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Right, and the shift gets even deeper. Few people know this but money was invented to keep track of debt. In fact, what most economic textbooks say is that mon
by borjamoya 7y ago
Right, and the shift gets even deeper.
Few people know this but money was invented to keep track of debt. In fact, what most economic textbooks say is that money comes from barter. It turns out there's no single evidence that this ever happened in history! (David Graeber has a phenomenal book call Debt that explains all of this.)
Now, the shift we're seeing is that social credit system--or as I call them Social Debt Systems--are going to be "the new money."
Lots of people talk about the data economy and the fact that we need a way to put a dollar value on information.
And what we're seeing with social credit systems is that that value is not 'on' information. It's 'in' information. And that's creating a new economic logic we're not able even to conceive yet
- whocanevenremem 7y agoI'm not sure they are separable, certainly paper money (and pre-money forms such as hansatsu) are created by issuing a debt, but they were created for the very pragmatic need of bartering without carrying a bunch of gold or rice around.
- borjamoya 7y agoThat's what common sense says. But there's no proof that that ever happened. I recommend you to check out Graeber's book. Or you can read my whole explanation in the fourth section of Data Dictatorships.
- pdonis 7y ago> money was invented to keep track of debt I think you're conflating two different usages of the term "money". Wikipedia calls them "money of account" and "money of exchange". Money of account appears to be older, and was, as you say, invented to keep track of debts. But when economics textbooks talk about money being invented to solve the double coincidence of wants problem, which is the main limitation of barter, they are talking about money of exchange. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_money
- borjamoya 7y agoThat's the history of coinage, which came after debt. Debt is older though. It goes back 5,000 years--at least: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years
- pdonis 7y ago> That's the history of coinage "Money of exchange" is, yes. And as I said, that is what economists are talking about when they talk about money replacing barter because it solves the double coincidence of wants problem. Money replacing barter has nothing to do with debt.