Алексей Ощепков – Triologues of Interdependent People (страница 6)

“Well… that’s one way to put it,” Unkno drawled. “But I’ll concede your point: it would be odd to expect we’d instantly uncover *the* ultimate Cause behind everything. Our greatly esteemed—by both you and me—Joseph-Louis Lagrange, whom I’ll state plainly was, alongside the great Euler, one of the foremost mathematicians of the 18th century… Yet! He was compelled to invent something he called ‘action.’ Fine—he invented it. But *you*?”

“When he invented it,” Dr. Cernus said, “he merely showed that the equations of motion in mechanics follow from minimizing this ‘action.’ In other words, among all possible equations describing motion, those that minimize action are the ones that ‘govern’ the system. He didn’t need to prove anything about the inner nature of this mysterious ‘action.’ Nature seeks to economize on action—in Lagrange’s special, far-from-obvious sense. The Lagrangian works—hence we needed the Lagrangian.”

“So you hope to stumble upon a ‘Cernusian’?” Unkno asked, not even bothering to inflect his words with doubt—but immediately making room for hope. “Though Hamilton’s formalism, developed 45 years later, is arguably more fundamental and organic.”

“Something along those lines. We’re searching within today’s crisis-ridden economy. And here we have turbulence. Who knows what might be found under a snag in murky water? But to find it, we need—at minimum—an experimental apparatus. Lagrange and Hamilton had mechanics, which supplied an endless stream of empirical data. Moreover, we must remember: in living systems—including economics, as you rightly noted—we’ll never observe a truly ‘final striving.’ To generate experimental data, we must engage with structural elements. So—what might serve as objects for structural analysis?”

“Not the faintest idea,” said Rr. Unkno.

“To ensure nothing essential or fundamental slips through the cracks, we’ll broaden the concept of ‘economic rules.’”

“Still no clarity,” Unkno remarked. “In any game-theoretic framework, three things exist: players, rules, and incentives. In our current abstract model of the economy, we clearly have only economic actors—firms and individuals. On the other two counts, there’s nothing but void.”

“Fair enough,” Dr. Cernus agreed. “Let it be so. How might we classify actors in general?”

“Too vague a question.”

“Let me refine it: the classification should help us work with the assumption that boundaries exist in the economy. Suppose rules mostly define which red lines must not be crossed.”

“Classify by degree of freedom relative to behavioural boundaries?” Unkno ventured. “Something like estates?”

“Almost,” said Cernus. “Let me begin—with an extreme. Some economic actors treat all manner of boundaries with utter contempt.”

“Criminals, then?”

“Yes. But if we include those who aid them—willingly, unwittingly, or often without even realizing it—the aggregate represents significant economic flows. Beyond high passionarity, what characterizes such actors? What distinguishes them from ordinary ones?”

Rr. Unkno fell silent for a moment.

“They form strong bonds,” he finally said. “Their connections are often far stronger than any legally binding contract. Certain ‘codes.’ Honour.”

“Exactly!” Dr. Cernus exclaimed. “And note something crucial: these ‘strong interactions’ arise not only among passionaries themselves—whether in pairs or larger clans—but also between a passionate actor and an ordinary accomplice. Such ties are frequently much stronger than typical legal relationships. I needn’t cite prostitution (where illegal) or arms trafficking—though these, plus trade in other prohibited goods and services, constitute a share of any economy too large to ignore. Vast amounts of commerce occur in the ‘grey zone’—ordinary goods sold without proper certification for that territory. Ordinary people buy them in ordinary shops. True, big chains rarely carry such items—but small retailers almost always stock either counterfeit or dubious merchandise.”

“So what?” said Rr. Unkno. “They get caught, they don’t—does anyone feel hot or cold? The state suffers no harm as long as the criminal element remains small.”

“It remains small precisely because apprehending such actors yields little benefit—even for law enforcement. I wish to draw your attention to the fact that this turnover never enters official statistics. Or rather, it’s worse: it *does* enter, but indirectly—distorting the very correlations that would aid factor analysis. For example, bread consumption traditionally correlated with actual residential population density. But migrants bake flatbreads in mini-bakeries and sell them off the books. Electricity use, also tied to population density, suddenly diverges from the bread index. Thus, given how much migrant activity occurs in grey or black markets, this layer of actors is substantial. Moreover, these actors periodically spawn new dangerous hotspots—they’re constantly hunting for novel schemes. And this isn’t just about so-called phone scammers, who are prominent partly due to sponsorship by geopolitical rivals. All other rogues are equally alert. In short—these are plasma people. Charged.”

“Ah,” Rr. Unkno said, comprehension dawning. “I see where you’re headed at last. Then let’s call them *ionized*. ‘Charged’ sounds undeservedly positive for such actors.”

“Excellent,” Dr. Cernus smiled—but Rr. Unkno couldn’t see it. “Next, we consider the following stratum of economic actors, ranked by their reverence for boundaries.”

“I’ve already guessed. Now comes gas.”

“Yep. Or smoke. Broadly, everyone operating ‘through crypto’ and various kinds of remote workers. Also included are those ‘self-employed’ who route only a fraction of their turnover through special accounts or even sole-proprietorship accounts. This varies by country, but such actors abound everywhere. The state finds them extremely hard to track, let alone ‘mobilize’—by which I mean compel to do something the state wants, but which these individuals either dislike, find too tedious, or simply never learn about. They’re ‘cloud’ people. Airy.”

“There you go again, doctor—embellishing. *Gaseous*! It’s unseemly to use such poetic metaphor (equally unearned by these characters).”

“Incidentally,” Dr. Cernus added, “it’s precisely the gaseous who shape news and ideological agendas. Traditional media like TV and newspapers are now irrelevant in this regard; on social media, pro-government influencers compete with individuals who interpret state-imposed boundaries with extreme liberty. Depending on the regime, their informational influence is easily on par with the state’s. True, their narratives are fragmented—but they powerfully divert audiences who simply lack time not only to adopt any ruling clan’s viewpoint, but even to properly hear it.”

“I assume the next stratum is easy to guess. *Liquid*. Characterized by actors being much closer to one another than in the previous two.”

“Correct,” Dr. Cernus confirmed. “They aren’t bound by rigid frameworks, but exhibit a kind of ‘short-range order.’ Ordinary firms, ‘office plankton’—regular ‘free’ people and businesses. They likely form the majority, though not an overwhelming one. Notably, differences among them are small—in habits, income, worldview. They’re not kinetic; their minds slightly softened by calm, monotonous lives. They’re viscous—posing no danger, yet offering the state no reliable support. As a group, they change extremely slowly. They may shift jobs or even sectors, but overall, they constitute a stable volume—a watery constant.”

“Watery—let’s call them that,” said Unkno.

“And the final stratum,” Dr. Cernus declared conclusively, “is civil servants and various security personnel. Bureaucracy.”

“The deep state?” Unkno sought clarification.

“Yes. Including military personnel bound by military mortgages or rigid contracts. For these actors, freedom is a step left, a step right—that’s all. Essentially serfs. True, they could theoretically leave any day—but they remain not by estate, but by circumstance, which continues to hold them in place. These actors resemble atoms arranged in crystals: they form a periodically repeating internal structure. States orient much of their behaviour around them, though individually, these people wield little influence.”

“Corruption here, I presume?”

“Precisely! Thank you for that vital observation. Corruption—despite its overtly criminal nature—belongs squarely to this crystalline stratum. It’s a system-forming factor in any state, and largely *regulated*—not publicly acknowledged, but meticulously codified and documented.”

“Lobbying,” Unkno grunted.

“Thus, we have four strata: bonded, watery, gaseous, and ionized. Allow me now to formally introduce the concept of boundaries—the very ‘rules’ you mentioned in game-theoretic terms.”

“A permissible formal assumption,” Unkno conceded. “Call rules ‘boundaries.’ I even see where you’re going. The first stratum obeys all boundary types. The second (watery) ignores one type. The third (gaseous) ignores two. Ionized actors are constrained only at specific checkpoint boundaries.”