AIM Framework glossary
A-Floor Erosion Principle
Canonical definition
Under unmanaged M-escalation, the Mimetic Premium infiltrates A-necessary goods through PM Contagion, raising the minimum cost of A-sufficiency faster than real productivity gains, such that populations previously A-secure can be pushed back into A-precarity even as GDP rises.
Explanation
The principle explains empirical patterns that GDP-focused analysis cannot: - Rising housing insecurity despite housing stock expansion - Medical bankruptcy despite healthcare capacity - Food insecurity despite agricultural surplus - Working poor despite full employment In each case, PM extraction raises the cost of A-access faster than income growth, producing A-precarity in conditions of apparent abundance. The principle provides the mechanism underlying the Opt-Out Paradox. Individual exit from M-escalation is infeasible not merely because M-urgency feels like A-urgency (the phenomenological barrier) but because PM has infiltrated A-provision itself (the material barrier). Refusing to pay PM means forfeiting A-access when PM-free A-provision does not exist. Policy Implication: A-Floor protection under M-escalation requires structural decoupling of A-access from M-signalling, tenure-form intervention for housing, universal provision for healthcare, competence-development decoupled from credential-ranking for education. Substrate specification. The A-Floor Erosion mechanism operates because PM (which is M-channel inflation) infiltrates A-necessary goods (housing, healthcare, education, food) through the three contagion pathways specified in PM Contagion: direct contagion (Status-association of the A-good itself), ownership contagion (Status-association of ownership of the A-good), and market contagion (PM-pricing in adjacent markets feeding back through comparable-property mechanisms). The principle is therefore an instance of M-on-A parasitism (Object Parasitism, Axiom 5) rather than an independent erosion dynamic; the I-substrate is not directly implicated in the principle but is indirectly affected because A-precarity erodes I-Override Capacity (see I-Override Capacity entry).
Epistemic status
Framework-Specific Principle.
Derivation
Also in the entry
Formal Statement: Let CA(t) = minimum cost of A-sufficiency at time t Let P(t) = productivity at time t Let PM(t) = aggregate Mimetic Premium in A-necessary goods at time t Under unmanaged M-escalation: - dPM/dt \> 0 (PM grows over time) - dCA/dt \> dP/dt (A-sufficiency cost rises faster than productivity) - Therefore: A-sufficiency becomes progressively less accessible despite productivity growth