J. R. Molloy wrote:
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> Consequently, the effect of eliminating arm's length transactions from
> a portion of the social order would tend to have no other effect than
> to increase emotional isolation of that society's members while
> increasing transactions of the virtual kind.
There surely will be very many elements and constructs exposed by eliminating arm's length transactions. I don't know whether to agree or disagree with your principle effect. Maybe in the past we needed such transactions because we didn't have an intellectual collaborator (Ingrid on your arm) to do the real world semantic number crunching for us. Anyway, upon reflection, the standard text book definition of an investment does appear to have an exponential cancerous component built in and I think "it" alone is what causes the "arms length" ghetto of today's rich to immolate themselves to the biggest conflagration of excess the world has ever seen.
Maybe we can rebuild a better world when the fire's out, eh?