The manipulation of financial statements through aggressive use of
permissible accounting choices like early revenue recognition,
optimistic asset valuations, or buried liabilities to misrepresent
a company's financial position.
algorithmic amplification
The process by which platform recommendation systems
systematically promote content that generates high engagement,
regardless of its accuracy or harm.
algorithmic hiring
The use of automated software systems to screen, rank, or select
job candidates, typically trained on historical hiring data.
anchoring
The cognitive tendency to rely too heavily on the first piece of
numerical information encountered when making estimates or
decisions. Even when people know that an initial number is
arbitrary or irrelevant, it systematically pulls their judgments
toward it.
at-will employment
An employment doctrine, dominant in the United States, under which
either party may terminate the employment relationship at any
time, for any reason not prohibited by law, without notice or
cause. Most wealthy countries impose statutory notice periods,
severance requirements, or just-cause protections that
significantly limit at-will termination.
audit studies
A research methodology in which matched fictitious applications or
inquiries are submitted to real decision-makers to measure
differential treatment by race, gender, or other characteristics.
availability heuristic
The mental shortcut of estimating how likely or common something is
by how easily examples of it come to mind. Vivid or recent events
are overweighted relative to more common but less memorable ones.
B
Basel Convention
The 1989 international treaty restricting the transboundary
movement of hazardous waste, particularly from wealthy to
developing nations.
bertillonage
The system of criminal identification developed by Alphonse
Bertillon in the 1880s, based on recording eleven precise body
measurements. Widely adopted by police forces in Europe and the
colonial world, it was displaced by fingerprinting around 1900.
biometrics
The measurement and statistical analysis of unique physical or
behavioral characteristics to identify or verify an individual's
identity.
blood libel
The accusation that Jews murdered Christian children to use their
blood in Passover rituals.
boryokudan
The Japanese government's official designation for organized crime
groups, meaning "violence group," used in anti-organized crime
legislation since 1992 as an alternative to the self-identifying
term yakuza.
bounded rationality
Herbert Simon's term for the observation that human
decision-making is rational only within the limits of available
information, cognitive capacity, and time. People do not
optimize; they search for solutions that are good enough and stop,
a process Simon called satisficing.
brand protection
The enforcement of exclusive commercial identity through legal
mechanisms such as trademarks and trade dress, used to prevent
competitors from trading on an established name.
C
choice architecture
The design of environments in which people make decisions,
recognizing that the arrangement, framing, and defaults of options
systematically influence which options people choose without
restricting their freedom to choose otherwise.
civil disobedience
The deliberate, nonviolent refusal to comply with laws or
government demands as a form of political protest, aimed at
changing the law rather than evading it.
codetermination
A labor relations system in which workers hold formal
representation rights on corporate governing boards, as in the
German Mitbestimmung model.
cognitive bandwidth
The finite mental capacity available for attention, decision-making,
and problem-solving at any given time.
cognitive bias
A systematic pattern of deviation from rational judgment in which
people reach conclusions through processes that are predictably
and consistently skewed.
cognitive pollution
The systematic degradation of the shared information environment
through the spread of misleading, manipulative, or low-quality
content at scale.
collective bargaining
The process by which workers negotiate wages, hours, and working
conditions as a group through their union rather than as
individuals.
commons
Resources held in common by a community rather than owned
privately, subject to collective governance rather than market
allocation.
conspicuous consumption
Thorstein Veblen's term for spending on goods and services
primarily to signal social status rather than for their practical
use or pleasure. The signal only works if the expenditure is
visible and sufficiently costly to exclude lower-status
competitors.
conspicuous leisure
Thorstein Veblen's term for the visible display of not working as
a signal of social rank. In contexts where most people must
labor, idleness signals that one can afford to abstain; in modern
professional contexts, the signal has inverted to highly visible
overwork and constant availability.
consumer cooperative
A cooperative owned by its customers rather than its workers, in
which members pay a joining fee or purchase membership shares and
receive a dividend proportional to their purchases, with
governance following a one-member-one-vote principle.
content moderation
The practice of reviewing and enforcing community standards on
user-generated content on digital platforms, including decisions
about removal, restriction, and amplification.
control fraud
A form of financial fraud in which the executives of an
institution use the institution itself as a vehicle for personal
enrichment at the expense of depositors, investors, or clients.
cooperative
A firm owned and governed by its members in which profits are
distributed in proportion to participation rather than capital
invested, and governance follows a one-member-one-vote principle
rather than a one-share-one-vote principle.
copyleft
A licensing approach that requires derivative works to be
distributed under the same open terms as the original, preventing
proprietary appropriation of open-source contributions.
cracking
A gerrymandering technique in which a concentrated bloc of
opposition voters is divided across multiple districts,
ensuring they form a minority in each
and cannot elect a representative anywhere.
Used in combination with packing to produce a structural legislative majority.
credit union
A member-owned financial cooperative that accepts deposits, makes
loans, and returns surplus to members rather than distributing
profits to outside shareholders.
crop lien
A credit arrangement in which farmers borrowed against their
future harvest, typically from merchants who charged high interest
and kept borrowers in perpetual debt.
cultural capital
The non-financial social assets that confer advantage in
education, employment, and status, such as fashion preferences,
modes of speech, and educational credentials, that perpetuate
class advantages without direct transfer of money.
culture fit
The use of perceived compatibility with an existing team's norms
and personality as a criterion in hiring decisions, which tends to
reproduce the demographic composition of existing teams.
D
dark money
Political spending made by nonprofit organizations that are not required
to disclose their donors, allowing wealthy individuals and corporations
to fund campaigns and lobbying without public attribution.
dark triad
A cluster of three overlapping personality traits—psychopathy,
narcissism, and Machiavellianism—that researchers treat together
because they tend to co-occur and share a common pattern of
callous self-interest, manipulation, and disregard for others.
decriminalization
The removal of criminal penalties for a behavior, typically while
other civil or regulatory restrictions remain in place.
Delaware flip
The process by which a non-US startup reincorporates by creating a
Delaware holding company above the existing domestic entity and
transferring intellectual property to it, typically required by
American venture capital investors as a condition of investment.
democratic backsliding
The gradual erosion of democratic norms, institutions, and practices
within a formally democratic system, typically carried out through legal
means by elected governments rather than through military coups.
Characteristic features include court-packing, media pressure,
electoral manipulation, and weakening of independent oversight institutions.
deplatforming
The removal of an individual or group from a digital platform as a
content moderation enforcement action.
diffuse decision-making
The distribution of accountability across many individuals in an
organization such that no single person can be held responsible
for harmful outcomes.
disposition effect
The tendency of investors to sell assets that have increased in
value while holding on to assets that have declined, the opposite
of what a rational strategy would recommend. It follows from loss
aversion: selling a losing position requires acknowledging a loss,
which is more painful than an equivalent gain is pleasurable.
divestment
The disposal of financial assets in a company or sector as a form
of political pressure, imposing reputational and economic costs on
targeted firms or governments.
donor-advised fund
A financial vehicle in which a donor contributes assets, receives
an immediate tax deduction, and retains the ability to direct
grants to charitable recipients at any pace over time, while the
contributed assets remain under the donor's effective control.
downline
In multi-level marketing, the network of distributors recruited by
a participant and by those distributors' own recruits, whose sales
generate commission income for everyone above them in the chain.
doxxing
The publication of private personal information to expose someone
to harassment
dual-class shares
A corporate share structure in which two or more classes of stock
carry different voting rights, typically giving founders or
insiders shares with ten or more votes each while public investors
receive shares with one vote, allowing the company to raise
capital without ceding effective control.
due process
The legal requirement that government or institutional action
affecting rights must follow fair procedures and provide a
meaningful opportunity for challenge.
E
electronic waste
Discarded electronic devices containing toxic materials such as
lead, mercury, and cadmium, much of which is exported for
processing in developing countries under hazardous conditions.
Enclosure Acts
Parliamentary legislation in Britain from the seventeenth through
nineteenth centuries that converted common agricultural land to
private ownership.
Enclosure movement
The historical process by which common agricultural lands in
Britain were converted into private property, displacing rural
communities that had depended on shared access.
engrams
In Scientology, traumatic memories believed to be stored in the
reactive mind and to impair mental and physical function; the
target of the auditing process, which aims to discharge them
through conscious recall.
enshittification
The process by which platform businesses progressively degrade the
quality of their service as they shift value extraction from users
to advertisers and away from both to shareholders.
equity compensation
Payment in the form of stock or stock options rather than cash,
used extensively in the tech industry to align worker incentives
with company value while deferring cash costs.
excommunication
Formal exclusion from membership in a religious community and its
sacraments, historically used by the Catholic Church as a
disciplinary and political tool against individuals.
F
face turn
In professional wrestling, a character's transition from villain
to hero, typically marked by a moment that reveals underlying
decency and produces crowd approval where there was previously
hostility.
Fair Game
A Scientology policy, first articulated in 1965, stating that
members who leave the organization and publicly criticize it may
be subjected to any action by other members without organizational
discipline. It was officially rescinded in 1968 but documented as
continuing in practice under different names.
first-past-the-post
A plurality voting system in which a single candidate is elected
from each geographic district by winning more votes than any other candidate,
regardless of whether they receive a majority.
Commonly used in the United Kingdom and former British colonies
as a synonym for winner-take-all or plurality voting.
Flexner Report
The 1910 report that restructured American medical education
around elite university-based schools, simultaneously
professionalizing medicine and closing institutions that had
trained women and Black physicians.
Framework Convention on Tobacco Control
The 2003 World Health Organization treaty on tobacco regulation,
the first international public health treaty negotiated under WHO
auspices, committing signatory countries to measures including
advertising restrictions, health warnings, and plain packaging.
FRAND
Fair, Reasonable, and Non-Discriminatory: the licensing commitment
a patent holder makes when their technology is incorporated into a
formal technical standard. The commitment is intended to prevent
the patent holder from using a standards-essential patent as a
chokepoint to extract monopoly rents from everyone implementing
the standard. What counts as "reasonable" is routinely contested
in litigation.
front-running
The practice of executing trades based on advance knowledge of
pending client orders before those orders are filled, exploiting
information asymmetry in financial markets.
G
general partnership
A business structure in which two or more people share ownership,
management, and unlimited personal liability for the firm's debts
and legal obligations.
gerrymandering
The drawing of electoral district boundaries to give one political party
a structural advantage, typically by "packing" opposition voters into
a few districts they win by large margins, and "cracking" the remainder
across many districts they lose narrowly.
GNU Public License (GPL)
A free software license that grants users the freedom to use,
study, modify, and distribute software, with the key requirement
that any distributed modifications or derivative works must also
be released under the same terms.
greater fool theory
The idea that an overpriced asset can still be a rational purchase
if the buyer believes they can sell it to someone else at an even
higher price before the market corrects. A bubble collapses when
no greater fool can be found.
H
harm principle
John Stuart Mill's principle, articulated in On Liberty (1859),
that the only legitimate basis for restricting individual liberty
is to prevent harm to others.
harm reduction
A public health approach that aims to reduce the negative
consequences of drug use without requiring abstinence, through
measures such as needle exchanges, naloxone distribution, and
supervised consumption sites.
heel
In professional wrestling, a character designated to play the
villain, whose role is to behave in ways the audience finds
objectionable so that sympathy and approval flow toward the
opposing character.
heuristics
Mental shortcuts or rules of thumb that people use to make
decisions quickly under uncertainty. Heuristics often work well
but produce systematic, predictable errors in specific
circumstances, which behavioral economists call cognitive biases.
Hicklin test
The 1868 British legal standard defining obscenity as material
tending to deprave and corrupt those whose minds were open to
immoral influences, superseded in the US by the Miller test.
horizon problem
In cooperative economics, the tendency of member-owners to
underinvest in long-term assets because their claim on the
cooperative ends when their membership ends, giving them a shorter
time horizon than the firm's productive life.
hyperbolic discounting
The tendency to discount rewards in the near future much more
steeply than rewards in the more distant future, producing
time-inconsistent preferences.
I
implicit bias
Unconscious attitudes or stereotypes that influence decisions and
behavior in ways the decision-maker does not recognize or intend.
impression management
The ongoing effort by individuals to control how they are
perceived by others. In large organizational hierarchies, where
decision-makers have limited direct observation of a candidate's
actual work, impression management skills become a primary
determinant of career advancement, independently of underlying
performance.
information asymmetry
A condition in which one party to a transaction has significantly
more or better information than the other, enabling exploitation
of that advantage.
interdict
A Catholic Church sanction that suspends religious services in a
territory or for a community, historically used as collective
punishment to pressure secular rulers.
interoperability
The ability of systems from different vendors or platforms to
exchange information and work together without requiring special
adaptation by the user. Interoperability mandates are legal
requirements that a platform accept connections from competing
services on non-discriminatory terms.
investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS)
A mechanism in trade and investment treaties allowing foreign
investors to bring arbitration claims against governments in
private tribunals, bypassing domestic courts, when government
actions are alleged to have damaged their investments.
invisible labor
Work that is essential to the functioning of an organization or
household but goes unrecognized, uncompensated, and uncounted
because it is performed by people with less power (typically
women, caregivers, and low-status workers). Examples include
emotional labor, domestic work, and the administrative
coordination tasks that fall to junior employees or support staff
rather than the people who take credit for outcomes.
J
joint-stock company
A firm whose ownership is divided into transferable shares held by
multiple investors, each of whom bears risk only in proportion to
their investment; the organizational predecessor of the modern
publicly traded corporation.
K
karoshi
Death from overwork.
kayfabe
The collective maintenance, by performers and audience alike, of
the fiction that professional wrestling matches are genuine
athletic contests; by extension, any shared pretense that all
parties know to be false but sustain because the fiction serves a
social or commercial function.
keiretsu
A Japanese network of interlocked companies that hold shares in
one another, maintain long-term supply and trading relationships,
and are often anchored around a central bank, insulating member
firms from hostile takeovers and short-term market pressure.
L
legibility
The degree to which a state or institution can observe, measure,
and administer a population or resource through standardized
categories.
legitimacy
The quality of being recognized as having rightful authority,
distinct from power exercised by force or coercion alone.
limited liability corporation
A firm in which shareholders cannot be held personally responsible
for the company's debts or legal obligations beyond the amount
they have invested, separating the financial risk of the owners
from that of the enterprise.
limited partnership
A partnership structure with two classes of partners: limited
partners, who risk only the capital they have contributed and take
no part in management, and at least one general partner, who
retains full personal liability and operational control.
long firm
A fraud in which a business establishes credibility through
legitimate trading before ordering large quantities of goods on
credit and disappearing with them.
longtermism
The belief that the most important thing people can do is to
ensure that the long-run future of civilization goes well, on the
grounds that a future containing trillions of people vastly
outweighs present-day welfare in moral calculations. Longtermism
is used to justify present harm in the name of speculative
futures, and that its practitioners disproportionately assume that
they themselves should be making those decisions.
loss aversion
The finding from prospect theory that losses produce roughly twice
the psychological impact of equivalent gains.
M
Miller test
The 1973 US Supreme Court three-part test for obscenity, requiring
that material be evaluated by community standards, appeal to
prurient interest, and lack serious literary, artistic, political,
or scientific value.
Mitbestimmung
The German system of codetermination, in which workers in large
firms hold legally mandated representation on corporate
supervisory boards with formal authority over management.
Mittelstand
The layer of medium-sized, often family-owned manufacturing and
engineering firms that form the backbone of the German economy,
characterized by long time horizons, specialist expertise, strong
regional roots, and formal worker representation under the
codetermination system.
Montreal Protocol
The 1987 international treaty requiring signatory countries to
phase out the production and use of ozone-depleting substances,
including chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). It is notable for including
differentiated timelines for developing and developed countries, a
technology transfer fund, and trade sanctions against
non-signatories.
moral disengagement
The psychological mechanisms by which people disengage their moral
standards to engage in or tolerate harmful behavior, including
displacement and diffusion of responsibility, dehumanization of
victims, and advantageous comparison with worse acts.
moral licensing
The psychological phenomenon in which past virtuous behavior
reduces the felt need for future virtuous behavior, sometimes
leading to more harmful subsequent choices.
moral panic
A disproportionate social reaction to a perceived threat,
typically focused on a specific group or behavior, amplified by
media coverage and political entrepreneurs.
motivated reasoning
The cognitive tendency to evaluate evidence in ways that support
conclusions already preferred, rather than following evidence to
its logical conclusion.
N
narrative economics
The study of how popular stories and narratives spread through
populations and drive economic behavior, including investment
manias and market crashes.
neoreaction
A political movement, also called the Dark Enlightenment, arguing
that Enlightenment values such as democracy, equality, and human
rights have made societies weaker and more chaotic. The movement
is distinct from classical fascism in its rejection of nationalism
and its preference for corporate over state power, though critics
note this distinction matters less to those governed by the
result.
network effects
The phenomenon in which a product or service becomes more valuable
to each user as more people use it, creating strong advantages for
established platforms and barriers to entry for competitors.
normalization of deviance
The process by which organizations gradually come to accept risk
thresholds that would initially have been unacceptable, through
repeated exposure to near-misses that did not immediately produce
catastrophe.
nudge
A change in how choices are presented, such as a default setting
or the order of options, that predictably influences behavior
without restricting options or changing financial incentives.
Nudges exploit the same cognitive tendencies that produce bias,
and may serve the choice designer's interests rather than the
chooser's.
O
obscenity law
The body of law governing the prohibition of material deemed
indecent or harmful to public morals, whose legal standards have
shifted substantially across time and jurisdiction.
P
packing
A gerrymandering technique in which opposition voters are concentrated
into a small number of districts they win by very large margins,
wasting their surplus votes
and reducing their influence in surrounding districts.
paradox of tolerance
The argument that unlimited tolerance must eventually lead to the
disappearance of tolerance: a society that extends tolerance to
movements committed to destroying tolerance will itself be
destroyed.
Parkinson's Law
The observation that work expands to fill the time available.
partnership
A business structure in which two or more people share ownership
and, in a general partnership, unlimited personal liability; a
foundational organizational form for professional services firms,
law firms, and investment funds.
passion principle
The cultural norm in certain fields that workers should pursue
their work as a vocation rather than merely a job, used to justify
poor conditions, low pay, and long hours.
patent assertion entities
Companies that acquire patents not to produce goods but to extract
licensing fees or litigation settlements from operating
businesses; commonly called patent trolls.
payola
The practice of record labels paying radio stations or disc
jockeys to play their songs without disclosing the payment to
listeners.
penny press
The mass-market newspapers of the 1830s that lowered cover prices
and relied on advertising revenue rather than subscriptions,
establishing the commercial model that now dominates media. See
also yellow press.
peonage
A system of debt bondage in which workers are legally required to
continue working until a debt to an employer is repaid,
effectively a form of coerced labor.
philanthrocapitalism
The use of private charitable foundations and large-scale
philanthropic giving by wealthy individuals to shape public
policy, research priorities, and social institutions, without
democratic accountability or electoral legitimacy.
plurality voting
An electoral system in which the candidate with the most votes wins,
even without a majority.
In a multi-candidate race this can produce winners supported by a minority of voters
and creates strong pressure toward two-party systems through the spoiler effect.
pollution haven
A jurisdiction with weak environmental regulations that attracts
investment in polluting industries relocating from places with
stricter standards.
Ponzi scheme
A fraudulent investment scheme that pays returns to earlier
investors using funds from later investors rather than from actual
profits, collapsing when new investment stops.
positional goods
Toods whose value depends on how few other people have them.
Unlike material goods, which can be democratized as production
scales, positional goods lose their value if everyone has access
to them, producing self-defeating competition in which each round
of gains returns participants to the same relative position.
precarious workers
Workers in contingent, part-time, contract, or gig arrangements
who lack the employment security, benefits, and legal protections
associated with standard employment.
predatory pricing
Setting prices below cost to drive competitors out of a market,
with the intention of raising prices once competitive pressure is
eliminated.
predictive policing
The use of algorithmic tools to forecast where crimes will occur
or who is likely to offend, criticized for encoding and amplifying
existing racial and socioeconomic biases.
propaganda model
The observation that mass media systematically filters news to
serve elite interests through ownership structure, advertising
dependence, and other institutional pressures.
proportional representation
An electoral system in which parties receive a share of legislative seats
roughly proportional to their share of the popular vote, as opposed to
winner-take-all or plurality systems in which a party can win a legislative
majority with a minority of votes.
prospect theory
A model of how people actually evaluate risky outcomes. Key
findings are that people evaluate outcomes relative to a reference
point rather than in absolute terms, and that losses loom roughly
twice as large as equivalent gains (a phenomenon called loss
aversion).
Psychopathy Checklist
A clinical assessment instrument for measuring psychopathic traits
in individuals. The checklist evaluates characteristics including
callousness, grandiosity, manipulation, lack of remorse, and
failure to accept responsibility. The Framework is also used to
show that corporate legal structure produces psychopathic behavior
at the organizational level.
public benefit corporation
A corporate form that legally requires directors to consider the
interests of employees, communities, and the environment alongside
shareholder returns, providing some protection against purely
financial acquisition pressure; available in several Canadian
provinces and US states.
publication bias
The tendency for academic journals and researchers to publish
positive or statistically significant findings while null or
negative results go unreported, distorting the scientific record.
putting-out system
A pre-industrial manufacturing arrangement in which merchants
supplied raw materials to workers in their homes and collected
finished goods, a precursor to the factory system.
Q
R
racial formation
The process by which racial categories are created, transformed,
and destroyed through political, economic, and social forces
rather than biology.
ranked-choice voting
An electoral system in which voters rank candidates in order of preference.
If no candidate wins a majority of first-choice votes, the candidate with
the fewest votes is eliminated and those ballots are redistributed to each
voter's next preference, repeating until someone reaches a majority.
Also called instant-runoff voting or preferential voting.
redlining
The systematic denial of mortgages and insurance to residents of
non-white neighborhoods in the US by government agencies and
private lenders from the 1930s onward. It was formally outlawed in
the US in 1968 but its effects persist in wealth and credit gaps.
regulatory capture
The process by which a regulatory agency comes to serve the
interests of the industry it is supposed to regulate rather than
the public interest it was created to protect.
regulatory compact
An implicit or explicit agreement between a regulated monopoly and
a government regulator, in which the monopoly accepts rate and
service regulation in exchange for protection from competition.
revolving door
The movement of individuals between roles in regulatory agencies
and the industries those agencies oversee.
S
samizdat
A form of dissident activity in the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc
in which individuals covertly reproduced and distributed censored
or banned literature, bypassing state censorship.
satisficing
The strategy of searching through available options until a
good-enough solution is found, rather than evaluating all
possibilities to find the optimal one. Satisficing reflects
bounded rationality: people do not have the time, information, or
cognitive capacity to optimize.
scrip
Company-issued currency or vouchers that could only be spent at
company-owned stores, historically used by employers to keep
workers' wages circulating within the company economy.
selection bias
A statistical error that occurs when the sample used in a study is
not representative of the population it is meant to reflect,
leading to skewed or misleading conclusions.
selectorate
In selectorate theory, the full set of people whose nominal
support a leader depends on to hold power, from which the winning
coalition is drawn. The selectorate is large enough to give the
leader alternatives if individual coalition members defect, but
most members receive only public goods rather than private
benefits.
selectorate theory
A framework explaining political and organizational behavior in
terms of the size of the winning coalition a leader must satisfy
to remain in power. Leaders with small winning coalitions can
maintain power by distributing private benefits to a few key
supporters; those with large winning coalitions must provide
broader public goods.
sharecropping
A system in which tenant farmers gave a portion of their crop as
rent to a landowner, often perpetuating poverty and dependency
through tied credit arrangements.
sideloading
Installing software on a device from sources other than the
platform operator's official app store, bypassing the operator's
review and commission systems.
slotting fees
Payments made by consumer goods manufacturers to retailers for
guaranteed shelf placement, functioning as a barrier to entry that
favors established brands with resources to pay.
social legibility
The degree to which an individual's characteristics, credentials,
or identity are visible and interpretable within the
categorization systems used by institutions making decisions about
them.
sodomy laws
Laws criminalizing certain sexual acts, historically applied
primarily to same-sex relations; declared unconstitutional in the
United States by the Supreme Court in 2003.
sole proprietorship
The simplest business structure, in which a single individual owns
and operates a firm with no legal separation between personal and
business assets, meaning the owner bears unlimited personal
liability for the firm's debts and obligations.
speculative bubble
A rapid, self-reinforcing rise in the price of an asset driven by
expectations of further price increases rather than underlying
value, followed by an equally rapid collapse when those
expectations reverse.
stand your ground
Laws that remove the traditional legal duty to retreat before
using lethal force in self-defense, applicable wherever a person
has a legal right to be.
standards body
An organization that develops, publishes, and maintains technical
standards through consensus processes among industry participants,
governments, and other stakeholders.
standards capture
The process by which a dominant firm shapes a technical standard
to its own advantage, either by controlling a standards body, by
implementing proprietary extensions that become de facto
requirements, or by refusing to implement open standards that
would reduce switching costs.
statistical discrimination
The practice of using group averages as proxies for individual
characteristics in decisions about hiring, lending, or other
allocations, producing disparate outcomes even without conscious
prejudice.
structural lock-in
The condition in which technical, contractual, or network
dependencies make switching away from a platform or system
prohibitively costly, regardless of dissatisfaction with it.
suppressive person
In Scientology, the designation applied to individuals who
publicly criticize the organization or leave it in ways deemed
harmful to its interests; those so designated may be cut off from
contact with current members, including family members who remain
in the organization.
surveillance economy
The business model in which user behavior data is systematically
collected, analyzed, and monetized through targeted advertising
and data brokering.
switching costs
The financial, practical, or social costs incurred when changing
from one product, service, or platform to another, which
incumbents exploit to retain users.
T
taste discrimination
The situation in which employers who prefer not to hire members of
certain groups effectively pay a premium for that preference,
disadvantaging discriminating firms in competitive markets.
tax haven
A jurisdiction that imposes low or zero taxes on foreign income,
profits, or wealth, attracting capital and corporate registrations
that have little or no genuine economic activity there.
TESCREAL
An acronym for Transhumanism, Extropianism, Singularitarianism,
Cosmism, Rationalism, Effective Altruism, and Longtermism. These
movements are not identical, but they share a belief that a small
group of enlightened individuals can and should steer humanity's
long-run trajectory, which tends to position democratic
institutions as obstacles rather than safeguards.
tithe
A mandatory contribution of one-tenth of income or produce,
historically collected by the Catholic Church as a form of
taxation with legal enforcement in many countries.
tontine
A historical financial arrangement in which subscribers contribute
to a shared fund and receive income from it; as each subscriber
dies, the remaining subscribers' shares increase until the last
survivor inherits the whole. Banned in most jurisdictions because
the structure creates incentives to hasten the deaths of other
participants.
tort liability protection
Tort liability is legal responsibility for harm you cause someone
outside of a contract; tort liability protection (also called
liability shield or immunity) is when a law specifically exempts
you from being sued for such harms.
transfer pricing
The setting of prices for transactions between subsidiaries of the
same multinational corporation, which can be manipulated to shift
profits to low-tax jurisdictions by under- or overcharging for
goods, services, or intellectual property licenses.
U
union avoidance
A formal management discipline focused on preventing workers from
forming or joining unions, employing specialized consultants to
structure workplaces, communications, and compensation to reduce
organizing incentives.
V
vertical integration
A business strategy in which a company controls multiple stages of
its supply chain, from production through distribution and retail,
reducing dependence on external parties and raising barriers to
competitors.
W
waqf
An Islamic charitable endowment in which property is dedicated in
perpetuity to a specified purpose and cannot be sold or inherited;
historically used to fund mosques, hospitals, schools, and public
infrastructure across the Middle East, Central Asia, and North
Africa.
winning coalition
In selectorate theory, the minimum subset of supporters a leader
must keep satisfied to remain in power. The smaller the winning
coalition, the more each member must be rewarded with private
benefits rather than broad public goods, creating strong
incentives for corruption and cronyism.
workplace politics
The process by which individuals and groups within an organization
attempt to influence decisions in their favor when there is no
shared agreement on goals or priorities. Workplace politics is
not exceptional behavior by bad actors; it is the normal mechanism
by which organizations resolve disagreement.
X
Y
yellow press
Late nineteenth and early twentieth century sensationalist
newspapers known for emotionally manipulative coverage that
prioritized circulation over accuracy, named after the Yellow Kid
comic strip.