A grammar of rent, a vocabulary of extraction.
Working Papers
This is a repository of working papers, notes, and frameworks developed at the intersection of institutional economics, investment research, and political philosophy.
The animating problem: the extraction attractor is a geometric fact about social space. Understanding its structure is a precondition for designing against it.
Core framework
RR = V(create) / (V(create) + V(extract))
The Robustness Ratio. Any institution, platform, or financial structure can be evaluated by the proportion of value it creates versus extracts. As RR approaches zero, the extraction attractor has colonised the system.
Central thesis
Extraction, AI misalignment, and addiction are three instances of the same structural phenomenon — terminal object colonisation — at different scales. The Argyros-Haydon decomposition maps this directly: every operator contains genuine scalar content, with extraction bounded as a compact perturbation.
All Papers
A stress-test of private equity structures against geopolitical tail risk, focusing on the Strait of Hormuz scenario. Develops the intelligence asymmetry thesis — that proprietary data generation will become one of the most consequential parameters in LP due diligence — and introduces formal decomposition methods for separating genuine value creation from structural rent extraction across 165 asset managers.
The terminal object of the Universal Choice Space is normatively empty. This paper argues that this structural fact makes human oversight of AI systems not merely prudent but logically necessary. Drawing on Banach space theory, Lawvere's fixed point theorem, and category-theoretic foundations, it develops the alignment interpretation of the scalar-plus-compact operator algebra terminus.
Extraction is not a fact about human nature but a geometric fact about social space. This paper develops the extraction attractor framework — drawing on Prigogine, Shannon, and Georgist political economy — to show why institutions converge toward rent-seeking regardless of the intentions of their founders, and what structural conditions can interrupt or reverse that convergence.
Institutions hold detailed, continuously updated maps of individuals. Individuals hold almost no corresponding map of institutions. This asymmetry is not incidental — it is the mechanism by which rent is extracted from information. This paper examines three architectural responses and evaluates each against the Robustness Ratio, concluding that self-enforcing structural intervention dominates regulatory compliance.
A comprehensive analysis of synthetic PIK structures, covenant erosion, NAV lending, and adjusted EBITDA contamination across private credit and life insurance. Develops the chameleon capital thesis and incorporates Phalippou et al. "Would I Lie to You?" (SSRN 5322805) as evidence that narrative tone predicts GP performance better than reported valuations under Knightian uncertainty.
A note on the name
The author's full name is Daniel Harry Levy Haydon. He goes by Dan.
The etymology
Daniel — from Hebrew דָּנִיֵּאל. God is my judge. Authority that derives from beyond the institution.
Harry — to plunder, to lay waste, to harass. The act of extraction.
Levy — from Hebrew levi, but also: the tax. The tithe. The compulsory take.
Haydon — the hay down. The common field. What gets enclosed.
The reading
The one whose authority derives from beyond the institution — watching the plunderer levy a tax on the commons. This was not chosen. It was inherited — which is, of course, precisely how extraction works.
The project is to make it visible. The name, it turns out, always was.
About
These papers are produced by D Hay, an investment professional and writer working at the intersection of fund research, institutional economics, and political philosophy.
The animating conviction: the map is always political. Institutions succeed on their own metrics while producing territories that don't match. Understanding the gap between the two — and who profits from it — is the central problem of our moment.
The grammar of rent framework draws on Banach space mathematics, Gödel, Prigogine, Shannon, Georgist political economy, and Michael Levin's morphogenetic field research. The Argyros-Haydon decomposition, developed with Richard Haydon (Emeritus Professor of Mathematics, Oxford), provides the formal backbone.
Longer essays and dispatches are published at danhaydon.substack.com.