Ideology prevents them from properly identifying the derived and integral parts that calculate the probable direction, position, and thus the space the risk proportion occupies at any particular time. This also accounts for most of the beta volatility--the entropic value--concomitant to organized consolidation of the risk proportion which, ironically, is supposed to lower the entropic value).

According to reactionaries, the problem is not the lack of income since keeping labor costs low is disinflationary. Modern economic theory, you see, focuses on consumer demand--creating debt and managing the money supply to resist the declining rate of profit. Of course, neo-classically, monetizing debt does not have a disinflationary, quantum effect. It has an entangled, stagflationary effect that renders the practical concept of labor value (unaccumulated income and the deflationary risk proportion that goes with it) as a value to be resisted by any and all means. Hence, disinflation, rather than being the benefit (the freedom) that a free market naturally provides to prudently regulate right down to each and every individual, is redefined, neo-classically, as a function of its consolidated value--adding supply at an economy-of-scale, volume discount against declining consumer income (demand) and rising unemployment.

The declining demand (zero-sum reduction of consumer income by reducing the amount of labor demanded) accounts for the amount of government regulation added. The demand (the power of the prudent regulator) is added to the size of government and is the entangled quantity that gains a gamma-risk proportion.

(It is important to understand here that competitive innovation is not considered by capitalists to be value that accrues to labor. Labor-saving devices are not employed to make labor easier at the same price, which increases the value of labor by making it more productive, but to increase the return on investment--the value of accumulated capital. The accumulation in zero-sum, you see, renders labor less productive, not more, and that is why there is so much confusion about the reward that derives from the risk. The legitimately derived reward is so entangled with varying, ideological quantifications of its, distributive, proportional attributes, its objective reality is reduced to whoever has accumulated the most wealth and power to determine it, which is the power to self-determine, or prudently regulate as one sees fit in the pursuit of liberty.)

The reaction to regulation is that it does not allow for the liberty to organize as one sees fit, and that liberty (essentially derived from the incentive to control the cost of labor as a matter of prudential regulation) is value that is legitimately "self" determined. This value of the risk (its legitimately derived accountability) is, according to reactionaries, not only at the foundation of what it means to be American, but is at the root of the problems that plague us.

Industries and markets are merged (deliberately organized) so that labor costs are minimized while profits are maximized (stagflation and a continuously rising debt-to-equity). This, you see, is a deliberate act--an organizational technology--to gain profit by causing detriment, and since the capital derived by this technology is not converted back into labor value (disinflationary, competitive, innovatively productive capacity), but instead used to deflate wages and salaries of the ninety-nine percent, the effective quantum value of "the risk" (the fully assumed loss) is evermore probable.

Populist sentiment that reactionaries claim unnaturally resists the way things are and should be, resistance they say will result in a crisis, naturally occurs to deconsolidate the risk and prevent the crisis. (Correct! The implication here is that reactionaries want crises. It is the opportunity to react. It is the opportunity to foreclose on value accumulated in the lower classes.) So, when Bank of America reacts to deflationary crises with a massive, hubba-hubba foreclosure program, the quantum entanglement increases to a ninety-nine percent risk proportion and naturally tends to occupy the critical policy space that governs the risk--the space we refer to as self-determination...the space that must be occupied to demonstrate, or verify, how much power you have. Remember that Bank of America says its reaction is only natural...and acting contrary to its natural "objective" (its self-interest) is, like Ayn Rand says, the ultimate moral hazard--it will surely result in crises that, you see, the reaction is sure to cause.

Populist sentiment (declining consumer demand transformed into political demand), conservatives contend, is not class warfare. It is an economic technicality that "the mob" does not understand.

Turning consumer demand into political demand is a critical, technical error. The reason we use consumer demand to quantify value, instead of labor value, for example, is because labor tends to transform into political risk, which inflates costs and entangles economic risk. This entanglement is, you see, conservatives say, the uncertainty (the complexity that the non-elite are too slow or "intellectually lazy" to understand) that prevents economic growth and debt reduction.

In order to cause a distribution (increase demand for added supply so that, as conservatives will have it, there is no disinflationary effect, which according to neo-classical economics is bad because it empowers labor and reduces profits) it is necessary to free capital from taxation and government regulation. If capital is not freed from oppression (the political demands of empowered labor value), it will not distribute--it is horded (and kept in the dark), like we have now.

Capital is grossed and hidden in largely dark markets until the value of labor is reduced to economic desperation. At that point the philosophy of self-determination is invoked to identify the problem as self-oppression (Ayn Rand's "A is A" identity hypothesis and Herman Cain's "blame yourself" thesis). It is the point at which labor (including the small proprietor) seeks to cause a distribution through government process--essentially taxing and spending to turn accumulated wealth (and power) back into labor value (working capital), which is "the risk" neo-classically identified as consumer demand (buying power).

(Since buying power is the critical measure of the prudent regulator--for the ability to self-determine--it is necessary to consolidate this power to avoid its oppression and demand that others take the risk. This is accomplished by essentially "swapping" the role of oppressor and oppressed while, at the same time, retaining the original position--Rand's "A is A" identity--to avoid the liability of rigging the market and robbing consumers of their regulatory capacity. This capacity is, you see, the power of governance, or the ability to self-determine, and you can't be the governor if you are governed. Hence, we have the working hypothesis, "government is the problem and not the solution" and, at the same time, the practical theory that consumer demand is at the fundament of economic value where government, properly understood, is nothing but a moral hazard.

Being unwittingly stuck with all the risk is no accident. You are a likely counterparty--a likely victim--for consumption of "the risk" if you do not have the buying power to, for example, bid prices up and swap the risk in dark markets.)

According to the proponents of consolidated capitalism, the populus does not understand that government, not Wall Street, is the oppressor. Those who adamantly advocate for dark markets and counterparty "swaps" to effectively identify "the risk" and thus efficiently distribute capital to control it, like we are doing now, say this is the free market at work.

The more free-market "capitalism" we have (the more markets are allowed to freely consolidate into efficient, too-big-to-fail economies of scale), conservatives contend, the more private enterprise occupies the space otherwise used to oppress us by keeping demand (income) dependent on government action. It is as necessary to declare our independence now as it was in 1776. (Notice here that the argument is reduced to a functional binomialism. The potential, entropic value of consolidating the risk proportion--the increased entropy of "making" markets more efficient, or orderly, by commanding labor value, or income, with so-called consumer-demand measures--is operationalized with a predictable, binomial variation. The choice--the capacity to prudentially regulate--is binomially determined: either big government or a too-big-to-fail corporate state. It is here we all understand that consolidation of industry and markets causes the need for big government to prevent what is "too big to fail" from failing.)

Government, then, according to conservatives, causes demand reduction by taxing, spending, and regulating what is otherwise a free-and-open market. Government, they say, "crowds out" the prudent regulator, which they say "adds" risk, but as we know, risk is not added, it is consolidated. It is deliberately organized into an economy-of-scale efficiency that hides in the dark to avoid "the risk" of liability, which eventually transforms into, and presents as, the demand for government and sovereign debt. "Sovereign," remember, means debt that is largely paid (consumed) by "We the People" (the ninety-nine percent), collected by the top, one percent with the legal authority to tax and spend, or not, by means of due (public) process. Those who accumulate value by the invisible hand of providence (public processes), you see, are next to God...they are supra-sovereign. They are so enlightened with the secret knowledge of our true, "objective" reality (class identity verified by the capacity to make money and use buying power), they can see what the rest of us cannot see--the invisible hand doing its handy work (making money), without liability, in the dark. We can't presume to sue what "We the People" can't see, can't do, or properly understand, right?

The invisible hand (dark markets) ontologically commands the risk--it as an act of God, in whom we trust, and it is imprudent to try and regulate the providential (the objective) hand of God. So, for example, according to the Objectivist, reactionary version of this natural philosophy, when we experience a recession, it is best to just let God's hand play out, providentially consolidating wealth and power into the hands of those naturally selected to prudently regulate risk with, for example, dark markets.

The fatal flaw of Objectivist, natural philosophy is that it is reactionary--it is fallaciously post hoc. Without ensuring deconsolidation of the risk in priority (the fully assumed risk of loss consumed in priority by the prudent regulator), the consumer is not empowered to demand the objective reality (the self-determination) it professes.

Reactionaries are always sure to identify populist sentiment with high entropic value. Populist movements indicate impending chaos, confirming what they always knew to be true, that disestablishment of conservative values and institutions always re-establish. The ensuing chaos of a populist sentiment (not the gamma-risk proportion that accumulates with the established consolidation of wealth and power) objectively identifies the risk of loss that is fully assumed (i.e., the risk of loss correlates with the determinant without deviation and is thus fully assumed in priority). While David Hume, for example, reflected on the French Revolution as the evidence that supports the conservative hypothesis of natural, elite authority, Karl Marx's assessment of the risk was quite different.

According to Marx, the entropic value indicates impending change that quantifies (synthesizes) the risk proportion. The objective reality that occurred, as history unfolded, was Hume's hypothesis synthesized with Marx's concept of socialism. We had, for a time, state socialism versus state capitalism with a well-defined, binomial structure of global power.

Conservatives, now claiming the end of history with the dominance of global capitalism, are quite sure of their conservative hypothesis. They react to any challenge to established authority with absolute confidence, and a sense of absolute power. They are sure, absolutely, "We" naturally tend to a low entropic value by continuously organizing toward a singularity of the quantum risk (merging and acquiring into an ever-smaller policy space with an ever-larger span of control), despite increasing entropic value world wide.

To control entropic value (to command it and direct it to resist the declining rate of profit) central banks (a singular, coordinated quantum that is too big, and too entangled, to fail) react to the probable risk proportion by managing the money supply (the quantum), and much of this activity occurs in the dark (the entanglement). (Remember that a free market requires the quantum value of the risk not be in the dark. If it is, it is impossible for the consumer to be the prudent regulator.) The Fed, for example, recently disclosed its secret trillion-dollar transaction with the financial sector to forestall financial collapse, but without forestalling foreclosure. (Keep in mind that the total amount spent to bailout big financial establishments is currently estimated at over $120 trillion. At the same time, virtually nothing is made available to prevent the property of the lower classes from being confiscated, and in many cases these victims of private enterprise--their property unprotected by the state--are still obligated to pay the mortgage and the costs of foreclosure on property they do not own sold short. Not only did the ninety-nine percent get royally scammed, but paid the scammers--the consumers demanding it--a big bonus to do it! So, if conservatives cannot see what the gamma-risk proportion looks like because they are always too busy lurking in the dark, this is what objective reality really looks like.)

The reason this kind of macro-risk management occurs in the dark is not because its disclosure would cause financial panic, but because it rewards rampant psychosis on Wall Street...the same people that tell the Occupiers to "get a job" and "take a bath"...the same people who believe it is normal to allow for massive foreclosures and widespread economic desperation while its perpetrators are rewarded, and sustained, in zero-sum through the Federal Reserve System.

The Super Ego as Prudential Regulator

Being in a state of highly consolidated wealth requires a prudential, super ego to regulate the risk. The risk is consolidated and structurally organized to control its distribution so that its effect can be philosophically rationalized as generally beneficial.

Typically, the philosophy of risk associated with consolidated wealth is an appeal to the super ego. The system of governance becomes so complex it appears necessary to consolidate power into the hands of a few supermen capable of forging order from the apparent chaos (the entropic value of the risk proportion discussed in previous articles on this site). The chaos (the value of a supposed uncertainty), keep in mind, is risk-value these saviors have caused, accumulated, and thus apply by deliberate necessity, which gives their power the appearance of a popular consent (naturally endowed to achieve a state of low entropy). These supermen not only have the natural ability (the power) to dominate (achieve success by risking capital), but also have what appears to be the wisdom to steer us all from moral hazards by consolidating the risk into the hands of elite power (networking the externalities to achieve low entropic value, which is measured with an expanding margin of profit).

If we experience a declining rate of profit (deflation), then we need more consolidation, conservatives contend, not deconsolidation. (Deconsolidation is considered to be a moral hazard despite the more of it we have the less probability of deflation. Since the probability of deflation provides the possibility for consolidating equity by expanding debt, or increasing debt-to-equity, capitalism tends to deflation but stops and reverses short of a declining rate of profit where the risk goes fully gamma. This is where a distribution MUST occur from the accumulation--not monetized--because a declining rate of profit accrues more power--consumer demand--to The People. Remember that monetizing the debt causes inflation, which reduces consumer demand, or buying "power.") Liberals who argue we need more consolidation, but with more regulation, are a subset of this conservative risk assessment and essentially delimit the current debate to prudentially regulating the risk proportion (Dodd-Frank instead of Glass-Steagall, for example). Reducing debt is being described and explained as a function of deliberate, organized consolidation, converging the left and the right into one, consolidated, reactionary element that both the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street perceive to be the opposition.

What happens then, as we have seen following the Great Recession, is even more consolidation of the risk (even more errors), which provides even more need (validation) for reactionary, rather than pro-actionary, politics. The deliberative, prudential process results in validation (the Aristotelian logic that Ayn Rand uses) rather than verification (the empirical logic that Thomas Jefferson favored) of a popular consent.

While the reactionary element tends to tout its moral (Aristotelian, aristocratic) strength (its consolidated power, its "super" ego) as the legacy of a pluralistic tendency that goes back to the American Revolution, America's founders nevertheless considered concentration of power to be the very height of imprudence. To resist validating the errors (the incivility) that naturally accumulates with consolidated power, they sought to regulate it with civil (Constitutional) rights naturally endowed and empirically verified (tested) by demonstration of popular consent (unabridged freedom of speech and assembly being among the first and foremost). Occupy Wall Street, you see, does not indicate "collapse of our moral system" (which is what the king said about the American Revolution), but signals that the empirical value of the Enlightenment is alive and well...much to the demoralization of would-be kings.

At this point in our political-economic history, in a state of highly consolidated risk, we are, for example, relying on a "super committee" to arbitrate a dangerously, oversized, economy-of-scale risk proportion. It is important to understand that this kind of macro management will not reduce the risk, economically or politically, but will accumulate it even more. (Today it's pepper spray, tomorrow it's...? What form of prudent incivility will the "super" ego bring us tomorrow?)

The super committee has ignored, for example, the problem that plagues us--too much consolidation, like repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. Instead, the committee's impasse is described as being over the left-wing delegation's intent to steer the committee toward a moral hazard--tax increases.

Having failed, then, to agree on budget cuts, the committee has determined the fate of our economy by procedural default. Cuts by "sequester" are highly deflationary--they will take effect while income is falling for ninety-nine percent of the population and rising for the top one percent.

Falling income combined with the sequester will accelerate declining, economic demand, and combined with the repeal of Glass-Steagall will accelerate the process of turning equity into debt. In other words, this process is designed to profit the top one percent at the expense of everyone else, increasing political demand which, instead of deconsolidating the risk (repealing the repeal of Glass-Steagall, for example), will result in more deregulation to get a more progressive tax code.

A more progressive tax code, however, will not have the expansionary effect that it did in the 90's without deconsolidating the banking sector like we did in 1933. Glass-Steagall, remember, was repealed and signed into law in 1999 at the final hour of the final day of the Clinton administration. President Clinton was advised by his Randian economic advisers that consolidation will increase the efficiency of markets (that it will expand the pie). Of course, we know now, as we knew then, that it does not. It liquidates equity into debt, efficiently consolidating industry and markets by supporting deflationary risk instead of resisting it. The result is declining income against rising prices (monetized debt)...the ultimate dream of Bank of America and Goldman Sachs--putting everyone in their proper class, providing prudentially shared prosperity through its regulated deprivation, by committee, of course.

Understand that the capacity for prudential regulation is not its consolidation. All the arguments that are elite modeling of the risk proportion (whether a legislative "super"-ego committee or Wall-Street quants, both of which hauntingly hark back to fascist tendencies for managing systemic risk from the top down) tend to fallaciously beg the question. These arguments that derive from a liberal-conservative philosophy of the risk add errors to the system when we need reduction.

One thing we know for sure, fascism is not the model for the prudent regulator, something that our founders knew very well and very carefully wrote it out of our constitutional form of government. That is why it has lasted for over 200 years...not because it encourages the consolidation of power, but because, contrary to what elite theorists are currently telling us, it is intended to resist it.

Consolidation of power, economic or political, does not achieve an economy-of-scale efficiency, it achieves an economy-of-scale deficiency! The evidence is overwhelmingly obvious and it takes a veritable army of conservative philosophes--technical elites empowered and compensated to apply the risk--algorithmically calculating the zero-sum reward (the deficiency) to appear ontologically derived.

Understand that the "proof" of this ontology is a philosophical endeavor. Despite what physicists (the quants) claim, describing reality as a confirmable hypothesis combined with its mathematical proof is a philosophical construction easily manipulated to fit a preconceived notion of reality. The history of science is full of mathematicians armed with mathematical descriptions that were empirically disconfirmed despite a predictive utility.

According to the quants, a theory that is not verifiable is not science, it is philosophy, which leads us to believe that philosophy is not a reliable means of knowing things, much less a prudential means of determining liability for the administration of justice or, for example, the equitable effect of tax policy.

So, we need technical elites empowered and compensated to apply the risk, which invokes the Iron Law of Oligarchy and suggests the mechanics of natural law determines our fates based on one's ability to calculate (quantify and manipulate) the odds. In other words, to manipulate the math to fit the prescribed outcome fallaciously describes an ontology of the outcome--a philosophical error that loads the system with quantifiable (knowable, predictable) risk.

Algorithmically calculating the zero-sum reward (the economy-of-scale deficiency) to appear ontologically derived and, therefore, prudently regulated with the legitimacy of natural law, the elite are armed with the "proof" of its mathematical description rather than the liability of its intentional, philosophical prescription.

That there are no prosecutions after the Great Recession like there was, for example, after the savings and loan crisis is because the risk is being described as force majeure--a product of nature. Its prosecution is, then, tantamount to prosecuting gravity for causing an apple to fall off a tree and bonk you on the head--the risk of loss is fully assumed.

A philosophy of risk is in technical operation here to exculpate the liability inherent to its organized consolidation, and this philosophy effectively governs the practical concept of self-determination and the ability of the person (including the corporate body) to prudentially regulate it in self-interest.

The self alone, according to this philosophy of risk, is the prudential regulator as long as we have a free market. (Remember, according to free-market theory, the freedom to choose--disposable income--affects the practical philosophy of selfishness. A selfish person is not likely to survive a free market, but a self-interested person is. Such a person is not solely self-determined, not without defeating the free market first, but is prudentially regulated by the determinations--the discretionary income--of others. To be completely self-determined and act selfishly, or imprudently, requires consolidating markets and accumulating discretionary income, or class warfare.) So, in order for the philosophy of the prudentially regulated self to be confirmed (to credibly "blame yourself" if you don't have a job, as one prominent conservative recently put it), it is necessary to ensure a free market, and conversely, if we do not have the power to self-determine, it must be because we don't have a free market.

The capacity to apply risk depends on income (like the ability to pay health-care premiums by government mandate, which leaves the consumer with virtually no means to control--demand--the cost and the marginal profit based on merit). The capacity to self-determine, then, is primarily a function of value imparted to labor, which according to modern economic theory is less important than consumer demand.

As long as we impart more value to consumer demand than the value actually imparted to labor, then we support (by super committee, for example) the capacity to "command" rather than "demand" the distribution of the risk--exactly what a free market is not.

Along with the failure of the super committee, the latest attempt to distribute the risk by means of constitutional mandate failed to pass the House as well. The right-wing delegation, despite holding out for making the Bush tax cuts permanent, apparently recognizes its philosophy of risk does not pass muster. Passing the super committee's cuts, or making the tax cuts permanent, either way, would not only make the costs and benefits of the Great Recession the "new normal," but would surely gain a gamma-burst proportion--the point at which the fully assumed risk of loss is fully consumed at present value.

As popular sentiment continues to swell against them, conservatives generally sense the need to reduce the gamma risk. The limit has been tested and the super ego wins, Constitutionally, by means of popular consent.

As our founders wisely recognized, popular consent is, by nature, the prudent regulator.

Prudential Regulation

Adopting consumer demand to value the marginal risk forces the value of labor to rely more on politics outside the economic marketplace.

Remember that the capacity to buy something or not--marginal, discretionary income--applies risk. While primarily considered an economic function, it is a political function, nevertheless. Buyers and sellers, depending on income, sanction in the marketplace, affecting the margin of profit and market behavior, or what is referred to as "alpha" (market) risk.

When we rely on analysis that primarily focuses on consumer demand to value the marginal risk, the value of labor (what is paid out to apply the risk inherent to prices--prudentially buying, or not buying, to regulate the behavior of producers in the alpha dimension) is diminished.

Keep in mind, as well, that capitalists do not want to admit that the free market has a political component. Politics is, rather, an unwelcome intrusion that causes all manner of inefficiency, increasing costs that pass to the consumer. They want to focus, instead, on economic efficiencies gained by consolidating, which diminishes the power of consumers to politically sanction in the marketplace. The diminished, political capacity creates demand for more government and increases the cost of doing business.

It is important to understand that the demand for government is not a zero-sum, leading conservatives to claim that government causes itself, but, of course, it does not. Reducing alpha risk (the ability to apply risk on demand without a collective, economy-of-scale) causes more than one unit of government.

Along with the political demand displaced from the alpha-risk dimension, which is added to the gamma-risk dimension, the need to regulate the regulator is also added. This is where we see self-determination (the alpha legitimacy of risk-reward) being reduced to the Iron Law. So the alpha ends up occupying space, for example, in Zuccotti Park, in a gamma-risk dimension. Self-interest and determination becomes "a risk to public health and safety" instead of safely occupying space in the alpha dimension. This is the point of inflection at which alpha risk goes gamma to control the effects of its accumulation.

When the alpha goes gamma is the opportunity to determine just exactly what space the risk will legitimately occupy at any particular time. It is the opportunity to control--prudentially regulate--the effective distribution of the risk with the force and legitimacy of elite, authoritative governance, both public and private. Risk is deliberately organized so that the will of higher authority is too big to fail--it is literally insurmountable--in the interest of "We The People" (in the republican and not the democratic form both politically and economically).

Once the risk goes gamma, its direction is critical because it has gained a catastrophic proportion. Risk accumulated into the gamma dimension demands certainty, and so we organize it to be too big to fail. The risk gains a full measure of certainty and, at the same time, transforms into beta-risk volatility (uncertainty), which gives the risk the appearance of an exculpatory, random ontology.

Not only is government a pre-existing condition for doing business (the gamma risk that is fully assumed in priority), but when industry and markets consolidate, demand for government is added. It is at this point that advocates of consolidation argue, post hoc, for reducing government. Its success, however, adds more demand for government and more than one unit to prudentially regulate the market.

The added demand for prudential regulation is mistaken for added risk, but risk has not been added, it has been transformed. What is added is elite, regulatory authority modeled to manage this phantom, added risk, and because the risk is modeled as added rather than transformed, the error propagates within the system.

The added error propagates the regulatory authority to manage the accumulation of error as added risk. The risk assessment then becomes so complex that a highly technical cadre develops to technically model the probable outcome of, and the necessary reaction to, the certainty of an accumulating risk proportion.

Remember, again, the accumulating risk proportion is a zero-sum--it accumulates from the alpha dimension and transforms into regulatory (gamma) risk. When, however, the risk goes gamma, the need to govern it propagates. So we have, for example, expansion of the SEC to now include the Risk, Strategy and Financial Innovation Division promulgated to technically model and manage risk that is arbitraged to cause systemic (consolidated) risk rather than applied to prudentially regulate it in the alpha dimension where government is needed (demanded) least.

If we want to have government that governs least, as Jefferson described it, it is necessary to deconsolidate the risk.

Resorting to a "super committee" and a balanced budget by constitutional mandate to exact detriment (and accumulate more risk) in the name of the general welfare is far from the Jeffersonian ideal.

Demand Economics (Geeks and Greeks)

While classical economic theory posits that labor is the source of economic value, neo-classical theory assigns consumer demand to that value.

The new assignment of fundamental value to the consumer ideologically accommodates conservative philosophy of the risk in a post-industrial environment. Marx's theory of labor value, which all classical economists subscribed, is suppressed to accommodate a theory of value that supports arbitrage of the risk proportion. Market value is not how much work is imparted, but with the extension of credit (inflation, unemployment, and massive debt-to-equity), value is whatever the market is willing to pay for it. That way valuations are legitimately arbitraged (put at risk, remembering that the reward is legitimately commensurate with the size of the risk) without adding supply, exculpating the liability of gaining profit by causing detriment, the Great Recession being the latest example.

Assessing what caused the Great Recession includes, for example, the Community Reinvestment Act in which mortgages were written without the means to pay it. That is, market prices were based on what the market would bear, not the value imparted to labor (what wages and salaries could afford to pay). The entire system was put at risk. The risk proportion was huge, and the reward is proportionally huge (its political value currently estimated at ninety-nine percent of the probable risk assessment and rising). If there is blame to be imparted, Wall Street can claim the geek gods (the technocratic elite) of public and private finance modeled the risk with an inscrutable complexity that can only be described as fateful, but this claim of ignorance is not enough to exculpate the value consumed from risk that is fully assumed.

There has to be a philosophy to explain the legitimate value of the risk proportion. Although equities continue to rise in value, it is not being "expropriated" from labor as classically described, but legitimately "demanded" in the marketplace.

Profits are generated on demand and the supply of money available to demand it legitimately directs the risk according to market forces (the analog to Greek gods on Mount Olympus). Any Socratic challenge to this ontological mythology, you may have noticed, is tantamount to political-economic heresy...it is unpatriotic...it is counter-revolutionary!

We see then how demand economics provides technical support for a classical outcome that is philosophically outmoded. While we no longer consider the rigors of the free market a legitimate means of mass deprivation for the common good, the accumulated supply of money is nevertheless being directed by the top one percent to exact deprivation because consumer markets (the geek gods) demand it.

The power to exact detriment is in the lap of the gods, you see. Wall Street geeks crunch and tweak so fate befalls the weaker links. If success eludes the toil you bear, it is the self you must at first forswear. It's not geeks that put you in the streets, but looters, vandals, and freeloading Greeks.

Ninety-Nine Percent

Now that there is ample evidence the risk proportion is fully gamma (Occupy Wall Street, for example), a distribution will occur on the accumulation.

Political pressure to occupy the critical policy space of financial investment will be relieved enough to set up for the next crisis of liquidity. The risk, rather than deconsolidated, will be temporized--extended over time to secure occupation of the critical space that deliberately consolidates capital and converts it into accumulated wealth (massive debt) and political power (the massive, too-big-to-fail risk associated with the debt). Rather than reduction of accumulated risk, the probability of class warfare is kept at ninety-nine percent.

At ninety-nine percent, the risk of loss is fully assumed. Wall Street perp-walks (mostly insider trading) will give the appearance of risk reduction, but it occurs to support, not resist, maintaining the accumulated risk proportion (40 percent of all profits to the financial sector on a 4-1 debt-to-equity). The debt will continue to liquidate equity, but at a slower rate, giving the appearance of an improving economy.

Equity shares will rise to reflect the accumulation of value which, ironically, diminishes the capacity to sustain it. We continue to see, for example, productivity rising with increasing momentum against declining income (which accumulates value in the top one percent), setting the macros up for another big short--a double dip that will be attributed to market mechanics and not a deliberate detriment.

It is a deliberate detriment, however, and the proportion of the risk assumed is determined by income class. Ninety-nine percent is fully expected to sacrifice for the benefit of the top one percent who, according to conservative philosophy of the risk, are demonstrably best able to determine the general welfare by application of their self-interest. This application of "interest" (economic rent) is the measure of self-determination, and how much interest you pay is confirmed (but actually determined) by accumulation of wealth and power (the accumulation of risk). The accumulated benefit is used to produce income exacted from the productivity of the lower classes through application of the accumulated risk (either you pay the rent--sacrifice for the benefit of those who master society's resources--or suffer deprivation of social resources to which, by natural right, no one is entitled to except by having earned it in the free market).

Keep in mind that the detriment is exacted by means of market mechanics directed by a consolidated, risk proportion (the accumulated benefit in a class proportion). Achieving an economy-of-scale (organizationally defeating free-market mechanics) is touted as a functionally beneficial means of controlling the risks (the direct, democratic accountability) of the free market.

Consolidating capital, industry and markets is supposed to make us more productive, and it does that, but with high inflation and unemployment. (Understand here that the productivity is generated from the demand-side while conservatives argue it is "supply-side." It is a deliberate deceit constructed to exculpate the risk of liability because, remember, the legitimacy of the profit is that it adds supply, which creates jobs and controls inflation.) These risk attributes (inflation and unemployment symptomatic of demand-side management of the risk) accumulate because the means to control them (the free market) is diminished to maximize the profit margin (the empirical measure of success that conservatives say is legitimately earned without any additional liability because the risk of loss is fully assumed by free-market mechanics in priority).

Keep in mind that, according to conservatives, the zero-sum distribution of risk and reward (the class proportion) is not warfare because it adjusts the macros for capital investment which, they say, is generally beneficial. At the same time, they argue, large (supra-sovereign) corporates are hording cash and running up huge sovereign debt (which they are beyond the liability to pay) because the business environment is too uncertain. This uncertainty, however, is an extortion scheme using the accumulated value.

If the accumulation is not free of tax liability (being supra-sovereign) then the certain choice is larger sovereign debt or massive austerity (a liability to be collectively paid by "The People" who are sovereign and, thus, self-determined). In either case, the result is diminished demand--higher demand against a lower dollar, or a higher dollar against lower demand. This extortion scheme is possible only because the value (the risk) is too consolidated. That is, in order to properly adjust for this problem, providing the stability (the liability) of a popular consent, it is neccessary to deconsolidate the risk value.

A philosophy of supra-sovereignty (corporate bodies so big that they are beyond the accountability of sovereign power to achieve the general benefit of economy-of-scale efficiency) has, however, developed to explain the discrepancy between conservative values and the apparent lack of popular consent.

Now we have "neo-conservative" values that know no sovereign boundary (because as Ayn Rand explains, for example, they represent universally "objective" truth, which is difficult for the sovereign, non-elite to ascertain). These newly evolved values are supposed to provide a general, global benefit, but a highly divisible (class-warfare) distribution of the risk actually occurs. So we see, for example, the emergence of the "super committee" to reconcile, and organizationally validate by bureaucratic default, the divergence of conservative, economic philosophy and the political "demand" that has accumulated into an empirically verifiable, ninety-nine percent risk proportion.

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.