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Economics is the control mechanism which filled the void vacated by religion after the Enlightenment. A bunch of arbitrary rules, conjured out of thin air by the ruling class, protected from scrutiny, and imposed upon the masses.
- Churches and cathedrals became banks and financial institutions.
- Priests and clergy retrained into economists and finance officers.
- Mythology was mixed with cherry picked elements of mathematics to become finance.
- God evolved into GDP.
Within this framing, money is an imaginary construct that only functions because of a shared societal psychosis. Its value and utility can only exist as long as everyone involved in its use continues their belief in it.
This is not to claim religion and economics shouldn’t play a part in society, they can help with social cohesion, and unify groups for a common goal. My argument is that they should be subservient to the will and needs of the society they exist within, not positioned as their current dictatorial role of casting the societal mould.
Many useful things are entirely made up. Concepts like justice, love, community, hierarchy, nationhood, borders, property, gender, etc. are all social constructs. They exist because we choose to make them exist. In the immortal words of Terry Pratchett, “Take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy…” Social constructs are the “big lies” we create because we need them to make sense of the world, and ideally make it a better place. Money is just another social construct we created because it serves a useful function.
Love that quote.
Yeah, there are definitely a lot of times where money is important as a measure of the logistical practicality, and I actually do respect those practicalities… but some days it feel like the world has been taken over by people more fixated on getting money than making the world better. At the very least, there are other social-constructs worth balancing against the financial considerations.
Totally agree. It’s always important to remember that these tools are means to an end, not an end in themselves, and to make sure we are designing the tool to serve useful and constructive ends. If the tool isn’t serving a beneficial purpose, it’s time to consider another tool, or possibly redesigning it. We invented the tool. We not only have the power, but also the responsibility to use it wisely, and to make it better when it’s not serving its purpose.
Sir this is a meme group
He‘s literally describing how memes work.
Money is a collective fiction.
It is a social construct.
It only exist because we live in a society.
As is every social agreement
As is language.
I can’t tell which end of the bell curve I’m on here lol
Maybe someone can explain the two distinct “money is fiction” positions?
One side is the conspiracy nuts, the ones that don’t really believe anything specific, just some vague idea of an “illuminate” type that influences the world using money. Usually none of the ideas are actually “wrong” on their own and in a vacuum, but the way they’re mixed together is always batshit, and you can’t really talk or reason to these people, and they can never really explain who is in control.
Then the other side, also believes that money isn’t real, but in the way that debt on a macro scale just… doesn’t matter. The only reason it does is because of powerful people with massive egos, who carry a pecking order of like-minded people who think they’ll be next in line to live like kings. That all the countries could just look at their balance sheets, and just say “fuck it, don’t worry about the debt.” Basic needs like housing, energy, oil, none of it really matters, and at any time we can drop the whole charade about debt and just… be good neighbors, and we could all get on with our lives, and never worry about owing debts.
Of course the second point will never happen without exploring new systems of government, but is theoretically possible.
tiny tiny 0.0001%:
Money is real:
To say it is not so is to say that “concepts actualized within our own minds are not real.” And to say that is to say that our own minds are not real and since our minds are what define the world and sets a “real state” to it, as in our minds itself is what defines the external world as real then internal concepts must be at least as "real’ as external concepts such as time or gravity or quarks or our own physical brain that holds our minds.
IDK… I think the percentage of people smoking mind altering substances is much higher than 0.0001%.
Time to advertise a short story called The Station’s Cathedral (Die Bahnhofskathedrale) which sort of encapsulates why you can find my at both ends of this curve.
I couldn’t find a quote but somebody wrote a paper about it.
Technologies can be both material and social. Social technologies live in our heads, sustained by our individual trusts in their shared belief. Murray Bookchin called them “technics” and they are incredibly durable considering that they are in actuality entirely immaterial.
Eye roll at this brain dead meme, and also what GreenBeard said.
