AIM Framework glossary
Averted-Cost Opacity Principle
Canonical definition
The principle that the cost of a Conflict is observable only where the Conflict crystallises, so an intervention that holds an interface below the Critical Loop Gain destroys the event that would have priced it, and the value of prevention is therefore structurally unobservable at the scale at which prevention acts. Two consequences follow for what a population will pay for. By the Two-Logic Diagnostic, willingness to pay is set by how hard a deficit presses rather than by what a correction is worth as provision, and a prevented Conflict generates no deficit signal because the deficit it would have generated is what the prevention removed. By the Observability Gradient, a Conflict is audience-facing while prevention is private, so the field from which Individuals infer what is valuable over-samples the contest. The resulting gap between the price of a contest and the price of prevention is a Mimetic Premium on the contest and not a discount on prevention.
Explanation
You cannot bill for the fight that never happened, and this is not because people undervalue peacemaking. It is because a fight that was stopped leaves nothing behind to put a number on. A fight that runs produces bills, hearings, lost months, and a named winner, all of which are visible and all of which press. Prevention produces silence. The mind sets what it will pay by how much something hurts right now and by how much of it it can see, and a prevented Conflict scores zero on both, however much it was worth.
Epistemic status
Framework-Specific Principle.