version

Well-known member
What does it mean to you? How often do you think about it? To what extent do you view it as an abstract, illusive thing? Does it have a mind of its own?
 

version

Well-known member
This is something I read a while back which really stuck.

https://web.archive.org/web/20150221181146/https://thepointmag.com/2014/criticism/foes-god

“Money has lost its narrative quality the way painting did once upon a time,” she says. “Money is talking to itself.” One way to understand the remark is as an oblique reference to modernism, the period where art first became “difficult,” where its meaning and purpose—and so also its methods and effects—no longer seemed to make sense in the old way. Insofar as the complexities of contemporary finance make it a challenge to figure out what has happened in the world market and how, money might be said to have become “difficult” too. Bleeding-edge capitalism, as somebody once remarked, resembles nothing so much as a new form of abstruse conceptual art, the rarefied dominion of an insular cosmopolitan elite whose activities appear—but only appear—to have no roots in the everyday world.
 

entertainment

Well-known member
Its been devalued a bit this past decade. Would say that attention has overtaken as the true commanding valuta of our times. The master drive.
 

luka

Well-known member
We're definitely living in an attention economy. Dissensus is a very pure attention economy.

What's interesting about making cash, direct, without a boss, is you develop this atavistic attachment to money, count it, delight in it, take pride in it. Like rappers holding huge stacks of banknotes to their ear like a telephone, or drug dealers spelling out their names in wads of 50s. It's very different to having some desultory amount simply appear in your bank account for services rendered.
 

entertainment

Well-known member
We're definitely living in an attention economy. Dissensus is a very pure attention economy.

What's interesting about making cash, direct, without a boss, is you develop this atavistic attachment to money, count it, delight in it, take pride in it. Like rappers holding huge stacks of banknotes to their ear like a telephone, or drug dealers spelling out their names in wads of 50s. It's very different to having some desultory amount simply appear in your bank account for services rendered.

The term "making money" is interesting. As far as I know its an American invention. In all of history, you'd only been able to only earn it, attain it, transport it from somewhere else into your possession. "Making money" is the American Dream, a non zero-sum arcadia economy, where everybody can flourish on account of themselves only and at the misfortune of none.
 

luka

Well-known member
I suppose the fact that people are even discussing UBI is an indication of how much money has been devalued.
 

poetix

we murder to dissect
When my firstborn arrived, 19 years ago, I didn't really have enough, in practical terms. Now my daughter has been born I have a bit more than enough, which is much nicer. If we need something we just buy it. There is a certain ease and freedom that comes with being able to do that.
 

Leo

Well-known member
When my firstborn arrived, 19 years ago, I didn't really have enough, in practical terms. Now my daughter has been born I have a bit more than enough, which is much nicer. If we need something we just buy it. There is a certain ease and freedom that comes with being able to do that.

as the representative of American capitalism here, I'll add that "certain ease and freedom" translates to less stress overall, which sometimes makes people a bit more relaxed, friendly. you can't buy happiness and money doesn't make everyone "nicer", but it can do so for some people. greed exists, but sometime $$ has a positive impact.

RE: an attention economy, keep in mind that Instagram influencers and people with huge YouTube followings aren't doing solely for that reason. yes, attention may be at the root of their rise and remains central to their existence, but they also monetize those channels (pre-roll ads on videos, paid Insta posts, free stuff from brands to promote, etc.)
 

Leo

Well-known member
It's very different to having some desultory amount simply appear in your bank account for services rendered.

similarly, I still prefer to write checks to pay bills because I want to have a monthly physical activity to remind me of what I'm spending. when you have auto bill payment where the amount is automatically deducted from your account, it's not "in your face" and you can forget it's an actual expense and lose track of it. that's the genius of Netflix, amazon prime, Hulu...you don't periodically reevaluate the value/worth of continuing because you can forget you're actually paying for it.
 

version

Well-known member
“If you want to make a million you don't have to understand money, what you have to understand is people's fears about money”

As a layman who's never worked in finance, this is how I tend to view stuff like Wall Street. It seems as though you don't really need to get money, just how people respond to it. You watch how they react to it and react accordingly.
 

version

Well-known member
The use of the term 'mining' in relation to Bitcoin is an interesting one. A return to the gold rush and prospecting, as though it's buried somewhere, hidden.
 

version

Well-known member
Yeah, I even found The Big Short a bit of a head scratcher in places and that's supposedly one of the most successful instances of making that stuff accessible to the average person.
 

luka

Well-known member
I've asked vim about this before he said it's beyond him too. We might actually have a thread.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
But that's more about credit and derivatives and stuff rather than money itself, I suppose it doesn't need to address what money actually is.
 

version

Well-known member
There's some hippy guy acting as a therapist for corporate types in Pynchon's Bleeding Edge who characterises competing economic systems as being engaged in holy wars and compares the twin towers coming down to the twin statues of the Buddha the Taliban dynamited in Afghanistan.
 

Leo

Well-known member
while the ruling elites certainly do things to enrich themselves, their true motivation is power. once you have $100 million or whatever, another $10 or 20 million aren't going to make life measurably better, there's nothing new that you will then finally be able to afford. diminishing returns. it's about authority, calling the shots.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Yeah I remember first hearing about the "diminishing power of money" in the 90s and it made perfect sense... but it doesn't seem to hold, billionaires still seem prepared to kill or ruin loads of people for a few extra pence.
 

version

Well-known member
Facebook's Libra currency could be an interesting development. It's already been banned in France and Germany.
 
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