| Author |
Message |
MJP
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 07, 2006 - 9:51 am: | |
What is money?
Money is a species of debt. That's my definition of it.
It's strange when you think that it's money that drives buses, for example. |
MJP
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 08, 2006 - 1:33 pm: | |
Here is more reflection on the 'dismal science'. (That is, to keep the troops entertained.)
Money is in fact nothing at all. It doesn't exist; and yet without it no buses would move. However much you pushed or pulled, they wouldn't budge. You wouldn't even be allowed on one.
What gives money its value?
Marx's concept of surplus value begs the question. Surplus to what? What is necessity? What is subsistence? It depends who does the defining.
The qualities that we perceive in money. What it represents. Trust, confidence, transformation, possession, well-being, fantasy, time, are on the account of it that I would like to give all species of debt.
The great question is, what does that mean, and am I talking through my hat? |
Martin
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 08, 2006 - 3:10 pm: | |
Money is an agreed system of signifiers, and anyone from Pound to Colin Wilson (I remember he demolished "surplus value" in a single paragraph somewhere) can get lost in just exactly what actually underlies that system. If you agree on "worth," you can invest it in anything - to take just the most well-known instance:
http://www.dirtgardener.com/TipSheets/Bulbs/Tulipa miana.html
Interestingly, I'm just reading a biog of Nico which points out that heroin makes a much better currency in unstable times than gold - not that it did the poor woman any good. |
MJP
| | Posted on Thursday, February 09, 2006 - 2:01 pm: | |
Martin: money is an agreed system of signifiers, but what do all those signifiers work to signify?
The question may be unanswerable; but it may not.
The idea of heroin as a currency is interesting. Because suppose no one was interested in it; no one took it. Then it would be a kind of empty signifier, like paper itself. Where does its value come from? In a way this system of signifiers determines reality. But then comes the bust. The sudden collapse in confidence. It becomes worthless.
Confidence and money. Where there is one there is also the other. |
iotar
| | Posted on Thursday, February 09, 2006 - 3:20 pm: | |
So money is a matter of belief? The collapse of the German economy in the thirties was a failure of faith which led to an adherence to a new brutal regime based not upon scarcity, supply and demand but upon might as right.
But as we've seen the one is always hiding behind the mask of the other. While the capitalist world dances mathematical games of economics underneath there is the rottweiler military complex. Certainly economics is built upon confidence, but where confidence fails, there is always force.
Also: money is potential. Barter only allows for real perishable objects while money is eternal, although fluctuating in magnitude. Money is value awaiting action. It is the future. It is "all you never had of goods and sex". |
MJP
| | Posted on Monday, February 13, 2006 - 1:24 pm: | |
Io: >>>but where confidence fails, there is always force
It's one of those 'which comes first?' questions. The state is founded on force. That is the case, obviously and simply. The peace in which we live - the civilisation that we are priviledged to be part of - is the construct of a military power. But on what is that force bent (so to speak)? I would say: on a human fantasy. It needs something to make it real. The medium of that means is money. |
mjp
Username: mjp
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 16, 2007 - 8:54 pm: | |
In case anyone is interested, here is a link which actually argues the same thing. This link was sent to me by my brother. The video has a definite but disguised aura of doom and conspiracy theory about it. It is clearly outraged that it seems that bankers are taking us and the rest of the world for a ride. All kinds of quotes are used as ammunition. What it has right - confirming my guess - is that money is indeed undeniably a species of debt. The problem with the conspiracy hints is that a banker isn't anything more than a hill of beans monitoring a system that he or she never invented and that came about through hard human custom and war and power.
http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/135.html
Given those failures of perspective, however, this is an interesting summary. |
mjp
Username: mjp
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Thursday, February 12, 2009 - 5:24 pm: | |
The doom sayers seem to have been right.
I had no conscious idea, anyway, writing this that we were sitting on top of a financial bubble. |
martin
Username: martin
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Friday, February 13, 2009 - 1:55 pm: | |
Not being wise after the event - but in the end, one way or another, all debt has to be paid. And the longer the Nice Decade went on, the more I remembered advice given by my great-grandfather, which my parents drilled into me as a teenager: if you can't afford two, don't buy one. It means I missed out on the bling. It also means I'm not staring at repossession.
Cold comfort. Where this will end is anyone's guess. Mandarins probably have a frighteningly fair idea - but none will dare say it in public.
Soft landings, y'all. |
mjp
Username: mjp
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Monday, February 16, 2009 - 10:54 am: | |
Money is the measure of reality. The measure for two reasons: because it is said to be real and because it works. It works because it works. It is real because it is said to be real. Just for example when the measure of a foot or inch is decided on, and works as the measure of things simply because everyone agrees on it. It's talking through my hat time. But it makes sense to me anyway. |
mjp
Username: mjp
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Monday, February 16, 2009 - 11:02 am: | |
I should add: money is the measure of reality as a finitude. |
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