Thursday, August 28, 2014

Izabella Kaminska — The tribute and organisation theory of value – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

From Part 3:
In this tribute series, I’ve been trying to get people to stop thinking about money in the abstract or intrinsic value sense.
My proposition instead is that money is about muscle. Always has been and always will be. Riches are the product of the authority or gravitas that affords you well being, a.k.a wealth. A muscle, of course, being a biological machine which optimizes energy efficiently so as to create power with.
 
But by muscle, I don’t necessarily only mean brute force. I mean all systems that are better organised than other systems and thus stronger and more capable of enforcing their will or alternatively of creating value. Whether that means they are better at collecting favours due, cultivating the land, confiscating assets directly or manipulating you into doing what they want, doesn’t really matter. What matters is that they are just better at doing it. 
Not to say that reciprocity doesn’t encourage value creation but simply that when it happens it’s mostly incentivized by a need to join forces so as to organise against a stronger enemy, whether that enemy is a stronger person, a nation or nature itself. 
Dizzynomics

1 comment:

Matt Franko said...

" once we get to the Romans it becomes abundantly clear that efficient ordered civilisations need to keep expanding their sphere of influence to maintain their state of order. But why is that?"

Perhaps to keep the barbarian head- cutter-offers as far away as possible from your centers of civilization ?