AIM Framework glossary
Comparator Capture Principle
Canonical definition
Money, being a continuous, public, and universally denominated scale, functions as the optimal mimetic comparator, so that any competition denominated in Money carries a standing structural presumption of positional (M-driven) rivalry, because the scale itself supplies the cardinal, observable, cross-context ranking metric that Status requires. The presumption is rebuttable only by independent demonstration that the monetary pursuit is bounded by an Appetitive or Intrinsic provisioning function, that is, that it satiates. Non-satiation of monetary pursuit is the empirical fingerprint of Comparator Capture.
Explanation
Money is the cleanest scoreboard ever built: one number, visible to everyone, comparable across any two lives, with no ceiling. Status needs exactly such a scale, and where one exists it will be used. Once a contest is denominated in Money, whether the players want what the Money buys or where the Money puts them in the ranking is not readable off the contest, and Source Opacity means the players cannot read it off themselves either. The Comparator Capture Principle fixes which way that resolves. The default is positional, and the burden falls on whoever claims otherwise. Money genuinely provisions the Appetitive floor and genuinely funds Intrinsic pursuits, and the evidence that it is doing so in a given case is bounding: a pursuit that stops once enough is enough. The pursuit of the ten-billionth unit is as intense as the pursuit of the first. The structure is the rebuttable one the framework uses in the Presumption Against Scapegoating, and for the same reason: the architecture does not permit reading the source directly off the scale, so the default is set by argument and displaced by behaviour.
Epistemic status
Framework-Specific Named Result.