Cosmic Economics — IfT IV, The Baked Universe: Pre-fermentation Before the Bang

It from Trade: Cosmic Economics — A Conceptual Translation Layer for the t=∞ Time Ocean Model (Complete Series) This series proposes a cross-disciplinary conceptual translation layer that reinterprets foundational structures in modern physics through the language of economics, markets, and value. Titled It from Trade, the series extends John Archibald Wheeler’s “It from Bit” conjecture by arguing that physical reality emerges not merely from information, but from the exchange of information — and that exchange presupposes a market, a price, and ultimately a customer. The central axiom of the series is the Axiom of Cosmic Customer (ACC): the universe operates as a self-organising economic system, with time as its directional arrow, liquidity as its generative engine, and the desires, aesthetic judgements, and subjective utility of the conscious observer as the ultimate source of value. The series maps 18 key physical phenomena — spanning General Relativity, quantum mechanics, and thermodynamics — onto their economic and behavioural analogues. These include the Big Bang as market opening, gravity as capital concentration (Matthew Effect), black holes as Zero-Entropy Interface (ZEI) bankruptcy terminals, the speed of light as a bandwidth firewall preserving information asymmetry, entropy increase as systemic inflation, and the conscious observer as the final customer who closes the cosmic value loop. It from Trade is developed as the behavioural and motivational layer complementary to the author’s earlier t=∞Time Ocean Model (TOM) series. While TOM provides the computational ontology of the universe (Mother Matrix, Father Body, ZEI), It from Trade supplies the economic and teleological language through which that architecture can be understood as purposeful. The series consists of a Preface and seven substantive papers, plus a Postscript. It does not replace standard physics (ΛCDM, quantum field theory, or general relativity) but offers a structural and behavioural isomorphism framework. Three Alignment Equations with explicit functional forms and falsifiable observational windows are proposed in Paper V. arXiv access code available upon request Contact: [email protected]