Wealth is real, though relative, and is measured in units of currency (dollars). But as the recent dot.com boom/bust demonstrated, it can also be illusory.
Ed Weick > Hmmm.... > > Rocks are "real", we can stub our toes on them; coins are "real", we can > choke on them, or throw them at dogs urinating on our lawns (forgive me > Bishop Berkeley). "Money", like other forms of totem worship is a social > convention. > > MG > > -----Original Message----- > From: Keith Hudson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: April 21, 2002 2:38 AM > To: Michael Gurstein > Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Reality of money (was RE: Computers: our downfall (wasRe: > Privatizing the Public: Whose agenda? At What Cost?) > > > Fundamentally, money is real -- at least until we're reduced to a level of > depravity and starvation when we start eating one another. It was even real > at almost that stage when: > > "There was a great famine in the city; the siege lasted so long that a > donkey's head sold for eighty shekels of silver and a quarter of a cab of > dove's dung for five shekels." [2 Kings ch 6 v 25] > > And if money isn't shekels of silver, then it's packets of cigarettes as in > present-day Russia, or poppy seeds as in present-day Afghanistan. All > tangible, not abstract. > > Credit is certainly an abstraction. We're now into abstraction after > abstraction as one dubious financial instrument succeeds another in the > world of computerised finance. That's precisely what I've been trying to > say in my last two postings. > > However, I'll grant you that governments started the rot a century ago when > they turned real money into paper tokens in order to play fast and loose > with its value. > > Considering the bouts of inflation of the last century, and the likelilood > of prolonged deflation in this, money will have to become real again sooner > or later. > > We had a glimpse of what real money was during the 19th century when its > value remained constant, when free trade reigned, when real economic growth > occurred and when the working man started to become free of agricultural > servitude. > > KH > > At 15:06 20/04/02 -0400, you wrote: > (MG) > <<<< > I think I should have written "real" money? > > Isn't all "money" simply a set of conventions wrapped around beliefs in the > form of tokens. "Credit" simply takes that to one further stage of > abstraction, and e-money credit only dematerializes this further. > > We can tie values down and link them to real exchanges and then abstract > that up, but talking about "real" in these terms seems to me to be about as > empty and pointless (and fairly dripping with ideological assumptions) as > talking about the "real" nature of humankind. > > Whoops sorry, that's another discussion. > >>>> > > > __________________________________________________________ > Writers used to write because they had something to say; now they write in > order to discover if they have something to say. John D. Barrow > _________________________________________________ > Keith Hudson, Bath, England; e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > _________________________________________________ >
