AIM Framework glossary
Polarity-Switch Scaling Principle
Canonical definition
For any population N greater than or equal to 2 satisfying the capacity condition, push-based obligation architectures with institutional A-floors Pareto-dominate demand-based architectures in aggregate need-satisfaction. The welfare gap grows approximately linearly in N for N greater than 150, because demand coverage saturates at the Dunbar bound while push coverage scales with overlapping-network topology. The gap is driven primarily by the elimination of Mimetic Premium deadweight and secondarily by the recovery of coverage gaps.
Explanation
Push-based provision does better than demand-based provision at every population size, and the margin widens as the population grows. The reason is a ceiling on one side and none on the other. Demand can only be exercised where a standing relational ledger and a social audience exist to enforce it, which confines it to something like the fifteen people in a person's sympathy group. That ceiling does not move when the society grows from a village to a nation. Push has no equivalent ceiling: self-initiated provision travels along whatever overlapping networks exist, and those grow with the population. So the choice of obligation polarity, which looks like a matter of moral taste in a small group, becomes the dominant determinant of how well needs are met at national scale. Two things are being established, and neither substitutes for the other: the Push-Pull Obligation Principle establishes that push is the only stable polarity, on architectural grounds, and the Polarity-Switch Scaling Principle measures what that polarity delivers. The measurement would not overturn the entailment if the gap turned out to be small.
Epistemic status
Framework-Specific Named Result (formal, on empirically calibrated inputs).
Derivation
Appendix 18B, Section 18B.5; the underlying entailment at Chapter 18, Section 18.10 and Appendix 18B, Section 18B.2.