Applied Recognition Economics
From physical need
to provision.
Meeting a need can require someone else’s resources, time and work. Economics must explain how that provision becomes possible and what it does to everyone involved.
In Recognition Science, moral law belongs to the physical structure of reality. Economic arrangements change states within that structure: what each person can do, what they bear, and what remains owed. The physical moral account supplies that connection: relations have states, actions have authors, obligations depend on what happened, and continued action requires physical means. The diagrams connect these results to economic decisions and show why agreeing on a record does not make it true.
Preparation, continuing supply, rates and reserves.
What was requested, agreed, done and left unmet.
The actor, recipient and everyone else affected.
A real, authorized course that satisfies the ethical conditions.
Resources and response history
An earlier response can require
more preparation energy.
The request is encoded as 2. The output starts at 1, then becomes correct. Compare the output with the request at three successive boundaries, using a separately prepared pair of signals each time.
A wrong pair, (1, 2), needs 5 units of preparation energy and exports ½ unit. A matching pair, (2, 2), needs 8 units and exports nothing. Both outputs remain in the physical account.
Try the prepared comparison bank
The energy unit is fixed by the same calibration in both schedules. Inputs are prepared independently; this example does not reuse earlier outputs.
Both schedules end with the same correct response. The earlier one has less accumulated charge and less export, but needs 21 units to prepare. The later one needs 18. This is a property of this protocol, not a recommendation to delay.
Accumulated charge, signed burden change and physical energy answer different questions. Signed changes telescope to the endpoints. The retained charge remembers the waiting history. Converting that charge to exported energy requires actual comparison executions and a measured calibration. Export is only part of the preparation account.
A constructive duty calculation
Help must preserve
both sides of the supply.
Consider two maintained processes, each assigned to a distinct patient in the model. A third agent controls their feed valves. The controller can transfer material from one supply tank to the other. Each process needs 2 units through the chosen interval.
In the specified physical interpretation, interrupting either feed raises that patient’s burden. Keeping both feeds open preserves their reference states. The zero-harm rule admits only joint maintenance; the material account determines whether it is possible.
Find an adequate transfer
Permission is a separate fact about the action and its history. The calculation cannot create it.
These are controlled process models with a declared patient interpretation, not measured human physiology. No labor or third-party effect may be left out when the model is applied to people.
With 5 units at the source and 1 at the recipient, every transfer from 1 to 3 units funds both processes. The personal-cost chart reads the two maintained processes, not their supply tanks. All adequate transfers tie, including one that uses the source’s last unit at the end of the interval. The physical constraint protects supply through that interval; a longer horizon requires a new calculation. With only 2 at the source and 1 at the recipient, none exists. That failure identifies a shortage; it does not justify harming either person.
Applying the model to a real decision
Check the whole course of action.
- Use the real available plans. A favorable effect does not supply missing material, a valve, an observation or someone else’s agreement.
- Retain the actual past. Equal current balances can conceal different promises and performance. Repairing the present does not erase an earlier breach.
- Identify every affected person and relation. A recipient’s improvement cannot stand in for the worker’s condition or a third person’s loss.
- Check the path, then the choice. An acceptable endpoint can hide an unacceptable intermediate action. Among eligible, admissible plans, the decision rule can require restoration when every non-restoring option is strictly worse for at least one represented person and better for none.
What the model establishes
The model brings the physical feasibility tests, response-history accounting and constructive assistance theorem together. The food example and the 505-request delivery calculation track individual consequences.
What still needs to be established
The complete physical identification of human need, agency and all affected relations; the governing response when no available action meets every requirement; and evidence from a prospective application. Those identifications and rules must be derived within the physical moral account.
Assistance and agency
Providing care
when someone cannot act.
The account keeps two foundations together. A description of the whole must preserve the needs, effects and obligations of its members; a description of the members must preserve their shared physical constraints and count each resource once. The RS physical ethical framework governs the relations and actions that these descriptions retain.
An assisted-care example represents a patient who performs no work or scheduled action during the modeled period. A helper prepares food, stores it, transfers it and assists intake. The example retains both people's reserves, the patient's prior permission and the helper's authorized work. The formal model and 216 reserve-and-permission cases have been checked. Insufficient reserves for either person or missing permission prevent the plan.
The calculation then follows both people through the next maintenance response. Each has an internal relation with a burden of ¼ capacity unit; a funded response removes that burden and spends ¼ unit. After care, the patient can fund this response. The helper can also fund it, but needs one additional initial reserve unit to retain capacity afterward. Removing both burdens alone does not establish that both people can continue.
Within the example’s two available plans, an authorized plan preserving both people’s capacity exists if and only if assisted intake is authorized and the helper has additional reserve. The recipient contributes no labor, and each internal response changes only that person’s own relation. These are consequences of the stated response law and calibration.
The moral assessment must also establish when providing or withholding care is required, permissible or unjustified across the entire history, including the effects on the helper and others. Care for someone who has never been able to consent requires an account of authority beyond this example.
Consciousness, agency and authority
Being affected, being able to act and being authorized to act are different relations. The patient’s inability to perform the work does not remove their need or transfer their standing to the helper. A complete account of care must retain the patient’s experience, the helper’s capacity and the authority under which assistance occurs.
Explore the economic questions
Continue with the economics overview for examples of provision, individual needs and shared resources, or the worked cases for assistance, authority and responsibility.