It’s an arbitrary point system that distorts real wealth and minimizes the real value of labor and time in the favor of the ruling class. Without the distortion of value money inflicts on wealth, there could be no institutionalized slavery, no billionaires, and no housing crisis. The "invisible hand of the market’ claimed by economists is actually the very visible hand of Wall Street, the Federal Reserve and other central banks around the world actively selecting which types of wealth have value.
Source: Worked in the Stock Market in the 90s on the Options Floor. Watched market makers inflate their wealth by millions by calling down to the trading floor and starting rumors. Insider trading was rampant - I knew PeopleSoft was going to split three months before it did. Thirty years ago it turned my stomach to realize that every element of how we value wealth in this world is defined by drunken ex-frat boys hopped up on coke and Jack Daniels, breaking every rule meant to contain them and laughing when they had to pay the fine.
Today I can’t even look at a stock ticker without feeling nauseous.
To be fair, currency and the stock exchange are fairly different systems. Currency roughly keeps track of how valuable/stable that currency is seen to be, while stock prices are largely made up of vibes regarding how well a company is doing. The latter is a game designed by and for the rich to hide and move money while inflating their own worth, while the former is what is being hid. The difference is, everyone has to agree on the worth of the dollar, while only a handful of traders determine the worth of Tesla stock.
No, greed is constant, and I don’t mention it above. I make no apologia for human nature, nor do I expect a utopia if currency suddenly disappeared. But if you get to the heart of it, your kids don’t fight over money - they fight over wealth - physical goods. In essence, a person has no need for money itself, only the goods it can buy.
After money detached from the gold standard and physical connection, it became effectively imaginary. As long as money is tied to the physical possession, it becomes difficult to hoard - a prime example is Fort Knox, which, while it hold a huge amount of physical gold that has a large monetary value, the vaults of Knox are dwarfed in comparison to the amount of money held by Elon Musk. In fact, I don’t think there’s enough physical gold in the world to cover Musk’s fortune.
Now, if Musk actually had to keep his wealth in the form of physical gold, he’d never be able to use it or leverage it the way he can with money. The logistics and expense of handling that amount of gold would be insurmountable. It’s very physical nature prevents the inflation and distortion we see with fiat currency. Another example would the millions in paper currrency Pablo Escobar lost to mold and rats - the need to hold the physical wealth effectively eroded it.
But money isn’t attached to gold anymore, or anything physical. It exists as an arbitrary point value within a bank account, and it’s attachment to physical goods only exists because we believe it does.
And in this arbitrary imaginary system, the value of a pile currency can now end up exceeding the total wealth of the world if the powers that be choose to let it.
Just like one man, Musk, is richer than all the rest of us according to this system, when his actual value as a member of society is about that of your average ketamine junkie.
Money is imaginary.
It’s an arbitrary point system that distorts real wealth and minimizes the real value of labor and time in the favor of the ruling class. Without the distortion of value money inflicts on wealth, there could be no institutionalized slavery, no billionaires, and no housing crisis. The "invisible hand of the market’ claimed by economists is actually the very visible hand of Wall Street, the Federal Reserve and other central banks around the world actively selecting which types of wealth have value.
Source: Worked in the Stock Market in the 90s on the Options Floor. Watched market makers inflate their wealth by millions by calling down to the trading floor and starting rumors. Insider trading was rampant - I knew PeopleSoft was going to split three months before it did. Thirty years ago it turned my stomach to realize that every element of how we value wealth in this world is defined by drunken ex-frat boys hopped up on coke and Jack Daniels, breaking every rule meant to contain them and laughing when they had to pay the fine.
Today I can’t even look at a stock ticker without feeling nauseous.
To be fair, currency and the stock exchange are fairly different systems. Currency roughly keeps track of how valuable/stable that currency is seen to be, while stock prices are largely made up of vibes regarding how well a company is doing. The latter is a game designed by and for the rich to hide and move money while inflating their own worth, while the former is what is being hid. The difference is, everyone has to agree on the worth of the dollar, while only a handful of traders determine the worth of Tesla stock.
Interesting. So you think greed exists because of money. I disagree because I have kids and they don’t understand money, but they do understand greed.
No, greed is constant, and I don’t mention it above. I make no apologia for human nature, nor do I expect a utopia if currency suddenly disappeared. But if you get to the heart of it, your kids don’t fight over money - they fight over wealth - physical goods. In essence, a person has no need for money itself, only the goods it can buy.
After money detached from the gold standard and physical connection, it became effectively imaginary. As long as money is tied to the physical possession, it becomes difficult to hoard - a prime example is Fort Knox, which, while it hold a huge amount of physical gold that has a large monetary value, the vaults of Knox are dwarfed in comparison to the amount of money held by Elon Musk. In fact, I don’t think there’s enough physical gold in the world to cover Musk’s fortune.
Now, if Musk actually had to keep his wealth in the form of physical gold, he’d never be able to use it or leverage it the way he can with money. The logistics and expense of handling that amount of gold would be insurmountable. It’s very physical nature prevents the inflation and distortion we see with fiat currency. Another example would the millions in paper currrency Pablo Escobar lost to mold and rats - the need to hold the physical wealth effectively eroded it.
But money isn’t attached to gold anymore, or anything physical. It exists as an arbitrary point value within a bank account, and it’s attachment to physical goods only exists because we believe it does.
And in this arbitrary imaginary system, the value of a pile currency can now end up exceeding the total wealth of the world if the powers that be choose to let it.
Just like one man, Musk, is richer than all the rest of us according to this system, when his actual value as a member of society is about that of your average ketamine junkie.