[pid-1]

> The only thing that maintains the value of any asset (or currency) is the collective belief in that asset or currency. Put another way: there is an inescapable component of trust in every asset

Most non currency assets are cash flow generating financial instruments.

If analysts don't believe a company is worth a dime, it can show them wrong by being profitable and paying dividends.

Edit: I think my point is - even if no one else believes in a stock or bond, you can still profit by "being right". The same is not true for currencies.

[Ntrails]

I cannot remember where I read this, but it was a view that basically the mere concept of a "company" is a collective fiction that we all believe in. As are nations, laws, etc etc. The idea that "tesla" is an entity one can interact with. That this "tesla" thing has value in and of itself. They're derived from beliefs in a system. Which could evapourate and render the idea of value meaningless.

I don't think this is very useful, since "yeah but without society there are no companies, money is nothing" doesn't take us very far! But hey.

[kuhewa]

It's useful from the standpoint it was explained in Sapiens (like how the fiction of the LLC allowed certain innovations) but not so much in this context. You can believe in the corporation or not, the important thing is that you won't go personally bankrupt if your company does, if the relevant 'belief system' aka the US judicial system evaporates, we have bigger problems to worry about than well, anything else in this conversation

[Avicebron]

I agree with GP to some extant, but yeah..the old "nothing matters in this semi infinite void we call reality" isn't usually much of a starter.

[kuhewa]

It's worth talking about in so far as trust is important for some concept to work. Like.. how you will help your friend move apartments because you know he will help you in a year or so. Or whether a successful (thus far) crypto coin could go to zero.

But the whole point of a corporation is it is a legal entity, you don't need to trust anything for it to work other than other than.. idk the fabric of our society.

[BlueTemplar]

But it's kind of a problem that TFA tries to "prove" otherwise without a big disclaimer about the limits of his model in the real world...

[9notorp]

>I cannot remember where I read this, but it was a view that basically the mere concept of a "company" is a collective fiction

I think I read something similar in Sapiens.

[simonh]

So the other way to say this is that companies are just as real as anything else in our society.

[kuhewa]

That was kind of Harari's point when using that lens in Sapiens, it wasn't that the corporation was some flimsy imaginary concept, it was that it is a fiction in the same way democracy or religion is.

[fantasticshower]

It's interesting but not very useful. What's also interesting is that almost everything (actually everything?) is concepts that we collectively believe in.

This is my takeaway from the book The Case Against Reality.

[crawfordcomeaux]

> I don't think this is very useful, since "yeah but without society there are no companies, money is nothing" doesn't take us very far!

This reminds me there always exists a path between the current society & a completely different one, and a short path to something completely different is to start from scratch.

[galaxyLogic]

Company is not fiction to believe in, it is an agreement a contract by the society encoded in a set of laws. The laws governing companies, unlike the market-value of assets, are very resistant to change. Market values change very often, especially values of crypto-currencies. Laws don't change often.

A company exists and has valid standing not because people believe in it but because the law says it exists. It is easy to prove beyond reasonable doubt that a company exists (or not). That has nothing to do with whether people believe it is valuable.

[drdeca]

I suspect that a company is still a natural abstraction in the sense described by John Wentworth (wrt “information at a distance” and such).

[jmyeet]

My point is more fundamental than anticipating market mispricing within a certain set of constraints.

How does a company make money? Why does it distribute that money to shareholders? Why can't someone working at the company just keep all the money? Why can't the bank just confiscate it?

The answer at all levels is the the threat of violence. Property rights (eg to the money) are enforced by the threat of state-sanctioend violence, for example the police showing up at your house and throwing you in jail if you don't comply with laws.

So why would the police show up and do that? Why would the courts enforce those laws? It's not just the threat of violence, essentially. It's the collective belief in that system.

[kgwgk]

Why stop there? What makes an asset exist at all if not someone’s belief? Persistence is not a physical property as much as a phenomenon of perception. We believe that what we see is what we saw - and we believe that who we are is who we were. Etc.

[xphos]

Have to agree an asset is not a currency, in some case one can consider labor an assets and by extension an asset that can produce value. Labor might be unique in that regard but property seems to be similar you can derive value from nothing by putting property to use and since you can always change what the property produces. However, without any property, you physically cannot produce anything.