Influence

Definition of the spectrum of influence.

|INFLUENCE| Ignorance > Awareness > Influence (Speech) > Incentive (Exchange) > Coercion (Force) > Enserfment (Power)

1. One can Influence
   Alter the probability of an individual or group’s decisions while preserving choice.
2. One can Incentivize
   Alter the probability of an individual or group’s decisions while preserving some choice
3. One can Coerce
   Alter the probability of an individual or group’s decisions while limiting choice.
4. One can Exercise Power
   Power is defined as possessing any of the various means by which to influence the probability of outcomes in a group or polity while eliminating choice.

Three Weapons of Influence

There are three means of influencing groups of people with institutions. (Johnson)

1) Force, or the threat of force (Masculine Strategy)
A person has a VIOLENCE INCENTIVE to behave in a particular way when it has been made known to him that failure to do so will result in some form of physical aggression being directed at him by other members of the collectivity in the form of inflicting pain or physical harm on him or his loved ones, depriving him of his freedom of movement, or perhaps confiscating or destroying his treasured possessions.

FORCE:
Tool: Physical Coercion
Benefit: Avoidance Benefit
Strategic use: Rapid but expensive.
“Seize opportunities quickly with a concentrated effort.”

POWER
Procedural Power: Political, Judicial, and Military Power (Soldiers, Judges and Politicians)

OPTIMUM FUNCTION
Limits: Via-Negativa: Procedural Power: Political, Judicial, and Military Power (Soldiers, Judges, and Politicians)

2) Remuneration or payment (Neutral or Market Strategy)
A person has a REMUNERATIVE INCENTIVE to behave in a particular way if it has been made known to him that doing so will result in some form of material reward he will not otherwise receive. If he behaves as desired, he will receive some specified amount of a valuable good or service (or money with which he can purchase whatever he wishes) in exchange.

PAYMENT, EXCHANGE:
Tool: Remunerative Coercion
Benefit: Material
Strategic use: efficient in cost and time, only if you have the resources.

POWER
Economic Power (people with wealth either earned or gained through tax appropriation).

OPTIMUM FUNCTION
Possibilities: Via-Practica: Economic Power (people with wealth either earned or gained through tax appropriation)

3) Moral claims (collective goods) – (Feminine Strategy)
A person has a MORAL INCENTIVE to behave in a particular way when he has been taught to believe that it is the “right” or “proper” or “admirable” thing to do. If he behaves as others expect him to, he may expect the approval or even the admiration of the other members of the collectivity and enjoy an enhanced sense of acceptance or self-esteem. If he behaves improperly, he may expect verbal expressions of condemnation, scorn, ridicule or even ostracism from the collectivity, and he may experience unpleasant feelings of guilt, shame or self-condemnation.

WORDS:
Tool: Verbal, Moral Coercion
Benefit: Ostracization/Inclusion, and Insurance benefit
Strategic Use: slow, but inexpensive.
“Wait for opportunity by accumulating consensus.”

POWER
Populist Power (Religion, Entertainment, Public Intellectuals)

OPTIMUM FUNCTION
Wants: Via-Positiva: Populist Power (Religion, Entertainment, Public Intellectuals)

 

Evolution of Institutions of Coercion

So given that there are only three methods of coercion available to us:

1. UNDERMINING: feminine gossip, rallying, and shaming(exclusion from opportunity).
2. REMUNERATION: libertarian trade, and
3. FORCE: Masculine force

There are only six interpersonal actions available to us:

1. Predation(Force, Theft, Fraud) >
   1. Force (Coercion) >
2. Remuneration (Trade) >
   1. Boycotting (Boycott/Ignore) >
3. Undermining: Inclusion in opportunity (Ostracization) >
   1. Flight(Separation)

Evolution of Social Orders

There are three existing and one emerging method of institutional coercion:

Religion (Inclusion / Exclusion) > Law (Protection / Punishment) > Credit (Consumption / Deprivation) > Surveillance – Digital Reputation (inclusion / exclusion from opportunity)

1. RELIGION
   Religion evolved to provide understanding of the word, virtues to imitate, and general prohibitions, across clans, tribes, and conquered nations, so that people could cooperate more easily and retaliate (feud) less frequently.
   Weapon: Ostracization (death sentence)
   Records: memory of locals.
   Institutions: Church, Academy, School, Family, Individual
2. LAW
   Law evolved to standardize punishments across clans, tribes, and conquered nations, to keep the peace, preserve productivity, preserve taxation, and legitimize (provide value by) rule.
   Weapon: violence, deprivation
   Records: written ledgers of crimes and punishments.
   Institutions: Military, Judiciary, Sheriff/Esquires, Militia, Men
3. CREDIT
   Credit rule evolved to increase productivity by the promise of consumption in the present, such that the primary form of social punishment was loss of consumption, status, and signaling.
   Weapon: deprivation of consumption, status, and signaling.
   Records: written and electronic records of creditworthiness.
   Institutions: Government, Treasury, Banking, Business, Technology, Labor
4. SURVEILLANCE (Inclusion / Exclusion)
   (emergent)
   Weapon: deprivation of opportunities for cooperation.
   Records: digital record and scores of your ‘desirability’ for cooperation.
   Institutions: Combining all of the above plus surveillance.

WEAPONS OF INFLUENCE: 

There are three means of coercing groups of people with institutions

1) Force, or the threat of force
A person has a VIOLENCE INCENTIVE to behave in a particular way when it has been made known to him that failure to do so will result in some form of physical aggression being directed at him by other members of the collectivity in the form of inflicting pain or physical harm on him or his loved ones, depriving him of his freedom of movement, or perhaps confiscating or destroying his treasured possessions.

2) Remuneration or payment
A person has a REMUNERATIVE INCENTIVE to behave in a particular way if it has been made known to him that doing so will result in some form of material reward he will not otherwise receive. If he behaves as desired, he will receive some specified amount of a valuable good or service (or money with which he can purchase whatever he wishes) in exchange.

3) Moral claims (collective goods)
A person has a MORAL INCENTIVE to behave in a particular way when he has been taught to believe that it is the “right” or “proper” or “admirable” thing to do. If he behaves as others expect him to, he may expect the approval or even the admiration of the other members of the collectivity and enjoy an enhanced sense of acceptance or self-esteem. If he behaves improperly, he may expect verbal expressions of condemnation, scorn, ridicule or even ostracism from the collectivity, and he may experience unpleasant feelings of guilt, shame or self-condemnation.
And a persuasive argument can consist of one or more of these strategies, often in great complexity.

People give priority one or more different weighted combinations, or perhaps ‘chordic’ representations of these strategies. They do so out of habit, and class inclination, just as they follow religious and class sentiments due to their upbringing.

People who belong to institutions have different capacities for adopting these strategies. Force requires discipline and long Time Bias. Remuneration requires cunning and invention. Moral claims require loyalty to consensus, and absorption of, and therefore payment of, opportunity costs. Different social classes have different time biases and consist of people with different time preferences, requiring different types of discipline under different social and economic conditions. ie: it is easier to have a long time preference if one is genetically disposed to better impulse control, and lives in greater security. It is easier to have a short time preference if one is more persuaded by impulses, less disciplined, and in an environment of scarcity.

The social classes are organized by intelligence. Intelligence is the ability to absorb content in real time, to learn abstractions in time, and to permute those abstractions in application to problems in real time. Intelligence regresses toward the mean over generations. THerefore class membership is an indicator of the likelihood of class mobility, and upper class position is difficult to maintain. While we use the word ‘middle class’, and most people in the west live middle class lifestyles, the middle class means possessing disposable income and participating in the market. Therefore the majority of citizens are in the upper proletariat and lower middle classes, which we call the working, white collar working and craftsman classes.

There are different costs to these institutions: Force is extremely expensive. Creating non-corruption, and order (some network of property definitions and their means of transfer). Property is a term for a scarce good that must used, consumed or transformed in the process of production, even if that process is human sustenance. Remunerative institutions require the complex task of concentrating capital then maintaining it in a constantly changing kaleidic and competitive environment. Moral claims require constant advocacy, verbal skill, maintenance of numerous relationships, and constant payment of opportunity costs.

The Social classes have different access to each of these forms of coercion. Those in the institutional class, or upper class, have access to force in the form of policy and law. Those in the capitalist class, or middle, have access to capital : money, and market institutions.

In each strategy people form elites, and organizations for utilizing those strategies. The elites create philosophical frameworks. Each of these frameworks consists of moral claims, and institutional means of perpetuating those claims, and the social benefits of adopting those claims.

Each of these institutions is open to corruption, which is the privatization of opportunity and reward, for personal consumption at group expense. Corruption is fraud.

Each of these strategies, their organizations, institutionas and elites compete against other strategies, organizations and elites, and each attempts to use it’s organization for discounts against other organizations.

This competition is analogous to the game of Rock, Paper, Scissors, if more complicated: each group can sucessfully compete against one another under most circumstances, but can defeat and be defeated by some other combination of forces.

The human mind is comfortable with identity and causality. It can with practice, understand a one dimensional causal spectrum. It can, with effort, understand two dimensions of cuasality. It can with more effort understand three dimensions of a causal spectrum.

Human emotions for example, consist of probably no more than three stimuli: dominance, pleasure and activiation. And that all human emotions, in their seemingly infinite varieity can be described as using these three axis of stimuli. Likewise, human social behavior consists of three different forms of coercion, in some combination, and this leads set of axis leads to seemingly infinite variety.

But it only seems infinite. At it’s base, there are only three forms of social organization.These three forms can be combined, as they are in the majority of the population in some manner or another. Or they can be used as one of three specializtions, each of which attempts to play rock, paper, scissors, with the other two.