The Asymmetric Carrier Problem

Why do some harms become cases, deadlines, hearings, and remedies — while other costs remain invisible background pressure?This episode of Mechanism Realism examines the asymmetric carrier problem. A carrier is the procedural structure that lets a harm enter an institution as an admissible, response-triggering object. It has components: bearer, category, forum, trigger, and incentive.The problem appears when one side of a tradeoff has a full carrier stack and the displaced cost does not. A complaint becomes a case. A statutory request creates a deadline. A recognized category triggers review. But the shifted workload, delayed queue, future taxpayer, deferred maintenance, or lost capacity often has no comparable forum, trigger, or owner.This is one upstream generator of telos gaps: known harms that fail to become anyone’s repair responsibility.Before asking whether an institution responded well, ask whether the harm had a carrier capable of making the institution answer at all.https://kunnas.com/articles/asymmetric-carrier-problem