I’ve been absolutely fascinated by the idea of dominant assurance contracts ever since I first heard about them in one of Cowen’s papers. Still, to my knowledge the whole concept of dominant assurance contracts is not well-known, even in academia. (Sorry, no links – I’m lazy.)

For those of you unfamiliar with, or unwilling to read Cowen’s paper, a DAC works like this:

A person, or a group of people decide they want to have the benefit of a park, a road, etc. But they can’t afford this all on their own. So they incorporate, and pitch their plan to others. By contract, they stipulate that either the project will be completed, or any “investments” will be returned plus an agreed upon interest payment.

A lot of people think that the root of government is freedom. But if this is true (which it is not), many people have forgotten their high-school math, because the complete answer would be:

?G = +/- Freedom

From the law of identity, we know that A is A. It cannot be both A and –A at the same time. Therefore, ?G cannot be equal to both Freedom, and the Opposite of Freedom. This would be problematic because of the +/- operator alone; we cannot definitively show that ?G = either Freedom, or –Freedom. Furthermore:

1. Given that: “Government is the negation of liberty” –or– [G = -L]
2. And that: liberty = freedom
3. It follows that: Government = -(Freedom)
4. Therefore: ?G = ?(-Freedom)

If we substitute either F or -F into our original equation, and do a little algebra; we are left with:
Freedom = Freedom*Freedom or -Freedom = Freedom*Freedom

So the “root of government is freedom” hypothesis is exploded, once and for all, because neither of these make any sense. But then what is the root of government?

Start from step 4 above and you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Given: ?G = ?-(Freedom)

We know that the root of a negative number is imaginary. From whence it follows that whatever root we may suppose Government to have, it is purely imaginary, and useful only in making pretty fractals on supercomputers.

QED