Paying and Getting

 

Conservation principles in themselves are timeless; i.e., it doesn't matter what comes first or next, paying or getting. It only matters that there is an equilibrium in which net paying is balanced by net getting.

Thanks to entropy, there is always slippage of one kind or another, so we have to add a third term, "friction," to balance our conservation equations. Because friction always reduces the net gain, the conservation equation is something like GET + FRICTION = PAY. One's efforts are never 100% effective, so it is unrealistic to suppose net receipts will be worth what one pays. This fact of life is illustrated over and over again in the simplest and most obvious situations. For example,

Food deteriorates. Unless you are willing to take huge risks, the food you acquired will have to be cleaned and prepared. So, more effort than the mere acquisition is required.

Relationships deteriorate. All sorts of human relations have to be constantly fed with emotional work. People require their familiars to do this, that and the other thing to maintain the status quo. The Christmas Card ritual, for example, requires participants to send cards to those on last year's list. Those not gifted will feel offended by the slight. Thus, sending a Christmas card is not a simple, off the cuff act: it usually involves an indefinite future commitment which can become onerous if the list is too large. Most people do not consider the full cost and possible consequences of sending a Christmas card, so eventually find themselves in awkward situations. The card is the price of maintaining even the least of relationships.

The same interactions apply to our larger social relations and to society generally. As each of us grows into adulthood, we enter into increasingly complex relationships with others and nature. Our actions invite feedback, which further involves us in our  relationships, making it more and more difficult to extricate ourselves. Thus, even the simplest acts eventually have far reaching consequences.

In the natural world beyond human affairs, neither Conservation nor Entropy care about particulars. That is, it doesn't matter who gets and who pays, as long as the totals are in balance. This lack of particularity allows all sorts of unusual phenomena, such as living things, to exist in our Universe. Living things are outrageous examples of material flouting Entropy, at least locally. The organized, anti-Entropic structure of living is not, however, without cost: lots of other forms of matter and energy are downgraded by excesses of the few. In analogy, Capitalist exploitation happens for the same reason: the generality of natural laws.

In human affairs, we cannot and do not tolerate the random application of purchase and payment for long. We believe in something called "justice," which is the ordering of getting and paying according to rules we invent. Justice is the making of Conservation and Entropy particular. This is accomplished by assigning locality and responsibility to events. If X gets a package in the mail, Y gets a check in the mail. In determining justice, we connect two events - the package and the check - to make the conservative balance. This particularity is also associated with "cause and effect;" i.e., we assign "cause" to one event and "effect" to another event. (It could be arranged another way.) The purpose of such an assignment is that linguistic convention forces causes to precede effects in time and space, which justifies the notion that cause is responsible for effects.

We overcome Entropy by assuming that all things deteriorate, but only for cause. The deterioration in many cases absolves causes of their effects. Thus, the renter is not responsible for "normal wear and tear" of the things rented. Entropy is also matched by interest, which is the payment for the use of money or other asset. In paying interest, we are overcoming the lender's loss of money; i.e., opportunity loss. In the tax code, we allow for depreciation and depletion, which seeks to compensate property owners for the loss of utility of their properties. The presumption in all the foregoing is that natural Entropy - the descent into disorder - is somehow illegitimate, and should be outlawed in human affairs. Thus, at least some victims of Entropy - usually the wealthy and property owners - should be compensated for their losses. On the other hand, the Entropy involved in aging is usually not compensated, since it is thought to be unavoidable.

The assignments of justice are entirely arbitrary, because the natural world does not care how the assignment is made. Compensation for entropic losses is similarly arbitrary, but possibly unjust, because Entropy will always force someone or something to pay for whatever was made whole.