I think I’ve made some headway on my understanding of money
- Money is an social construct or institution.
- It can be thought of as a symbol of something society (that defined the value) owes you.
- Money is ‘circulating debt’. When you receive a commodity that represents money society owes you something that is defined by the ‘value’ or unit of account.
- Currency exchange directly relates to the power between societies as obligations from on society are weaker/stronger in another.
When we feel money is being ‘created’, devalued, its a reflection on all of us. Its a subtle acknowledgement that we all agreed to give it value but someone has decided to make that decision for us.
I saw a method from a student to put your source on the left, a main argument in the middle and points to back it up on the right. Seemed like a solid structure.
It’s fascinating to think that some of our social structures evolved to mitigate conflict. That just as you might say why does a bird look this way, its a product of random mutations in an environment. Can we say the same about the social systems we’ve evolved, at least something deep rooted like religiosity?
One of my goals or structures to implement on myself is writing stuff up!
Samuel Bowles on Economics (Mindscape)
- In economics there’s a tendency to try and define interactions through defining the particles in the interactions (human beings) in society.
- Game theory applies this mathematics to the ‘particles’ of the economic. Their behaviour can be formalised.
- Metaphor in Economics is commonly, transportation, analogies with a physical system where some forces are doing the optimisation and transporting, value, services etc. from one end to the other.
- Bowles prefers the conversational metaphor of the economy, that we should be looking at linguistic not really physics for similarities in concepts.
- Metaphors from actual society rather than biology or physics is important.
- Classic economics seemingly is explained by constraint optimization. In the simple case of one man on an island and the resources available. So you have a vector of options and things to produce.
- ~ 20 min: Supply and demand as a theory depends upon the notion of a ‘complete contract’, you get redress if the contract isn’t met. Think of how this doesn’t work for labour. If you offer me a salary, you’re purchasing my time. My agreement to work is not enforcible. The contract could be terminated but theres no redress really for it ??