Money

[poliphilo]

Money isn't real. It's a figment- a shared hallucination- which depends on us pretending that the bits of base metal in our pockets, the blocks of shiny metal in our vaults and the pixellated numbers on our screens have a real ,intrinsic value. Economics, like religion, is a game of lets pretend- and money, like God, a human invention to which worth is ascribed. So long as we keep up the pretence all will be well.  But let our belief waver, the faith be broken, and society shakes from top to bottom.

Maybe you already knew this. I don't think I did before yesterday. Not really. Maybe I knew it deep down, but I hadn't let the ideas come to the surface. I hadn't articulated them.

Money has always frightened me.  I haven't understood how it works and I've never had quite enough of it to feel secure. Ailz is very good with it, though. She performs conjuring tricks, keeping the numbers jigging away, so there's always some to hand  Left to myself, I'd live like a miser out of fear of the stuff.  She doesn't have that fear. She actually enjoys the presdigitation she perfoms to give us a quality of life. It's a game to her. The word she uses about it is "bracing".

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I was reading something in one of my archaeology magazines that suggested that the adoption of Roman-style coinage by British tribal kingdoms represented a great step forward in civilisation etc. I guess that's true. The more sophisticated the culture the more fictitious its money becomes.

[oakmouse]

And the more fictitious the money becomes, the more sophisticated (in the old sense) the culture and its economic system are capable of becoming.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

And the more difficult it is to fix the system when it goes wrong....

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

Well, I think Gordon Brown did a fair bit of fixing this time last year and it has saved most of us from the worst ravages. For most of us, money may be virtual but it isn't fictional. But for certain investment bankers and stockbrokers, I think it takes on the mantle of a computer game and it might be safer if they were given monopoly money to play with.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I see that, in spite of having nearly brought the civilised world to its knees- and in spite of the universal contempt in which they are held, the bankers are back to their old game of awarding themselves gigantic bonuses.

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

Like professional footballers, it's all about rare skills, or that's the argument they make. If the UK restricts high salaries for excellent bankers, then they will move abroad and leave our institutions without the talent it needs.

This is not a bad argument as it stands but I would apply two caveats:

1. A bonus should be a bonus. It's not just part of your normal salary that is deferred until the end of the year. It should be given for extrmeley good performance on behalf of your investors (you and me) and not excpected as "standard". It should be deferred until the long-term effects of your decisions can be judged. Just like footballers, you are as only as good as your last performance.

2. When you perform badly and your investors and your company suffer from your mad decisions, you should get fuck all other than the sack.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I wonder how rare these skills really are- seeing how they can be performed by callow young men.