[Bratmon]

This article is a reminder to all of us programmers that there is a belief that is common among non-programmer intellectuals (especially the above-average-intelligence-but-not-genius types) but completely non-existent among skilled software engineers:

Abstraction is inherently dishonest.

If you're a good software engineer, you quickly build an understanding that abstractions are vital for detailed understanding of complex systems, but can leak or even fail entirely. Less quickly, software engineers build very good instincts at how to tell when an abstraction is leaking/failing (that's what debugging is, after all).

Outside software engineering, this is not a skill that is consistently practiced. As a result, you end up getting takes like this one, in which the authors figure out that "money" is an abstraction over "all productive work and assets" and that this abstraction sometimes leaks.

But because the authors aren't used to dealing with abstractions, they assume that the fact that the abstraction "money" leaks sometimes means that it's worthless and should be removed. In fact, the opposite is true: the abstraction "money" does leak (which can cause real serious problems), but in the cases it doesn't, it's essential to human flourishing in any economy more complex than "exchange bread for pelts"

[skybrian]

The first author is a professor of economics who seems to be some kind of socialist, but they readily admit that money is very useful. They're trying to get to grips with the nature of it. They're saying that some abstractions about money are better than others.

To come up with better abstractions, sometimes you need to strip away the abstractions and study what's being abstracted.

[ChuckMcM]

Apparently both authors would develop a better way to explaining and separating these things if they took some Systems Dynamics[1] courses. Everyone who has taken college level economics was taught that money isn't real (I mean the first money was owning a very large rock on a ledger where that rock might be at the bottom of the ocean. [2]) But what is absolutely real is a contract of labor or materials. Using numbers to allow you to trade contracts for wood and carpenters for a house and using tokens to represent those numbers is sufficient to create a more flexible market than just straight up barter.

[1] https://systemdynamics.org/

[2] https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2011/02/15/131934618/the-...

[Bratmon]

Are you trying to tell me that the the book titled "Against Money" is not against money?

[skybrian]

Well, not in a simplistic way. He kind of fudges it:

> The title Against Money is trying to do a few different things. First, it highlights the distinction between the network of money payments and values, on the one hand, and on the other hand the concrete social and material reality that exists apart from them, and often in tension with them. In this sense, we mean “against” in the same way one might distinguish a figure against a background; by writing about money, we seek to clarify our vision of the social world that exists around, outside and in opposition to it. Second, the title announces our criticism of familiar ways of thinking, our challenge to the dominant view of money within economics. Finally, the title links the book to a political project that seeks to transcend markets and property rights as the organizing principles of society, and to imagine a future in which money no longer defines the scope and possibilities of our collective existence.

[Bratmon]

> Finally, the title links the book to a political project that seeks to transcend markets and property rights as the organizing principles of society, and to imagine a future in which money no longer defines the scope and possibilities of our collective existence.

Yeah, the part where he says is goal is for society to transcend the concept of money is what got me to think that his goal was for society to transcend the concept of money.