Selected notes: Excuse me everyone, I have an announcement to make. *ahem* Barter is back, Alan Greenspan was the devil, and the government is lying t

Selected notes: Excuse me everyone, I have an announcement to make. *ahem* Barter is back, Alan Greenspan was the devil, and the government is lying to you about inflation. Thank you, for your time. It's crazy to me that the period TFA is talking about took place a generation AFTER the Volcker Shock and a decade after the initiation of Japan's Lost Decade(s). >And yet, in many contexts, money payments are treated as equivalent to the thing they give claim to, both by economic theory and in our day-to-day language. Huh. Swaps. >If money quantities do not refer to some underlying physical quantity or value, what do they refer to? Capacity to coerce (mind control). >If these payments and values and balance sheet entries don’t describe any of the concrete objects around us, why are our lives organized as if they do? Why, indeed.