You can force a class of 'market fixers' to exist just by using the right math in your pricing.
March 24, 2026
Original Paper
Induced Symbiosis Through Convexity: A General Principle of Mechanism Design
SSRN · 6299004
The Takeaway
Rather than hiring or regulating intermediaries into existence, this paper demonstrates that a specific 'convex' cost function makes their emergence a mathematical certainty. These intermediaries appear automatically because the geometry of the market makes fixing system imbalances the only rational way to profit.
From the abstract
<p>This paper describes a general mechanism design principle: a convex cost function applied to participant behaviour at the boundary of an economic equilibrium, when its revenue is returned to fund equilibrium restoration, reliably produces an aligned professional intermediary class as an emergent property. We call this outcome induced symbiosis. The intermediary is not designed, recruited, or instructed into existence. It emerges because the geometry of the cost function makes its emergence th