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by adventured
4062 days ago
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It's not favors that money represents, but rather a convenient frozen form of productive labor and goods. It represents time. The world does not owe you a debt or favor just because you possess that money. I don't owe you a debt, such that I have to give you anything for that money if I choose not to; and nobody else does either. Viewing money as a debt owed, is a very incorrect way to look at it. To prove the point, try walking up to someone and telling them that you have a piece of government paper in your pocket that represents a claim on their shoes, and since they owe you a debt you demand they give you their shoes (or really anything else for that matter) right now. See what happens. |
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> Money is a piece of token that represents favor or debt the world owns to you, or at least, anyone who takes money as payment
I think perhaps that line might be better stated as something like:
"Money is a piece of token that represents favor or debt the <backer-of-money> owes you."
E.g. <backer-of-money> might be a bank or government. E.g. fiat currency.
If someone accepts my money in payment, that is not because money is some "debt-upon-the-world" that I can transfer to an arbitrary person, and force them to repay, rather, they perceive that a token of the <backer-of-money>'s debt has value, and they are willing to exchange some good or service so that the <backer-of-money> is now in their debt.
Perhaps a more general way of looking at it is that money is a token that one believes has value because one believes that others believe the token has value, and are willing to accept it in exchange for other things of value (which may or may not be other forms of money, or goods/services with "actual" value).
Yet another way of looking at it is that money is part of a system that influences a group of individuals in society to behave in a certain way. From this perspective you could ask things like:
1. are the collective actions of society a desirable outcome? 2. is this an efficient way to achieve the current outcome? 3. what other kinds of systems might produce different outcomes? 4. pragmatically, what other kinds of systems are reachable given that we're operating within the context of the current system?