tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-76922215435753365012024-03-14T06:02:34.700+00:00jonone100 | blog<br>email: jonone100[at]gmail[dot]com
<br><small>
twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/jonone100">@jonone100</a><br>
Any comments please email me or connect on Twitter.<br>
Artwork is by James Spanfeller for Avant Garde Magazine (May 1968)</small><br><br>
************************************************************************
MBGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18404729484594219550noreply@blogger.comBlogger680125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7692221543575336501.post-57390684975982406542024-01-22T20:28:00.001+00:002024-01-22T20:28:49.367+00:00Money Wisdom #516<p>The strange irony of the concept of ecology in Western history is that while "nature" precedes all human activity by billions of years, the ecological concept is invented many millennia after economic thought. In other words, we perennial moderns have been thinking about the regulation of wealth vis-a-viz <i>oikos </i>(the household) since we first distorted our tongues to form words. But we only expanded this notion to include the earth and the cosmos, in an explicit and self conscious way, in the nineteenth century, with Haeckel's coining of the term. Of course, this is a very Eurocentric narrative. But it is precisely this narrative that both shapes and limits thinking ecologically today, in the corridors of power (as well as the living rooms of the disenfranchised). It is as if "we" invented the term the moment at which nature "itself" threatened to truly disappear from under our feet. We can only think "ecologically" as a consequence, when we let go of profoundly romantic notions of (mother) nature. Which is to say that the belated coining of the term <i>ecology </i>signals the realization that we in the so-called West were very late to think about the material and vital surrounds as anything other than the picturesque background of culturally foregrounded activity. Nevertheless, this very modern concept - describing the deep temporality of our given milieu - allows us to reorientate ourselves to the very same, hopefully with a less hubristic and narcissistic attitude. </p><p style="text-align: right;"><b>Dominic Pettman</b> <i>Peak Libido</i> (2021) p.15</p>MBGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18404729484594219550noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7692221543575336501.post-40719222544528330332024-01-22T20:03:00.002+00:002024-01-22T20:03:15.310+00:00Money Wisdom #515<p>..[N]ow, in our time, the problem of money has to be faced as a problem of consciousness, as a problem of the being of man in the universal world. It is more than just a psychological or social problem which one strives to correct in advance of attending to questions of the spirit. It has become the key to understanding the great purpose of human life and what, precisely, prevents us from participating in that great purpose. </p><p>Because money is a problem that enters into the whole of human life, it cannot be dealt with in a piecemeal fashion on the level at which it presents itself - pragmatically, psychologically, or moralistically - anymore than one can escape from prison by visiting the prison psychologist or social worker and improving the conditions inside the prison walls.</p><p style="text-align: right;"><b>Jacob Needleman</b> <i>Money and the Meaning of Life</i> (1991) p.4</p>MBGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18404729484594219550noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7692221543575336501.post-74651249924811385482023-11-02T20:35:00.005+00:002023-11-02T20:35:55.517+00:00Money Wisdom #514<p> "What makes the Roman Law conception of property - the basis of all legal systems today - unique is that the responsibility to care and share is reduced to a minimum, or even eliminated entirely. In Roman Law there are three basic rights relating to possession: <i>usus </i>(the right to use), <i>fructus </i>(the right to enjoy the products of a property, for instance the fruit from a tree), and<i> abusus </i>(the right to damage or destroy). If one has only the first two rights this is referred to as <i>usufruct</i>, and is not considered true possession under the law. The defining feature of true legal property, then, is that one has the option of <i>not</i> taking care of it, or even destroying it at will."</p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: right;"><b>David Graeber & David Wengrow</b> <i>The Dawn of Everything </i>(2021) p.161</p>MBGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18404729484594219550noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7692221543575336501.post-64562935086798127512023-09-30T09:41:00.006+01:002023-09-30T09:41:54.993+01:00Money Wisdom #513<p>"The power of capitalist realism derives in part from the way that capitalism subsumes and consumes all of previous history: one effect of its 'system of equivalence' which can assign all cultural objects, whether they are religious iconography, pornography, or Das Kapital, a monetary value. Walk around the British Museum, where you see objects torn from their lifeworlds and assembled as if on the deck of some Predator spacecraft, and you have a powerful image of this process at work. In the conversion of practices and rituals into merely aesthetic objects, the beliefs of previous cultures are objectively ironized, transformed into artifacts. Capitalist realism is therefore not a particular type of realism; it is more like realism in itself. </p><p>As Marx and Engels themselves observed in The Communist Manifesto, </p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;">[Capital] has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom — Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation. </p></blockquote><p>Capitalism is what is left when beliefs have collapsed at the level of ritual or symbolic elaboration, and all that is left is the consumer-spectator, trudging through the ruins and the relics."</p><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, Palatino Linotype, Palatino, serif;"><b>Mark Fisher</b> <i>Capitalist Realism - Is There No Alternative?</i> (2009) p.8</span></div>MBGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18404729484594219550noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7692221543575336501.post-54048039170938631782023-09-29T12:05:00.001+01:002023-09-29T12:05:12.044+01:00Money Wisdom #512<p>"Capitalist ideology in general, Žižek maintains, consists precisely in the overvaluing of belief - in the sense of inner subjective attitude - at the expense of the beliefs we exhibit and externalize in our behavior. So long as we believe (in our hearts) that capitalism is bad, we are free to continue to participate in capitalist exchange. According to Žižek, capitalism in general relies on this structure of disavowal. We believe that money is only a meaningless token of no intrinsic worth, yet we act as if it has a holy value. Moreover, this behavior precisely depends upon the prior disavowal - we are able to fetishize money in our actions only because we have already taken an ironic distance towards money in our heads."</p><p style="text-align: right;"><b>Mark Fisher</b> <i>Capitalist Realism - Is There No Alternative?</i> (2009) p.17</p>MBGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18404729484594219550noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7692221543575336501.post-5236606743178119802023-07-06T11:35:00.003+01:002023-07-06T11:41:45.251+01:00Money Wisdom #511<p> "Money has value only when immanent in <i>circulation</i> (payment or exchanges), but on the other hand seems to be a stable, value-embodying substance only as a transcendent entity, by being <i>withheld</i> from circulation, <i>possessed</i>. Circulation is necessarily communal, whereas possession is generally by the individual. Our thinkers (whether Greek or Indian) vary in the extent to which their cosmisation of money is of circulation (i.e. from a communal perspective) or of value (i.e. from an individual perspective). [We can] describe theses cosmisations in the descending order of their prioritisation of circulation by Herakleitos and ending with the extreme prioritisation of value by Parmenides. But each of the two essences of money (exchanged and possessed value) produces when projected onto the world an unacceptably one-sided account (Herakleitos excludes stable identity, Parmenides excludes motion and multiplicity). This presents an intellectual problem. But in practice money must both have value and the power to circulate: the two aspects <i>interpenetrate</i>. And so we shall see that in fact comisations of ciculation cannot exclude value and cosmisations of value cannot exclude circulation." </p><p style="text-align: right;"><b>Richard Seaford</b> <i>The Origins of Philosophy in Ancient Greece and Ancient India</i> (2020) p.322</p>MBGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18404729484594219550noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7692221543575336501.post-39353000830775003002023-07-05T11:11:00.006+01:002023-07-05T11:11:32.585+01:00Money Wisdom #510<p> "The single, invisible, homogeneous power that inheres in money is uniquely responsive to my will, and so occupies the boundary between internal and external space, closer to my inner self than are the objects I possess."</p><p style="text-align: right;"> <b>Richard Seaford</b> <i>The Origins of Philosophy in Ancient Greece and Ancient India</i> (2020) p.309</p>MBGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18404729484594219550noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7692221543575336501.post-67505800749901349452023-07-04T12:52:00.001+01:002023-07-04T12:52:06.509+01:00Money Wisdom #509<p> "As for psychology and politics, a crucial part in Plato's account is played by the desire for money, which is - beyond even the unruly desires of the body - <i>unlimited</i>. That is, as recognised earlier by Solon, potentially disruptive of the polis. Plato recognises that it is also potentially disruptive of <i>psuchë</i>. The two superior parts of the <i>psuchë </i>- the rational and the spirited - will, he says, always preside over the third, appetitive part, 'which is most of the <i>psuchë </i>in each person and by nature most insatiable for money'. It must be controlled by the rational philosophic part of the <i>psuchë</i>, just as in the polis the money-making class must be controlled by the class of philosophers. But the appetitive and money-loving element may dominate the inner self. Socrates in the <i>Apology </i>contrasts <i>maximising </i>wealth with <i>perfecting</i> the psuchë.</p><p style="text-align: right;"><b>Richard Seaford</b> <i>The Origins of Philosophy in Ancient Greece and Ancient India</i> (2020) p.302</p><p><br /></p>MBGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18404729484594219550noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7692221543575336501.post-75781364332291620232023-07-03T11:54:00.005+01:002023-07-03T11:54:57.974+01:00Money Wisdom #508<p> "The ideal entities having shed matter through the process of abstraction are not in a direct sense part of the empirical world... the ideal entities of the cultural and religious world are made part of the self, or, with other words, they transform the self in accordance with their nature."</p><p style="text-align: right;"><b>Cavallin</b> (2013) p.96 quoted in <b>Richard Seaford </b><br /><i>The Origins of Philosophy in Ancient Greece and Ancient India</i> (2020) p.287 </p>MBGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18404729484594219550noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7692221543575336501.post-1398142608551302902023-06-27T11:00:00.001+01:002023-06-27T11:00:54.911+01:00Money Wisdom #507<p> "...the first substance to function simultaneously as a general measure of value, a general means of payment and of exchange and general store of value was the coined money that first became generally used early in sixth-century BCE Ionia, of which the commercial centre was Miletos. And so the revolution in thought marked by presocratic cosmology occurred at exactly the same time and in exactly the same place as the first society in history to be pervasively monetised."</p><p style="text-align: right;"><b><i> </i>Richard Seaford</b> <i>The Origins of Philosophy in Ancient Greece and Ancient India</i> (2020) p.253 </p>MBGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18404729484594219550noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7692221543575336501.post-90791727787802253072023-06-19T11:48:00.006+01:002023-06-19T11:48:38.655+01:00Money Wisdom #506<p> "Herakleitean fire and karma reifying projections (cosmisations) of - or constructed from - (inter alia) money, which is no merely a metaphor, a way of illustrating karma and Herakleitean fire but a <i>component </i>of them; and this is why money and karma (and money and Herakleitean fire) came into being roughly simultaneously and in the same place. It can not emphasised too strongly that I am not proposing the <i>reduction</i> of karma to money... ...I suggest merely that <i>one of the factors </i>in the <i>emergence </i>of the core concept in northern India from the middle of the first millennium was the simultaneous advent there of monetisation."</p><p style="text-align: right;"><b>Richard Seaford</b> <i>The Origins of Philosophy in Ancient Greece and Ancient Indi</i>a (2020) p.208 </p>MBGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18404729484594219550noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7692221543575336501.post-75699662936850861892023-06-14T10:56:00.004+01:002023-06-14T11:41:23.999+01:00Money Wisdom #505<p>"Sometimes confused with poststructuralism, libidinal economy represents an attempt to fuse psychoanalysis with political economy. The phrase derives from Freud’s theory of psychical energy, or 'libido', but is closely linked to the reception of Nietzsche and Freud in France during the mid-to-late twentieth century. Early key texts by George Bataille (1991) and Pierre Klossowski (2017) were followed by a wave of further works during the 1970s, chief among them being Anti-Oedipus (Deleuze and Guattari 1983) and Libidinal Economy (Lyotard 1993). Inspired by the political events of 1968, the thrust of such works was to break down the artificial walls between psychoanalysis and political economy, to reveal inner psychic life and capitalist history as two sides of the same coin, and in so doing, to reveal how capital organises libidinal flows and produces a particular historical configuration of desire.''</p><p style="text-align: right;"><b>Amin Samman & Ronen Palan</b> <i>Systemic Unreason: A Psychic History of States and Corporation</i>s in Global Society Vol 37 2023 Issue 3</p><span class="ref-lnk fn-ref-lnk lazy-ref" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="off-screen" face=""Open Sans", sans-serif" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #10147e; font-size: 17.6px; height: 1px; left: -9999px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; text-decoration-line: none; top: auto; width: 1px;"><a data-reflink="fn" data-rid="FN0004" href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13600826.2022.2113040#" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #10147e; text-decoration-line: none;">Footnote</a></span><div><br /></div><a data-reflink="fn" data-rid="FN0004" href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13600826.2022.2113040#"><span style="color: #10147e;"><span face=""Open Sans", sans-serif" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 13.2px; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></span></a></span>MBGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18404729484594219550noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7692221543575336501.post-72969747318806027542023-06-13T12:10:00.003+01:002023-06-13T12:10:14.510+01:00Money Wisdom #504<p> "What the dreamer values about being a god or king is aloneness in the world: 'I am alone in this world! I am all!' The endpoint of monetised individualism is the individual ownership of everything, reflected in the Indian texts as the absorption of everything into the self. But this imagined aloneness is most easily achieved by severing all ties, as a wandering renouncer. The renouncer follows the logic attributed to Alexander the Great, who remarked that - were he not Alexander - he would be Diogenes (the Cynic renouncer)."</p><p style="text-align: right;"><b>Richard Seaford </b><i>The Origins of Philosophy in Ancient Greece and Ancient India</i> (2020) p.135 </p>MBGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18404729484594219550noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7692221543575336501.post-8542327364686704532023-05-24T12:24:00.000+01:002023-05-24T12:24:07.976+01:00Determinacy, GPT4, Declarations of Dependence, Money, Death and the Meaning of Life<p> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidwvFSr6HGpXY6Cv6319rns8BfC1bl7qXKCjtf0ou03Vdx6zLv1BGG0kk8QyAST1g0PfrWFRLJ6jNlXnTAwFjFk3GDyPvkC_8UXrEFdwc36pjCLia4DbYx2-h0RbVoeUx2hDQi_TfjRtrAC_YAj_lXDgsdui989DFFNb9ex9tAxf8VKp0JA0yWbwQd/s1600/Screenshot%202023-05-13%20131137.png" style="clear: left; display: inline; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1023" data-original-width="1600" height="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidwvFSr6HGpXY6Cv6319rns8BfC1bl7qXKCjtf0ou03Vdx6zLv1BGG0kk8QyAST1g0PfrWFRLJ6jNlXnTAwFjFk3GDyPvkC_8UXrEFdwc36pjCLia4DbYx2-h0RbVoeUx2hDQi_TfjRtrAC_YAj_lXDgsdui989DFFNb9ex9tAxf8VKp0JA0yWbwQd/w400-h256/Screenshot%202023-05-13%20131137.png" width="400" /></a></p><p></p><p>As ever on this blog, it's been a while. </p><p>I miss posting here. There's a sense of freedom that comes with accepting that very few people will read this post. Embracing this fact and still writing is liberating.</p><p>My recent <a href="https://medium.com/p/d9888981dc77">Why Joe Lycett Might Kill Us All</a> wasn't meant to be a 'liberated' piece. I wrote it with the intention of it being read. Unfortunately, it's had very few readers. Which is a pity because I'm rather proud of it. People whose opinion I hold dear have been complimentary about it - even without prompting! It would have been especially nice to get a response from Joe Lycett, himself. In the end, I content myself with the fact that it needed to be written and I wrote it.<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p>Whilst I enjoy writing those <i>public-facing</i>, general reader pieces and taking the time to polish my words, there is a trade off. I can't explore and think as I go as much as I can in these 'liberated' blog posts. </p><p>Inevitably there are more awkward and difficult moments here. I've talked a lot about Sex and Money over the years - and now, here, I want to introduce Death too. All the taboos! I'm sure I've gone too far sometimes. There'll be plenty to be embarrassed about in what I've written here since 2008.</p><p>But fuck it. Someone's got to work at those awkward boundaries. It's where the gold is. </p><p>I also tend to assume that my reader is pretty well-versed in theories of money. This isn't an effort to be deliberately esoteric and exclusionary - in fact, I can't stand that tendency. It's really just a matter of shorthand and time saving; not explaining that which is explained elsewhere (either on this blog or outside it). </p><p>And it is time, ultimately, that is the real finite resource for me personally and for the human experience, generally. I become more aware of this with every day that passes. </p><p><br /></p><p><u><b>The Ontology of Money</b></u></p><p>So I nearly titled this section <i>The Metaphysics of Money</i>. That I didn't is a clue to the general direction I'm taking this line of thought about money. I've become fascinated by the idea of money as 'determinacy'. Or, more specifically to say, that what we refer to as money is in fact 'determinacy' acting through mind (I use 'mind' throughout to mean both the conscious and the unconscious). </p><p>I'm not claiming to have framed it all coherently. It was a comment made by Phillip in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AraFuX5quM&t=3428s">Phillip Goodchild's discussion with Devin Singh</a> that sparked this latest line of thinking.[ <u><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1.</span></u> ]</p><p>As an opener, I want to suggest something non-contentious; the idea of 'determinacy' presupposes 'indeterminacy'. And <i>vice versa </i>because the observation of <i>indeterminacy</i> requires a position that is determinate. I very much like that the word '<i>determinacy</i>' and the notion of '<i>determinacy Vs indeterminacy'</i> suggests something that is a fundamental aspect of reality.</p><p>So, here's a short and imperfect paragraph expressing my current thinking.</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><i>Money's deepest ontological level is determinacy. When determinacy acts on and through mind it produces a psycho-sexual event we call 'currency'. </i><i>Ambivalence is the process by which determinacy is first 'dissolved' and then 'resolved' into the currency. </i></p></blockquote><p>If you're familiar with my psychodynamic approach you'll be aware of my insistence of ambivalence and the psychosexual as vital to an understanding of money (or more specifically, currency). The new bit - <i>determinacy</i> - introduces a layer that sits underneath the unit of account (UoA) function of money. </p><p>The UoA is the deepest ontological layer of money suggested by conventional economic thinking. [Some like <a href="http://financeandsociety.ed.ac.uk/article/view/8797/11773">Samuel Chambers argue</a> that functions of money aren't really 'ontological' at all. I've sympathy with this view but let's go with ontological for the sake of this piece.] </p><p>Many people agree with the UoA being the essence of money. But many don't. Some argue for the Store of Value (SoV)<i>,</i> others for the (tautological, IMO) Means of Exchange (MoE). I explore my reasoning for considering UoA primary, foundational and axiomatic in <a href="https://jonone100.medium.com/what-happens-when-i-burn-money-239891dfcee3?source=friends_link&sk=b679fd0acedfde9237efcbc2c3d5cff7">my long essay</a>. I also strongly critique the notion that money can be defined or understood solely in terms of its functions. I'll discuss the UoA and the 'storey beneath it' (as Simmel might say) momentarily. </p><p>But first a word on language. I could have chosen words and a linguistic framing other than <i>determinacy and indeterminacy </i>to describe what I'm envisaging. </p><p>For example, instead of <i>determinacy and indeterminacy</i> I could talk about order and chaos. I could say that money creates order from chaos; that it is able to cogently express and measure the desires and demands that flow through the maelstrom of the market; and in turn it is also able to disrupt any order that is created. </p><p>Or, I could use the language most often chosen for money/finance/economics - <i>certainty and uncertainty</i>. The economist's favourite money guru Charles Goodhart, starts his <i>Money, Information and Uncertainty </i>with the line '<i>..the need for money as a means of payment is caused by the existence of uncertainty</i>'. </p><p>I could even fully immerse myself in the language of physics and talk about Entropy and Negentropy.</p><p>But I like the precision of determinacy (ha!). I think its the best choice to corral my thinking and introduce these themes into my work in an intelligible way. The weirdest, most out-of-place chapter (and believe me that's saying something!) in <b>The Money Burner's Manual</b> is <i>Purity, Perfection and Precision</i>. I remember having to resist being wholly seduced by my thoughts on '<i>precision</i>' as I was writing it. So I guess '<i>determinacy</i>' has been lurking in my unconscious for a while. </p><p>I started out thinking of determinacy as the pre-eminent and most essential <i><b>quality</b></i> of money. But that's not quite there. I think what I'm really focusing on here is what Bataille might call 'the movement'. That is the movement toward determinacy from indeterminacy and <i>vice versa. </i>I'm not really worried at this stage whether the movement is in any sense 'knowable' or 'measurable'. What I want to do is create a totalising image of money - what it is and from whence it came. Hopefully, this will provide a lens or '<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_glass#:~:text=A%20Claude%20glass%20(or%20black,of%20landscape%20and%20landscape%20painting.">black mirror</a>' through which I get a new perspective on what's happening in the here and now. Most especially what happens when I destroy money. </p><p>So, to get back to what's 'underneath' the UoA.</p><p>If you remember and agree with Ingham's contribution - that the UoA function of money is both historically and <b><i>ontologically</i></b> prior to its MoE and SoV functions - then, like me, you'll appreciate that developing an idea about how the UoA function arose is important. </p><p>Ingham draws on the work of Searle to explain that UoA comes into being through an act of 'collective intentionality'; if money <i style="font-weight: bold;">is</i> measure (UoA) then all that is required, <i><b>is</b></i> <i><b>for each of us to believe</b></i> that circular metal objects <i style="font-weight: bold;">are</i> money, for them to then <b><i>become</i></b> money. </p><p>I think that's a fudge. It's a false end to the story of money. It creates a sort of ontological 'crust'. We have to break through that to get to the sauce underneath. And so for me (as I explained <a href="https://jonone100.medium.com/barefoot-in-bollingen-2163a042e7b6?source=friends_link&sk=cd7cf479656a4753eb21c67b0ffdc42a">here</a> and <a href="https://jonone100.blogspot.com/2020/07/an-off-piste-ramble-around-history-in.html">elsewhere</a>), that sauce is Simmel's idea that '<i><b>the unconscious equivalence of absolutes</b></i>' is the basis of the UoA function. For me, it seems to offer the most powerful explanation of how a <i>thing</i> that '<i>measures all things</i>' could have come into being. </p><p>However, even '<b><i>t</i></b><i><b>he unconscious equivalence of absolutes</b></i>' is still something that takes place within 'mind', within the human milieu, or specifically as Simmel claimed within the unconscious. It doesn't really extend money beyond human (or, at a stretch, mammalian) life <i><b>into</b></i> the cosmos. </p><p>Or, at least it does so only if you adhere to the more 'cosmic' theories of mind. I thinking here of Jung's work, theories such as Sheldrake's <i>Morphic Resonance</i>, or even McLuhan's idea as 'mediums' being 'extensions of man'.</p><p>But its notable that 'cosmic' theories of mind do tend toward a limited view of money. For Analysts money is a symptom. Biologists think its irrelevant. And for McLuhan - and most media theorists - money is just yet another medium. </p><p>That's not my instinct about money. </p><p>I see money as everywhere and everywhen. I remember a conversation with my daughter when she was doing her Phd in Astronomy - around 2017. I can't recall how we'd arrived at this point but she was quizzing me about my expansive idea of money while we were looking up at the night sky. I was explaining that for me, money was in the cosmos; that somehow it played a role in the formation of the stars and time and space.</p><p>So my hope would be that conceptualizing money's essence as 'determinate' might open up some grand possibilities <i><b>within</b> </i>our knowledge of the universe <i><b>as it stands</b></i>. Scientific theories of physical reality predict pretty well. Especially when dealing with things at the human scale. Theories of psychical 'reality' (currency included) have some catching up to do. </p><p>Hence, a more pragmatic starting point for an effective theory of money might be not to reconceive of the physical (as cosmic theories of mind tend to), but rather to rethink the psychical. To declare 'determinacy' as the Prima Materia of a psycho-sexual event, offers the prospect of a solid foundation on the <i>matter</i> side as we attempt to build a bridge to <i>mind</i>. Spanning this opposition between thing and process, between commodity and social relation, is after all the Holy Grail of a better understanding - <i>and living experience</i> - of money. [ <span style="font-size: xx-small;"><u>2.</u> </span>]</p><p><br /></p><p><b><u>AI and ChatGPT4</u></b></p><p>Unless you've been living under a rock, you'll have picked up the excitement about <a href="https://chat.openai.com/">Chat-GPT4</a> and AI generally. If you've not had a conversation with GPT4 yet, you should. It's quite remarkable. I've not experimented with the newly available visual tools but they too look amazing. Follow <a href="https://twitter.com/erocdrahs">@shardcore</a> if you want to keep up with that side of things. </p><p>So, of course, I wondered what GPT4 would say about money <i style="font-weight: bold;">and</i> whether I could convince it that 'money burning will save the world'.</p><p>If you want to see my 'conversations' with GPT4 for yourself in full <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KedYp_DYhVdnIZ34UV2gFgCFqKMHXWCt/view?usp=sharing">please feel free to download this pdf</a>. It's 94 pages! </p><p>One of the frustrations I had was getting GPT4 to create a decent summary. They're produced instantly, and they read like they're authoritative, but I found them to be an inaccurate recounting of our conversations. Often times, large important sections would be totally disregarded and the ordering of arguments and conclusions was incorrect. I'd get it to redo an incomplete summary but then some other mistake would arise. Here is a <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1s93ijAl7kk1uFfvhk6XiIcGyoCOL6I4f/view?usp=sharing">six paragraph summary</a> of our 94 page conversation - but, if you read it, please bear in mind what I've said. </p><p>One of the reasons I wanted to chat with GPT4 was to try out my ideas about determinacy. I took things slow. At first it was giving out standard ideas about money. It was very committed to the notion '<i>money is a human construct</i>'. Which is okay as a starting point, but (as with Finance's insistence on MoE as the essence of money) it's annoying when it's presented as the <i>be all and end all</i> of money. But, as you'll see, we broke through it. </p><p>I argued on the basis of '<i>which assumptions about money it is <b>safe</b> to make</i>'. In the end our agreed position was that '<i><b>money arose through or from human civilisation</b></i>'. Which is very different from saying '<i><b>money is a human construct</b></i>'. (And actually GPT4 had started out saying 'money is a human invention' which is even more unsafe.)</p><p>GPT4 seemed to like the idea of <i>determinacy</i> and was happy to adopt it as a <i>quality</i> of money. It took its time warming to the idea of money burning. I was surprised that I had to educate it that destroying currency is deflationary (according to mainstream econ theory). But we made some progress, I think. </p><p>I introduced the idea of 'vectors' to describe our experiential or visceral relations to money. We agreed that money is - to some degree (or more) - reflexive. In other words the way we spend, earn, save, and risk money all serve in someway to create money (or more accurately currency) as we know it. It was by using this notion of 'vectors' that I managed to get it to better consider the effects of burning money. It said:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;">"<i>Yes, introducing a fifth vector of "destroy" could have a profound influence on the way we experience money as currency. As you mentioned, it could not only change the form of currency but also have ripple effects on human culture, economics, and civilization as a whole. It is important to consider the potential implications of any changes to the concept and function of currency, as it is so deeply intertwined with our societal and economic systems. Additionally, any changes to currency can also have implications on individual psychology and behavior, as the way we think about and interact with money can have a significant impact on our well-being and decision-making</i>." - GPT4</p></blockquote><p>It was keener to stick to its guns when I tried to link our concept of money to the climate crisis. It seemed very willing at the outset to accept that there is a profound link between climate and money. But it seemed to want to separate out other 'solutions' to climate change from money. GPT4 was keen to tell me that money burning <b style="font-style: italic;">alone </b>would not save the world. </p><p>This struck me as a bit odd, given I'd never suggested that so long as we burn a bit of money, we could keep on burning fossil fuels and pumping shit into rivers. GPT4 seemed to get that money and climate are causally linked and that changing money (and/or our relationship to it) is fundamentally important to tackling climate change. But it didn't seem to comprehend that changing money (and/or our relationship to it) will change and expand the choice of actions we have, individually and collectively, in respect of how we tackle actually climate change. <i>More</i> perhaps than anything else. Not to mention the impact of changing money on social injustice. </p><p>So anyway, I reckon that's a win for money burners! Yay!</p><p>The other point I noted was the trouble GPT4 had with notions of the Absolute and a little logical glitch it had. I won't elaborate here other than to say the problems it had with the Absolute reassured me that having a 'meat suit' is pretty important to how we come to know the world around us. If you want to check the logical glitch search 'Graeber' in the 94 page doc. It was interesting that the glitch happened around the Parmenides/Heraclitus debate. Basically it couldn't get the idea that we had to believe in something false (Parmenides) in order to discover something true (Heraclitus). I think David might have melted a few of its circuits. </p><p>I revisited GPT4 a few weeks later for a new conversation. It had complete amnesia about our earlier conversation and the points we'd agreed on. Kind of annoying because I was hoping to recruit it to spread the Word of the Burn.</p><p><br /></p><p><i><b><u>Scott Ferguson's Declarations of Dependence</u></b></i></p><p>I <i style="font-weight: bold;">FINALLY </i>read Scott's wonderful book. Basically, it was hard trying to get a copy here in the UK hence its been a long wait. And - according to the law of buses - two copies of it arrived through my letter box on consecutive days (my Son had ordered me a copy as a surprise gift!). UK money nerds please get in touch if you want my spare (no randoms) - or chuck me a few quid for postage and I'll send it to Europe.</p><p>Now, Scott's book deserves a proper review which I'm not going to be able to deliver. My apologies. Reviews used to be big part of my work here and I'd love to start doing them again. Sadly time forbids. What follows in this section is mostly me riffing off Scott's work. </p><p><i>Declarations of Dependence</i> is a brave attempt to recast money for the Left. Scott's work on money is influenced by (or maybe even born of?) Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and Scott's book attempts to provide a philosophical, metaphysical or ontological underpinning to MMT's conception of money. </p><p>The central claim is that money has a '<i>boundless public centr</i>e'. This is where Scott installs '<i>the mystery of care'. </i>By <i>care</i> Scott means an '<i>anxious and inescapable public obligation and form of collective cultivation and uplift</i>'. What he refers to as 'Liberal' money has occluded this centre by persuading us of money's <i>thisness. </i>In other words we've come to see money as a <i>thing</i> arising from exchange and this serves to prevent us from seeing the true nature of money which is fundamentally social. (At least that's a my rough take on Scott's argument). </p><p>An academic friend has already suggested to me that there are a lot of similarities between my work and Scott's. I agree, but of course (as Freud suggested with his idea of the narcissism of minor differences) what I mainly see is where our ideas conflict! Before I get into that though let me just see if I can avoid the trap of my narcissism and (try to) align Scott's insights with my own. </p><p>I think the most significant thing I've taken away is a better understanding of the concept of 'care' as it relates to money and economy. </p><p>When David Graeber was a Bishop at CoB's Synod in 2019, in answer to the question 'How Do we Save the World?' David said that for him the most important thing would be to replace the categories of <i>production </i>and <i>consumption</i> with <i>care </i>and <i>freedom</i>. I wasn't wholly clear on what he meant. Of course, others were. And David's concept has been widely disseminated to the point where its appeared on Extinction Rebellion banners (see above).</p><p>I found it easier to assimilate <i>consumption </i>with <i>freedom. </i>I get that.<i> </i>But <i>production </i>and <i>care</i>? That relation was harder for me to grasp. Scott's book - and in particular his conflation of care and obligation - really helped me understand what David meant. </p><p>Encouraged by Scott to explore the importance of the idea of care in conceiving of money I found the following <a href="https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-anarchy-in-a-manner-of-speaking">interview with David in The Anarchist's Library</a>. It's from 2020. So some time between CoB and his untimely death in September of that year. He says, </p><p></p><blockquote><p>I conceive freedom primarily in terms of play, or maybe better to say I conceive play is the highest expression of freedom, since it’s self-directed activity that isn’t aimed towards anything outside it, but is a value to itself. [...]</p><p>When you're thinking of a care-giving relationship, usually the first thing you think of is the relation between mother and child. Mothers take care of children so they’ll grow and thrive, obviously, but in a more immediate sense, they take care of children so they can play. That’s what children actually do most of the time. And play is the ultimate expression of freedom for its own sake. So why not make that the paradigm for an economy too, which is after all just the means whereby human beings provide for one another. Not least because care and freedom are infinitely expandable without destroying the planet, while production and consumption are not.</p></blockquote><p></p><p>David's conception of 'play' dovetails with the anti-utilitarian ideas I explore through money burning. There is congruence between 'pure play' and 'pure sacrifice'. Linking the repression of these expressions of our humanity to planetary destruction is a profound insight. I'm now fully on board with Care and Freedom as the proper way we should be categorising human action around money!</p><p>Back to <i>Declarations. </i>I liked the concept of the 'sacred fisc' which Scott introduces when he offers a narrative of money's historical development. </p><p>I'm always a little dubious about historical narratives 'proving' the story of money one way or another. I loved the theory in Graeber's <i>Debt</i> much more than the history. For me, the 'truth' of money lies in our lived experience of it. Money is a mystery. Historical narratives though, inevitably, tend to frame it as a puzzle to be solved. Nevertheless, despite the historical wrapping, I was delighted to see the 'sacred' given centre ground in Scott's work. </p><p>I don't really want to get into Colin Drumm's critique of Scott and MMT. I haven't read Colin's PHd dissertation and only have his blog and some experience of his rather abrasive social media interactions to go on. Suffice to say, I think Colin misses the point by a mile. I wonder if this has to do with what I'm hinting at about the inherent weakness of historical narratives of money? </p><p>Amin Samman's <i>History in Financial Times</i> is a great exploration the link between historical narrative and finance. What stays with me from Amin's work is the quote from Giambattista Vico about the point of rhetoric; it is not to persuade but rather to create a persuasive reality. I think this speaks to the dangers involved in allowing an historical narrative to wholly inform/reinforce our conception of money. It a similar thing to what Joan Robinson said about ideology. </p><p>Anyway, I think Scott's work serves to expose the sacred centre of money whereas Colin's work serves to 'desacralize' it. As Norman O Brown (<i>famously of the department of the History of Human Consciousness at Santa Cruz from whence Colin was awarded his PHd</i>) told us.. <b>we confuse the past "by describing as <i>secularization </i>a process which is rather only a metamorphosis of the sacred.</b>" (p.248 Life Against Death)</p><p>I very much enjoyed Scott's ongoing discussion about money and the aesthetic, and how, by denying (Scott's notion of) the essential nature of money, the aesthetic works to reproduce a 'Liberal money' metaphysics. </p><p>I recently saw Roger Hallam (one of the founders of XR and Just Stop Oil) with a friend of mine, Chris Stone. Roger talked a lot about the politics of organisations. We always tend to strive to create non-hierarchical organisations to effect social reform. Roger argued however that revolutionary action requires some sort of organisational hierarchy to bring it into being. Chris has made the point to me many times that if you ignore politics it'll come get you anyway. So its much better to be aware of politics than to wish it away. I think Scott's point about the Aesthetic is the same sort of thing. An aesthetic that imagines it exists beyond money is just wishing it away. Making it much easier for money and money's ideology to penetrate and infiltrate art in disguise - and so reaffirm itself within art. </p><p>To get now to our differences. </p><p>I hope Scott won't mind me revealing the essence of a chat we had after his <a href="https://moneyontheleft.org/2023/03/25/postmodern-money-theory-part-2/">podcast with Rob Hawkes</a>. Scott argued that there was 'no outside to money'. Given my earlier framing of determinacy, it's clear that I'm not averse to this idea. However, I made the point that in CoB we do, in a sense, try to imagine an outside. Somewhere we can at least move toward, even if we can't get to it. I guess its a bit like imagining Heaven. I'm pretty sure Heaven doesn't exist. But existing or not existing, Heaven still exerts a supremely powerful force over Earth. And you know what they say, 'New Heaven, New Earth'. </p><p>I guess though, whether money has <i><b>the possibility</b></i> of an outside or not is a nuanced point of difference. </p><p>More fundamental is the notion of money - no, let's be more precise, '<i><b>currency</b></i>' - as arising from exchange. This is the standard line about it. And I guess working down in the ontological depths as Scott and I like to do, the key name here is George Simmel. For Simmel, exchange <i style="font-weight: bold;">really</i> matters. And it's often been the case that Hard Money folks - neoliberals, goldbugs, etc - like to invoke Simmel to support the idea that money is born of Our Lord, The Holy Market. </p><p>In turn, the adoption of Simmel by Hard Money folks has lead to the Soft Money folks feeling a little uncomfortable with him. (I was gonna say on the Right and on the Left instead of Hard and Soft Money - neither is too precise a categorisation - but I figure you'll get the gist). David Graeber gave Simmel a bit of a kicking at the beginning of his brilliant <i>Towards an Anthropology of Value. </i> </p><p>Here's the thing though. Simmel <i><b>isn't</b></i> talking about market exchange! At least, not directly. He uses the term in its broadest possible sense. <a href="https://jonone100.blogspot.com/2014/02/in-defence-of-simmel.html">I wrote about it all here back in 2014</a>. Indeed, in his example Simmel links exchange to flirtation. Given he's writing back in a very coy 1905 he might today (I like to think) instead say that SEX and MONEY are linked at the most essential level. Hence I think this is a key point of difference I have with Scott. I don't think its possible to exclude/down play exchange from the story of money. </p><p>The trouble for me is that if we downplay exchange, something fills the gap it leaves. And generally what that is for MMT - and here I'm moving beyond the scope of Scott's book - is a commitment to Law as constitutive of money. And Oh Boy! is that a problem for me! <a href="https://jonone100.medium.com/what-happens-when-i-burn-money-239891dfcee3?source=friends_link&sk=b679fd0acedfde9237efcbc2c3d5cff7">I wrote a fair bit about this in my mega long piece</a>. Suffice to say here, that I think the idea of Law as constitutive of money in an ontological sense is deeply mistaken. Ultimately, I think it's hubris - or, at best, wishful thinking. Sorry. Law and currency exist in a reflexive relationship, but the ontology of money has nothing to do with the rules, regulations and laws that we've established to try to tame it. </p><p>Neither Scott's book, nor MMT really deals with the problem of sovereignty, in my view. By sovereignty, I'm thinking of the way Bataille uses the word. More related to the power of <i><b>being</b></i>, than the power of Kings, Queens and States. Money sits in some form of direct relation to sovereignty. This is a matter of belief for Hard Money folks. I think Scott is right to focus on the other side of money because this 'obligatory' ('connected' or 'non-sovereign') side of money is, and has been, largely neglected by both Right and Left. </p><p>Nevertheless, money (as Simmel said) is profoundly ambivalent. This is its magic. It can at once be the most important expression of and contribution to sovereignty, and its reverse. It can both create and overcome distance - geographical, social and psychological. It can be one thing and its opposite and span the space between them. </p><p>So I can certainly forgive Scott for not addressing the issue of sovereignty to my satisfaction in <i>Declarations</i>. His book stands as a single dissenter against an onslaught of 'right-thinking' about money. We experience money as a totem and tool of our individual sovereignty, so the vast majority of work on money (including my own) focuses on this as a quality or function of money. Here in the UK the link between <i><b>the</b></i> Sovereign and money cries out from every banknote. </p><p>But Scott is right. The opposite of sovereignty also exists in money. </p><p>I'm reminded here of how King Charles III (and Queen Elizabeth II) talk about 'service'. About how they exist to 'serve' us, their subjects. We bow and curtsey to them but (somehow) they are also our servants. We can point out how bizarre, illogical and untrue this claim to service <b><i>i</i></b><i><b>s</b></i> in a material sense, yet (certainly for Queen Elizabeth II) very few doubt that she sincerely held that belief about service herself. </p><p>So yes, Money is both a right <i><b>and</b></i> an obligation. </p><p>[ I mean it's obviously an obligation if you think about money as promises 'the whole way down' as David Freund does to great effect with his 'digging dog' twitter meme, or if you just read what's written a Bank of England note '<i><b>I promise to pay the bearer</b></i>'. But the point is, its not <i><b>just an</b></i> obligation! Let the dog keep digging, David! ]</p><p>Having said that, I do see sovereignty as the key problem for the wider political project of MMT. And while I can forgive Scott, MMT needs to address this issue. [ <span style="font-size: xx-small;">3.</span> ]</p><p>Although I must say, the pragmatist in me loves the progress MMT has made in the US in recent years. I mean we do seem to be heading for climate disaster and fascism. So imperfect alternatives are starting to look very appealing. </p><p>It's so great to read such challenging, heretical ideas about money. The Left needs them as much (if not more) than the Right. I'm also really grateful for Scott's brief dip into Heidegger's <i>Being and Time</i>. That book is sitting behind my head now as I type. I got it five years ago and marked it as a 'must read'. But each time I open it up I'm like 'Yikes!' and quickly put it back on the shelf. </p><p>Anyway, let me leave it there for my thoughts on Scott's brilliant book. Thank you for writing it, Scott!</p><p><br /></p><p><u><b>Jacob Needleman's <i>Money and the Meaning of Life</i></b></u></p><p>Unlike <i>Being and Time </i>which sits on my bookshelf demanding to know why it hasn't been read, <i>Money and the Meaning of Life</i> has been quietly biding its time since 2015. In fact, I forgot I had it and ordered a second copy which I've since given away to a friend.</p><p>This is a general reader book by an academic. It's got a narrative which takes place around a class taught by Needleman and a couple of his students. Basically, it's easy reading. But wise and thought provoking nonetheless. Again, sadly no time for a review. But heartily recommended for money nerds and normies alike. </p><p>It's like a spiritual practice guide to money, in a way. It conceptualizes 'the problem of money' as a problem of consciousness and it uses 'ancient wisdoms' to explore 'the dual nature of man'. So (what I'd call) a notion of ambivalence is ever-present in Needleman's book. </p><p>Running CoB I've encountered a few folks interested in (what I'm gonna call) <i>Money Wellness</i>? It'd be too easy to be cynical about this genre of money wisdom - gurus charging a fee for a class to make rich people feel better about being rich. But if pessimism is for lightweights then so is cynicism. I think <i>Money Wellness</i> might be a huge unexplored and very fertile territory for CoB. </p><p><br /></p><p><b><u>Money & Death </u></b></p><p>At the Finance and Society's '<a href="https://financeandsocietynetwork.org/intersections-conference-2022">Intersections Conference</a>' last September 2022, Sandy Hagar presented 'Capital as Death Denial'. Sandy's presentation considered the link between death denial (broadly defined), money and Financial Capitalism and drew on the work of my favourites Norman O Brown and Georges Bataille (among others). It was one of the papers in the session 'Financial Subjectivities' which felt like it was designed especially for me! (Other wonderful papers included Financialising the Eschaton by Amin Samman & Stefano Sgambati, and Finance and Paranoia by Fabian Muniesa).</p><p>Recently, Sandy was kind enough to send me a draft of a piece that expanded on the themes in his talk. Obviously, I'm not going to talk about the draft directly. But I do want to briefly mention a couple of general things about money, death and money burning, though. </p><p>John Crow and Crossbones have played a significant and magical role in how CoB has come into being. And key to that is the idea of 'bringing death into life'. I've tried at various points to conceptualize money burning as just that. You'll find in my writings many references to the notion of 'conscious or deliberate loss' and its power. I often use the phrase '<i>to re-establish sacrifice and loss against the dominance of exchange and gain</i>' as an explainer for what CoB is about. For me, perhaps the most important thing is the visceral and experiential aspect of money burning - the feeling of loss. It's not <i>quite </i>death but maybe its a movement toward it!:-)</p><p>[There's links here to the 'outside of money' and the notions that union with the Absolute is achieved only through death and that Life - <i>living</i> - is a rupture. This is what Scott taught me about Heidegger's <i>Being and Time</i>!]</p><p>Perhaps as a result of getting older and going to funerals more often these days, the connection between Death and Money and our need to explore it, is increasingly dominant in my thought. Or maybe its a result of what Roger Hallam calls 'The Death Project' - his preferred term for the Climate Crisis. </p><p>Whichever, we need to find ways in which Death can be assimilated into life. Death denial surely has a role in civilization's refusal to countenance what is facing humanity through the Climate Crisis? </p><p>I remember back at the <i><a href="https://artmoneycrisis.wordpress.com/">#ArtMoneyCrisis</a></i> conference at Cambridge University in 2016, there were several papers from younger academics exploring the notion of Zombie Capitalism. Hollywood's prodigious output of this genre of movie had obviously captured their imagination. Although the Crisis of 2008 was still relatively fresh - inspiring some of the best work on money ever IMO (i.e. <i>Graeber, & Dodd</i>) - a sense of despondency was also setting in. (I remember feeling this despondency acutely at the inaugural <a href="https://financeandsocietynetwork.org/events"><i>Intersections Conference</i></a> that took place later that year). Capitalism wouldn't die even with a stake through its heart. The youngsters seemed to understand this intuitively and so were drawn to artistic representations of these themes. </p><p>I wonder what would theme would arise at a similar conference today, seven years on? We seem to be approaching the climax of the movie now where all the evidence suggests civilisation is doomed because we haven't found a way to deal with that which will not die. What's the trick? [ Spoiler: it's money burning! Invest now! ]</p><p><br /></p><p><b><u>The Ontology of Money Part II</u></b></p><p>One could, I suppose, introduce the idea of 'Finance'. One could argue that the stuff I talk about is all very well and good, but money as it exists today is inseparable from and wholly subsumed to Finance. And Finance <i style="font-weight: bold;">is</i> constituted by rules, regulations and laws. </p><p>Talking about Finance seems grown-up. It's adulting. It's real world. By contrast, enchantment with money's metaphysics seems like allowing oneself to indulge in child-like wonderment. </p><p>But then, just as being confronted by death makes us feel more alive, when crisis hits we all suddenly seem more aware that 'money is both foundation and product of Finance'. During the shock of 2008 people were asking '<i>What the hell even is money, anyway?</i>'</p><p>But then the exhilaration of the crisis subsides and the adult work of feeding our families and paying our rent - or selling our luxury cars and cancelling our winter skiing trip - once more dominates day-to-day life. The transience, indeterminacy and instability of life - <i>and the wonder of it</i> - evident in the moment of crisis are once more absorbed into institutions and arrangements; into the rules, regulations, taboos, and ideologies that surround, 'border-off' and contain money. Money's inevitable return to indeterminacy, its state of flux, can be hidden away and forgotten about (until next time). </p><p>I've spoken/written before about the phrase that came to me watching the famous interview between <a href="https://youtu.be/21nhIZ9QF80">Bill Drummond, Jimmy Cauty and Gay Byrne</a>. The phrase that popped into my head without even wiping its feet was '<i><b>a certain moment of uncertainty</b></i>'. I've struggled for a long time to figure out what this means. It seems to mean a lot. </p><p>Ostensibly, it refers to what Bill and Jimmy <i style="font-weight: bold;">actually </i>created when they burned a million quid. But like Derrida's notion of pure forgiveness, of 'forgiving the unforgivable', it is - as Derrida says - an impossibility. (I mention Derrida's phrase because money burning can be thought of as an act of pure forgiving - of giving<i> forward</i> without expectation of return). </p><p>Leaving aside the reasonable argument that Capitalism is in a permanent state of Crisis, I wonder if moments like 2008 - when, let us say, the boundaries of Crisis were extended to historically exceptional levels - are in a sense the mirror image of Bill and Jimmy's action? Instead of being a 'certain moment of uncertainty', the peaks of Capitalism's crises are 'uncertain moments of certainty'? </p><p>In other words, when 'all that is solid melts in air', when the ordered adult world of Finance dissolves, we are reduced once more to a child state of wonderment at the magical power of money and this <i style="font-weight: bold;">bare life </i>(as Agamben might say)<i style="font-weight: bold;"> </i>becomes our new grounding. As the adult world crumbles, our perspective and the potentialities and possibilities of life are reborn. </p><p>[ <i>Again, I've talked about this often (eg in The Money Burner's Manual) but a recurrent memory for me is the feeling I had holding a coin (an old penny) in my hand as a child and imagining its adventures. Its life. Animism or insight? The Jury is still out.</i> ]</p><p>After CoB in 2021 my friend Charlie Waterhouse - co-founder of the Extinction Rebellion Art Group, responsible for the naming and identity of the movement, and one of the founders of the Brixton Pound - gave us a wonderful review. <a href="https://www.buzzsprout.com/684977/6812239">There's a great interview with Charlie here about his XR work</a>. Here's what Charlie said about CoB;</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><b>"Church of Burn is a portal into a glorious world we’re not supposed to see. Where money’s power is revoked, reclaimed and reassigned. A sacrificial rite that rewrites our failing modern world. For once one has burnt money, what else is possible?"</b></p></blockquote><p>As is his way, I think Charlie has beautifully captured so much of what I'm trying to get at generally with my work and what I've explored specifically in this post. </p><p>What frustrates me about so much work on money is the closing down of possibilities, the denial of mystery. There are very human reasons for this. We are faced with huge uncertainties which money represents (or manifests?) and we which want to contain. But this drive toward 'derisking' is precisely what's killing us, too. Everything is channelled through money. It is the nexus point of sex, death, life, war, famine, climate crisis, and everything else. </p><p>If I could change one thing about the way everyone thinks and talks about money it'd be to introduce a law which demanded that money be always regarded as a mystery not a puzzle. </p><p>If any academic or politician said something to the effect of '<i>Money is a puzzle to be solved</i>' they'd be charged with heresy. I'm not sure what punishment I'd give them but I'm sure I can think of something - maybe burning 23% of their net worth? It'd be like theology in the middle ages. Say what you like but don't question the existence of God. </p><p>Sadly, I realise its an unworkable idea that might not actually fulfil its intention to do good. </p><p>I guess its a bit like Finance, when in a quest to do good, they introduce KYC and AML which just don't work to catch the bad guys. Or when they talk about 'sustainable finance' and end up just green washing. Or when they impose some puritan moral agenda under the guise of risk mitigation which just harms sex workers and folks (like me!) on the boundaries. (<i>I have the double honour of having been banned by financial institutions for both my Sex stuff and my Money Burning stuff!</i>). </p><p>The fact remains however that humility in face of money - and its immanent power - is both wise and necessary. </p><p>Last thought, I wonder if determinacy is what lends money it's <i>thisness</i>? Needleman said that money was a 'psychic reality'. And even though its not true I bet most people on Earth believe in their bones that <i><b>money is gold</b></i>. The solar flares of indeterminacy that erupt during Crisis serve to remind us that underneath its thisness, materiality and 'immediate knowability' money is also mystery. It may be that the one opposition that money cannot contain is the balance between puzzle and mystery. A true mystery is eternal. So a puzzle only ever manifests as appearance. Money can never <i><b>fully be</b> </i>a puzzle, it can only appear wholly as such to those who allow themselves to succumb to hubris. </p><p><b><u><br /></u></b></p><p><b><u>Some Personal News</u></b></p><p>Don't spread this around, but I'm facing redundancy from my day job. I'll know for sure in a couple of months, but if things work out it will be an enormous blessing. I've been working 6 day weeks since September 2022 in order to pay for my CoB adventures and it's killing me.</p><p>So redundancy would mean I could cut back on my 50 hours of minimum wage slavery each week and focus more on CoB. Basically, as far as CoB goes I'm at a crucial stage. Prior to writing my Joe Lycett essay I'd been having some brilliant conversations around design and branding with my friend Tom; thinking deeply about how to engage people around money burning, what it means and what or who CoB is. And the key thing is to get the ideas and personality clear so CoB can develop our internet and social media presence. </p><p>The minute I stop writing this piece I'm getting straight back to that. </p><p>However, I'd be lying if I didn't say the thought of doing a Phd hadn't entered my mind. I've thought about it in the past and my kids have pushed me especially hard in this direction, knowing I think that I'd enjoy it. My daughter was fortunate to get very generous funding. I've always been sceptical that they'd be any funding available for a project that is so 'out there' as mine. And comprise is not my greatest skill - especially when its something I care so deeply about. </p><p>And I guess its not just the random closure of my workplace... its also that I think maybe with this slightly expanded view of money (i.e. with <i>determinacy</i>) I have something that I might be able to knock into a coherent intellectual argument about the nature of money.</p><p>If any academic buddies have any advice about this little fantasy then please do get in touch privately. </p><p>I'll be back here to get into some hardcore money-thinking later in the year after I've done my CoB work. </p><p>_______________</p><p>Notes & things that wouldn't fit in:</p><p><u>1.</u> As stated, I picked up the notion of determinacy from Philip Goodchild. Sadly, because I've have so little time to read, I've not got further than a few pages into his latest work (which consists of three books on money and metaphysics). So I don't know how the notion of 'determinacy' plays out for him - I think he uses it about 'debt' rather than money, per se. </p><p><u>2.</u> Somehow all the stuff in this section is related to subject/object metaphysics (and its creation and undoing). That's of course central to Simmel's work and to the best selling Philosophy book <i>Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - </i>both of which (alongside Graeber's <i>Value</i> book) helped me distinguish between money and value, or at least isolate money from value. I guess one way to explore it would be to ask how human consciousness could realise a notion of determinacy in the face of indeterminacy. How could we go from experiencing our environment as a place of spirit to a resource to be exploited? Or how did we move from Animism to Polytheism/Monotheism (a la Freud). Subjectivism to objectivism. Solipsism to realism? How we could come up with the idea of the One and the Many (is Seaford right to suggest that currency played role?). Or basically how we could conceive of <i>things </i>by supposing they have value in themselves. </p><p><u>3.</u> Tangentially related to all this is something going on right now. It's the annual #MintTheCoin debate. If you follow Rohan Grey and/or Nathan Tankus on Twitter you'll get how the coin is becoming totem around competing economic ideas dance. Rohan and Nathan are of course very much in favour of minting a trillion dollar platinum coin. I really want to write/think about this from a 'consciousness of money' perspective. The coin and the debate around it speak to centrality of 'the conception of money' in how we organise human activity. Both sides of #MintTheCoin believe that doing so will change our idea of what money is. MMT guys think that's good, others not. Whenever the debate comes around I'm reminded of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/13/cant-bank-on-lloyds-any-more">this piece by Victoria Coren Mitchell</a>. She's bemoaning the closure of her local Lloyds bank branch. She says: "<i>Sure, the bean counters can save £££££s by locking doors, selling up and firing staff. Sure, most transactions can be done online. Sure, fewer of us are queuing up in person for day-to-day admin. But the existence of a local branch has a vital role, even if we never go in there: it’s key to the illusion that money is a thing. Money is not, of course, a thing; it’s an idea. But the illusion of thing-ness (which so nearly disintegrated when we caught that catastrophic glimpse behind the curtain in 2008) is vital to its desirability. Once we cease to desire it, the acquiescent balance of society is in grave danger. The pleasing physicality of banknotes, coins and cheque books is half gone already. The gold reserve’s been sold. If the bricks-and-mortar banks, counters and partition windows, paper forms and special pens go with them, there’ll be nothing left to <b>money</b> but numbers on a screen.</i>" Both #MintTheCoin and Bank Branch closures seem to bring with them the prospect of a 'top-down' reconceptualization of money. As Coren points out (and as Scott's <i>Declarations </i>considers in depth) money's <i style="font-weight: bold;">thingyness</i> seems wrapped up in our current relationship with it. The question for me to explore, I guess, would be what difference in affect is there between a top-down and a bottom-up reconceptualization? The idea - often so essential in the arts - that you want your audience to arrive at the conclusion themselves, really matters here. I reckon its much more powerful to have an individual experience the deep metaphysical and ontological issues that inhere to money through the visceral experience of ritual. Initial thoughts are that in terms of our individual and collective consciousness of money, top-down is reformation, bottom-up is revolution. Perhaps both is the best way forward? </p>MBGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18404729484594219550noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7692221543575336501.post-38763160710261593132022-10-25T11:14:00.002+01:002022-10-25T17:31:16.053+01:00Money Wisdom #503<p> "...the semiotic engine of capital - of wealth, of money, of value - produces a delirious regime of signs, obsessed, at once, both with the fences that need to be raised in order to protect the treasure from the enemies of value and with the spiralling void that value, ultimately, refers to."</p><p style="text-align: right;"><b>Fabian Muniesa</b> <i>Paranoid Finance in Social Research: A International Quarterly</i> (2022) (<a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/867507">link</a>) </p>MBGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18404729484594219550noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7692221543575336501.post-19418902395988167012022-09-17T13:11:01.022+01:002023-05-23T11:39:46.152+01:00A Personal Tribute to Nigel Dodd 1965-2022<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjICg0_jn-pyoLTOsSLuaFN-9wVogLQNWlkLe_L8PopXYYN_5eJhJNrscSuY3-A2icYXt2yyH9E5p3ptEYnuIRF4WVma3LMnxEXr65kjByoXa9ANz7ZuNUigA9aqza-7N18IWUL3SO58g3WFWH5O7xWyzc-_pkjNdIFRLd4JrDeiefiZXuTlk-cjZmV/s593/niggel-dodd.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="543" data-original-width="593" height="366" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjICg0_jn-pyoLTOsSLuaFN-9wVogLQNWlkLe_L8PopXYYN_5eJhJNrscSuY3-A2icYXt2yyH9E5p3ptEYnuIRF4WVma3LMnxEXr65kjByoXa9ANz7ZuNUigA9aqza-7N18IWUL3SO58g3WFWH5O7xWyzc-_pkjNdIFRLd4JrDeiefiZXuTlk-cjZmV/w400-h366/niggel-dodd.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p>I've just been at the Finance and Society Conference at City University in London for the past couple of days. It was the first 'in person' conference I've attended since 2019 because of the pandemic. I'm not 'in' academia. I'm not doctoral student, researcher, lecturer, or professor. In my day-to-day life I've little contact with anything that resembles university or academic life. Currently, I drive a van to earn my living. When I am lucky enough to attend a conference focusing on my area of interest I find it wholly invigorating. I guess if you're in academia you might get used to being able to chat about the weird, wonderful and esoteric stuff you're reading or thinking about. I don't have that in my day to day life. So it's brilliant to be able to be a pretend-academic for a couple of days every now and then.<span></span></p><a name='more'></a> <p></p><p>My detachment from the community meant though, that I was unaware that Nigel Dodd died just over a month ago on the 12th August 2022. So as I write this on the morning after finding out I'm still coming to terms with my thoughts and feelings. I met Nigel only few times - maybe half a dozen - and we occasionally had some email correspondence. However, his influence on the path of my life cannot be overstated. Without Nigel it's doubtful that I'd have done any of the stuff I've done in the last six or seven years. I don't think I'd have written <i>The Money Burner's Manual </i>back in 2015 if it hadn't been for Nigel so<i> </i>I don't think <i>Church of Burn</i> would exist and I don't think <i>Burning Issue</i> would have been published.</p><p>I can't remember when or how it was exactly that Nigel and I first connected - around late 2013 or early 2014. Our conversations would have been about Norman O Brown's <i>Life Against Death </i>- a book largely forgotten as psychoanalysis lost its currency, or at least whose currency was only really circulating in modified form with the French academy. I read it in September 2013 when I was on my first holiday after splitting up with my wife. It blew my mind. Nigel had read it not long before me and had, I think, a similar reaction.</p><p>So realising Nigel was keen to explore money from new or different perspectives, I soon got hold of what was at the time his only book - <i>The Sociology of Money</i> (1991). <a href="https://jonone100.blogspot.com/2014/04/my-review-of-sociology-of-money-by.html">My review is here</a>. The final page had the following lines "<i>[Economic reasoning] should be the object, not the foundation, of the project to explain how money works, to understand its nature and account for its existence in society</i>". I make no comment or presumption about Nigel's opinion of my work, but from my perspective I knew I'd found a kindred spirit.</p><p>Nigel and I were both born in 1965. He'd had a glittering academic career which saw him become a Professor of Sociology and Department Head of Sociology at the London School of Economics. Despite my pretensions, my academic 'career' consisted of a 2:1 - about which I'm still bitter about :-) - from the Economic History Department at the London School of Economics. We were about as far apart in the hierarchy as you can get. In fact, you could reasonably argue that I wasn't even 'in' the hierarchy, let alone at the bottom of it. But no matter. Nigel offered me words of encouragement, shared his papers, told me stories, and recommended books. He pretty much insisted I should read Bataille's <i>The Accursed Share. </i>I'm so glad he did because it was <i><b>the</b></i> transformative text for me personally and for my project. </p><p>A few stories spring to mind. </p><p>When Nigel was younger he took a summer job. He worked for a secure transport company that was tasked with transporting old, worn-out banknotes to the top secret, secure-facility incinerator (which I think is somewhere in Essex). He told me he used to enjoy a snooze in the back of the van on top of sacks containing millions of pounds worth of cash. I always wonder if this little connection to money burning played, consciously or unconsciously, into Nigel being so supportive of me and my money burning adventures. </p><p>As I indicated earlier, 2013 thru 2014 were tricky years for me. My confidence was at a low ebb. Being in touch with Nigel at that time really helped me. It gave me the feeling that my writing on money was in some sense being validated. It doesn't matter if that's true. The point is that because Nigel was kind enough to take the time to engage with me, I was encouraged to carry on, keep my head in a book and, as best I could, think through and express my ideas about money on this blog. Sometime early 2014, Nigel got in touch to ask if I'd like a preview a draft of his new book. Of course, I jumped at the chance. I read it, loved it, and (completely unsure of the etiquette) sent back 8 pages of corrections. He received them with grace. <i>The Social Life of Money </i>changed my world. There is no other book on money that covers as much theoretical ground. Nothing even close. I thought I had a pretty good grounding in the different schools of thought on money but Nigel showed me so much more. He also managed by a quirk of fate (or twist of synchronicity) to arrange his book launch on what was then my 'annual money burning day'. From 2007 thru to 2014 I'd burned money on 23rd October every year. So of course, when I turned up at the launch in the Old Theatre at the LSE and Nigel asked me about my next burn I had to say 'It's tonight!'</p><p>Nigel gave the opening keynote at the Art/Money/Crisis conference at Cambridge University in 2016. I always remember the warm greeting he gave me in front of the assembled academics which was a massive boost to my confidence and allowed me to relax and enjoy what otherwise might have been a very intimidating environment for a van driver who likes to read money books. His tone quickly changed to exasperation though as he told me about how he'd just learned he was being sued by the World Gold Council for remarks he'd made about the relations between gold and shit - a very well known psychoanalytical idea explored fully in Norman O Brown's <i>Life Against Death</i>. It was immediately apparent to me that this was a ludicrous, aggressive action which had no chance of success. But Nigel seemed genuinely upset by it and, even though I'm sure after a few words with a solicitor Nigel would have been reassured, I wish I could have been a better source of comfort for him in the moment.</p><p>Nigel published a lot of brilliant papers - many feed into <i>The Social Life of Money. </i>From his work in the 2010s<i> </i>I would recommend <i>Nietzsche's Money </i>(2013) where he writes about Norman O Brown's <i>Life Against Death. </i>In the noughties though, Nigel had a central role in an epic debate about the nature of money</p><p>It took place between 2000 and 2007 across various academic journals. It was hugely important. I was actually chatting about it with one of the keynote speakers at the Finance and Society Conference a couple of hours before I found out the sad news about Nigel's death. It involved some stellar sociologist's of money and its genesis was Viviana Zelizer's challenge to the generally accepted conception of money within the academic literature. She argued that money can be bestowed with 'social meaning' and that this disrupts the idea of money having a 'universal' conception. I gave an overview of the debate in <i>The Money Burner's Manual</i> (<a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/115JNtp-zQrwVIUnOEVBb8Rfw0h2ZqUCkijv_ycJDRlI/edit?usp=sharing">the key papers are listed here</a>). By 2005 what started as a wide ranging dialogue between several academics began to narrow down to a dispute between Nigel and one of his Cambridge Phd advisors, the renowned sociologist and Emeritus Reader in Sociology and Political Economy and Fellow of Christ’s College, Geoffrey Ingham. </p><p>Even though the papers were filtered through the language of an academic journal you can sense the tensions beneath the surface. The 2007 denouement revolved around the work of George Simmel (1858 - 1918). Now, Nigel's other Phd advisor was David Frisby. He'd become a colleague of Nigel's at the LSE in 2005 just a year or two before the final battle. And it just so happened that David Frisby was the world's foremost scholar on Simmel having translated his 1905 masterwork<i> The Philosophy of Money </i>into English for the first time in 1978. (When David Frisby died in 2010 Nigel wrote <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1468795X12461408">this tribute</a>.) </p><p>So the battle lines were drawn. The details of it might seem arcane to those outside the academic-money-verse but they reach directly to the heart of money. It boils down to ideas about how the Unit of Account (UoA) function of money - <i>i.e. how money is able to measure how many apples it takes to buy a gazebo</i> - comes into being. Many (including me) see the UoA as money's most important and primary function. Geoffrey Ingham had said that Simmel's view supported his own that in order to exist the UoA needs an authority. Nigel was clear. Simmel hadn't said this. What he'd said that the UoA arises from an (unconscious) equivalence between the total supply of money and the total supply of goods. I've since thought and written about this quite a bit. It was something that had stuck with me since I read Simmel back in the late 90s. I won't go into it here because it a strange idea that takes some explaining. But Nigel was spot on in his response to Geoffrey Ingham. Nigel's paper bought the battle to an end. </p><p>I count myself as very privileged that a few years after the fact, Nigel relayed a little of the experience of being involved what was quite an abrasive exchange at time. I don't think he'd enjoyed it. I do think it was a major contribution to the academic thought on money.</p><p>I invited Nigel to every event Church of Burn put on at The Cockpit, Marylebone but unfortunately never managed to persuade him to be Synod Bishop or just to attend and enjoy the evening. In 2019 Nigel's LSE colleague the late David Graeber was a Synod Bishop for us. David died about nine months later. Nigel sent me a sweet email regretting that he'd been too intimated by David's superstar status to introduce himself on those occasions when they found themselves in close proximity. I found this endearing, although from my humble perspective very weird too! David had been a charming presence at Church of Burn. Through his books and social media presence it was very easy to feel like you knew him a little because his style was personable and down to earth. Even though Nigel's writing style was a little less personal than David's he was an absolutely lovely man to communicate with and - on the odd occasion he took to social media - he was friendly and warm. The point is they also happen to be two of the foremost scholars on money, ever, with offices on the same campus. And yet they'd never spoke! I'm not the best hustler but if I'd been hanging round at the LSE I would definitely would have found a way to bring them together if only to take a selfie with them!</p><p>I count myself as very lucky to have known Nigel. It'd be presumptuous of me to call him a friend (although he was such a nice bloke I don't think he'd have minded). But we never went out for a pint or anything like that. He was a friend <i><b>to me</b></i>, though - if you know what I mean. He did so much for me. And he totally didn't have to. He didn't have to get involve in projects like the Brixton Pound either with my friend Charlie Waterhouse. But he did because he was a wonderful, compassionate man with a brilliant mind and I'll always be grateful to him for taking the time to connect with me. </p><p>Here's my last little story. I'm really proud of this one and it came out of the blue.</p><p>It was June 2020 and I hadn't heard from Nigel for a while. The Bank of England was running a public consultation on Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). Obviously the Covid Pandemic was what was on everyone's minds. Delivery drivers suddenly became 'heroes' and so I'd been busy with boring day to day stuff. No furlough for me unfortunately. With a week or two to go before the consultation deadline I decided that I need to seize the opportunity to make my point and demand that the design of CBDC's must allow their bearers to destroy it. I prepared a draft letter and sent it out to friends and academics asking for co-signatories. The first person to get back to me - within a few minutes - was Nigel. So I wrote a letter to the Governor of the Bank of England signed by myself, Professor Nigel Dodd <i>LSE Sociology, Author The Social Life of Money, </i>and 18 others making our demand that the right for us to destroy our own money should be written into the design of the BoE's CBDC. <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1v7v3FQbCkDMGUKc8aZg1ylDwHz7v1HnOI0CvtJ9ndiM/edit?usp=sharing">You can read it here</a>. </p><p>Thank you, Nigel, Rest in Peace. </p>MBGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18404729484594219550noreply@blogger.comLondon, UK51.5072178 -0.127586223.196983963821154 -35.2838362 79.817451636178845 35.0286638tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7692221543575336501.post-33030681276390157522022-09-05T11:04:00.003+01:002022-09-05T11:47:24.811+01:00Money Wisdom #502<p>"There are two basic models of the libidinal economy of revolutionary movements, which we might characterise as the Freudian and the Reichian, or the petit-bourgeois and the utopian-socialist, or the Calvinist and the Keynesian models - the former based on a vision of (libidinal) spending as depletion or loss, the latter on a vision of spending as <i>generating</i> (Libidinal) wealth."</p><p style="text-align: right;"><b>David Bennett</b> <i>The Currency of Desire</i> (2016) p.157</p>MBGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18404729484594219550noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7692221543575336501.post-68980736299312302632022-09-03T12:34:00.001+01:002022-09-05T11:47:35.998+01:00Money Wisdom #501<p> "Neoliberalism recasts the moral/immoral distinction as a rational/irrational one, reinforcing the bonds between economic and psychiatric rationality. As national economies continue to lurch between inflation and recession in the twenty-first century, the question of how much credit-fuelled spending is rational or irrational, healthy or unhealthy, for any nation at any given moment continues to divide economists, just as the question of how much shopping might be rational or irrational, healthy or pathological, for any individual divides psychiatrists."</p><p style="text-align: right;"><b>David Bennett</b> <i>The Currency of Desire</i> (2016) p.121 </p>MBGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18404729484594219550noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7692221543575336501.post-26643802190388683642022-01-05T14:33:00.001+00:002023-05-24T14:17:51.014+01:00Ritual and Administration<p>Happy New Year!</p><p>I really miss reading books on money and writing about them here. 2021 was a year more devoted to 'doing' rather than 'thinking' for me. I expect 2022 will be similar. </p><p>The highpoint of 2021 was, of course, the three Church of Burn events at The Cockpit, Marylebone over the first weekend out of lockdown in July. The performances were a significant step up in terms of their production values. An expanded cast and crew meant 30 of us were involved in creating Church of Burn in 2021. </p><p>It was utterly thrilling to see something that had existed in my imagination since 2019 finally be brought into reality. I am profoundly grateful to all involved. We have images, audio and video of the performances but we've been a little coy about sharing them. A few exciting things have happened since July 2021 and we want to keep our powder dry for the next time. <span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><u><br /></u></p><p><u>Administration</u></p><p>So, although I feel we gave Covid a bloody nose by managing to stage the event as soon as humanly possible, it did nevertheless have an impact on how we did things; for theatres, opening up in July was not as simple as 'anything goes'. Church of Burn had to (as much as possible) keep a 2 metre distance between cast and audience which made it too tricky to record the serial numbers of the notes that were sacrificed in Ritual. As a result we have no accurate record of the amount burned. </p><p>As there were plenty of witnesses to confirm that multiple money burnings took place though, it did seem appropriate to request a declaration from the Office of The Holder of The Staff [ All Hail, The Staff! ] in order to make an entry in the Record of Burn. The <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1k0CDNVj_mcFBWXwkwCOXPL8FtQKrMnsO/view?usp=sharing">declaration has been granted</a> and an amount of £1000 has been duly entered in the Record of Burn. </p><p>Not recording the serial numbers did remind us of how important this part of the ritual is. I was pleased that several members of the Church wanted to know that it would be re-instated in future. [ Check out <a href="https://twitter.com/jonone100/status/1473258887608426501?s=20">this thread</a> on how the recording of serial numbers on the destruction of a banknote mirrors how they were originally brought into being at the Bank of England - paper it links to is excellent ] </p><p><br /></p><p><u>Ritual</u></p><p>Just before Xmas I asked my Twitter friends for some help with a magical problem. You can <a href="https://twitter.com/jonone100/status/1474048017967767560?s=20">explore the thread here</a> but to summarise: I like to burn some of the tips I get from work. I can't give you a precise answer as to why tips are a favourite burn. I think it might have to do with the fact that they are freely given (or at least <i>more</i> freely given than money that is exchanged for my labour). Some people feel a social pressure to tip at xmas, but even so, there is still less pressure to pay (I'd argue) than in a contracted financial exchange. There is also the fact that tips are made in cash - and even for a committed money burner like myself, I simply don't tend to have cash on me these days. It's pretty much all contactless for me when I spend. </p><p>Anyway, this year my tip haul was around £80. As usual those who tip, tip well. But most people don't tip at all. Of that £80, £20 was given to me by an older couple. They told me verbally (twice) and in the card that accompanied the money, that it was 'for me and my colleagues'. By doing this they created a BIG problem for me. </p><p>I don't want to get into the rights and wrongs of attaching conditions to gifts. It's not my personal practice. But I think many feel that if you 'gift' money to someone, it's acceptable to say 'don't spend it on' whatever, or share it with 'so-and-so'. And despite my personal feelings, as I accepted their gift, I felt bound by their conditions. </p><p>Now, the practice at my day job is we NEVER share tips. It's just not practical. If we tried to do it, it'd have to be an informal arrangement (because of the tax issues the company would not want to know about it) and very quickly that'd cause a huge free-rider problem and risk massive resentment. The idea of buying say, £10 worth of chocolates, and sharing them with my 700 colleagues also seemed incredibly lame. The company provide little xmas treats anyway. Buying a gift in order to share the £20 with my colleagues would be about me 'just' fulfilling my obligations (and would mean I'd look like a total arse-licker to boot). </p><p>And to be honest, from the moment I got the £20, I knew I wanted to burn it. I was intrigued by the problem of how I could honour the spell the couple had placed on the £20 note and also sacrifice the fuck out of it. So it took some thought!</p><p>I'm not going to tell you everything about the ritual. But here's the gist. On the 2nd of January 2022, I burned £40 in total at a ritual by a pool in Froggatt Wood in the Hope Valley in Derbyshire. My point-of-pain burn is about £30 at the moment. I've suffered a little from burn-flation because £20 doesn't quite cut it for me nowadays. However, £40 is probably a bit too hurty. But I figured that my burn was £30 and £10 was 'for my colleagues'. (This Ritual has been entered into the <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BC8ATfIdmn9Jkyjgc8iGy44hGjxe6cT3Z0xeivnLC4g/">Record of Burn</a>)</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>So a few points:</p><p>I decided early on that it would be in keeping with the conditions that £10 of the £20 was mine and £10 was earmarked for my colleagues. This was not specified by the couple, but it seems reasonable to suppose a 50/50 split. If they'd wanted a greater share for either party it would be down to them to specify - whereas what they did was name two distinct entities i.e. me <i>and </i>my colleagues.</p><p>Now you may argue that my colleagues would NOT have wanted my to burn their £10. This is a fair point. However, there was no specification as to whether my 'spending' of the note would promote pleasure or displeasure among my colleagues; only that it should be shared with them. And clearly, I believe that burning £10 'on their behalf' is a good thing even though they may disapprove. </p><p>Once I'd decided that I'd burn their £10 though, I did feel that I needed to add something meaningful that connected my colleagues to the Ritual. I could have announced on the work intranet that I'd performed a money burning ritual and that would have served to give them knowledge of the event. But first up, it would have created all sorts of difficulties at work (I'm not sure the couple would have wanted that) and second it wouldn't have really 'connected' them to the ritual experience. So instead I made a promise and wrapped it around the burning/burned £20 (which of course is itself a promise) like a ritualised 'smart contract'. This is literal. I have a very scorched piece of paper with my promise written on it, which is now tightly wrapped around the remains of the money. </p><p>I'm not going to share with you what was written. It is a promise directly concerning my colleagues. I need to fulfil it (if at all possible) rather than talk about. </p></blockquote><p>I don't think I've talked at all about my day job on this blog. Deliberately so. Anyone who knows me personally knows that I'd rather not be doing it (this is an understatement!). In fact, I'm pretty sure that even if you don't know me personally you could figure out that I'd much rather spend my time reading and writing about money - and doing Church of Burn and all the other cool things - than driving van delivering stuff. </p><p>But, despite my wishes, I still find myself at 56 having to grind it out at work. I was very <i style="font-weight: bold;">very</i> down on work after Church of Burn. Major comedown after such a high. Take the following seriously, or don't - or do both at different times. But I was feeling so much hate and negativity toward work, after Church of Burn, that those emotions managed to sublimate themselves into the possibility that I wouldn't have to work anymore! Albeit, by getting sacked! A series of bizarre incidents - for the most part completely out of my control - led to me being called into meetings everyday for about two weeks solid. I ended up telling the universe that while I appreciated its efforts to grant my wish to leave work, getting the sack might not be hugely helpful for my wider ambitions.</p><p>I do constantly have plans about how I will escape my fate. I'll be putting the latest one into effect very soon. But in the meantime I want to recognise (as that older couple reminded me) that I should value and honour my colleagues in my day job. We've all been through the trauma of the last two years together. Not all have survived. Some colleagues I've known for over a decade. And even though I have no social contact with any of them, many I'd be honoured to call friends. </p><p>So despite the temporary existential crises that the conditions the couple attached to their tip caused me, it served to make me recognise that the magical/spiritual/religious aspects of my being (or whatever label you want to put on them) don't disappear when I put my work uniform on. And that even in the relationship with the institution itself, allowing for it to be deeply embedded or perhaps constituted by a financialized mode of production, the relationship is necessarily underpinned by something beyond measure, profit and contract. </p><p>I have survived my time doing my day job (so far and in large part) by adhering to a set of simple principles about how I do my job - about what I've committed of myself in return for my wage. I drive safely, keep customers happy and deliver on time. At work there is a book of rules and regulations longer and more complex than Simmel's <i>Philosophy of Money </i>(if you don't know it, trust me, its <i>very</i> long and <i>very </i>complex). But I ignore all of that stuff and just take my promise to the company in all seriousness. While they pay me, I keep my promise. This approach has kept me (relatively) sane, doing I job I really don't want to do, for eleven years. </p><p>Phillip Goodchild's koan-like phrase in <i>Theology of Money </i>often rattles around my head when I think about this stuff. <i><b>The promise of value is not the value of a promise</b>. </i></p><p><br /></p><p>Thanks to all those who suggested solutions on twitter, and to Anwen, Michelle and Tommy for their wise advice for witnessing the ritual and the promise. </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>MBGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18404729484594219550noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7692221543575336501.post-12435052364626582852021-02-15T13:21:00.001+00:002021-02-15T13:21:21.889+00:00Money Wisdom #500<p>"All money is a technology of future-making. We only accept a particular money as payment because we think it will be accepted tomorrow by someone else. Every transaction is a prediction, and therefore an affirmation, of a particular future.</p><p>[...]</p><p>If all money is a bet on the future, it is also a summoning of a future. When people design new money forms, it is usually with the goal of telling a new story about the future. Think of how euro notes have imaginary architecture — fictional bridges and arches intended to conjure a shared “European” past in order to project a shared European future.</p><p>[...]</p><p>Extropians also had a libertarian bent: They believed in the ability of money to create a cybernetic system that could power this new world. But if you truly believe, as the Extropians did, that you will outlive the world’s governments and even its financial institutions, how do you make a monetary vehicle that will too? How do you set a store of value that will persist and even grow as you await revivification in your cryonic chamber?</p><p>The answer, essentially, is cryptocurrency. You set your money and its value outside the things you think are crumbling. You secure it with the things you see as eternal: cryptography and markets.</p><p>[...]</p><p>There is magic in deferral. If we can just increase the time horizon, some things disintegrate but others fall into place. Despite imagining a future initially filled with chaos and collapse for ordinary people, Extropians consider themselves deeply optimistic.</p><p>Today’s cryptocurrency communities are similarly summoning a future. Some of those futures look a lot like the one the Extropians imagined; indeed, some of today’s Bitcoin old guard were themselves part of the Extropian groups decades ago.</p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: right;">Lana Swartz 'Bitcoin As A Meme And A Future'</p><p style="text-align: right;">in Noema (2021) (<a href="https://www.noemamag.com/bitcoin-as-a-meme-and-a-future/">link</a>)</p>MBGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18404729484594219550noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7692221543575336501.post-59174204922050085952020-11-19T18:30:00.000+00:002020-11-20T10:56:37.150+00:00Money Wisdom #499<p>As I say, money, for proponents of MMT, when the term is used for items used in making
payments, is said to be debt. Thus, in a chapter of Wray’s book focussed specifically on the nature of money, two subsections in which money is interpreted in this way are given the
heading “money is debt”. Wray also identifies three “fundamental propositions regarding
money”, one of which emphasises that “money [not a particular good] buys goods”, and
another of which runs as follows: </p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;">“Money is always debt; it cannot be a commodity […] because if it were that
would mean a particular good is buying goods” (Wray, 2012, p. 264). </p></blockquote><p>I take it that the term debt is here understood in its traditional and legal sense as an obligation
held by a debtor to satisfy a creditor. It is internally related to a credit, where the latter means
a specific right to payment or satisfaction. Credit and debt, in other words, are two aspects of
the same social relation – a credit/debt (or debt/credit) relation – connecting a creditor and a
debtor; you cannot have one aspect without the other. Credit is simply this relation viewed
from the perspective of the creditor; it is debt from the point of view of the debtor.
</p><p style="text-align: right;"><b>Tony Lawson</b> <i>Money’s relation to debt: Some problems with MMT’s
conception of money </i>(2019)</p><p style="text-align: right;">Real-world Economics Review, issue no. 89</p>MBGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18404729484594219550noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7692221543575336501.post-82448827199869018202020-11-19T17:03:00.000+00:002020-11-19T17:03:30.365+00:00Money Wisdom #498<p>"Although a unit of value ‘measurement’ or assignment is clearly a primary concept in any sustainable theory of money, it is not itself money. Rather, money, at least as I conceptualise it (or money proper, as Keynes calls it), comes into existence only if/when the community also positions a suitable kind of thing or stuff (denominated of course in the accepted unit of account, and so, as a kind, typically positioned elsewhere in the system previously) to serve as a general means of payment and, in the case of a successful money at least, a store of purchasing power. Money is that so (additionally) positioned kind of thing."</p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: right;"><b>Tony Lawson</b> <i>The Constitution and Nature of Money </i></p><p style="text-align: right;">in Cambridge Journal of Economics (2018) 42, 851–873</p>MBGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18404729484594219550noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7692221543575336501.post-90752496010987973092020-10-17T11:57:00.001+01:002020-10-17T11:57:49.005+01:00MoneyWisdom #497<p> "As a formative period of early Christian tradition, late antiquity was a setting of great upheaval and social, cultural, political, economic, theological, and symbolic transformation. It established certain parameters within which European civilizations developed and offered a fund of conceptual and practical resources from which to draw, as the West told itself stories about itself, fashioning an identity out of a distant and reconstructed past. As Western societies continue the process of self-examination that is always self-formation, the relations among the monetary economic, the political and theological persist as a deposit whose books and records require auditing. For this reserve has not ceased to generate interest, compounding in the form of theoretical and social returns, paying dividends both productive and destructive, life-giving and death-dealing. This is an inheritance that calls us to account."</p><p style="text-align: right;"><b>Devin Singh</b> <i>Divine Currency</i> (2018) p.206</p>MBGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18404729484594219550noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7692221543575336501.post-73516304477789441752020-10-15T16:20:00.001+01:002020-10-15T16:20:02.362+01:00MoneyWisdom #496<p> "...many accounts of colonization note the imposition of sovereign currency and tax requirement upon occupied territory. Infusing a colony with new currency achieves many tasks. Ideologically speaking, it circulates the image of the ruling center among the populace. New subjects are gradually conditioned to associate such images the means of payment and acquisition of the basics of life. They are reminded of the lord by whose mark it is they buy and sell. Figuratively speaking, they must prostrate themselves before the image in order to prolong physical life, accepting its terms and regime of value. The imposition also inserts the particular weights and measures established by the power, permeating exchanges relations with certain denominations of wealth. This provides new sovereignly determined methods of categorizing and evaluating reality. Most centrally, perhaps, establishing a new monetary space draws all participants into relations of obligation with the colonizing center. They must now render back to the authority a portion of these circulating tokens, reclaimed in taxes."</p><p style="text-align: right;"><b>Devin Singh</b> <i>Divine Currency </i>(2018) p.183</p>MBGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18404729484594219550noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7692221543575336501.post-88588360385297193482020-10-15T12:40:00.001+01:002020-10-15T12:40:38.536+01:00MoneyWisdom #495<p> "If it is true, as Simmel suggests, that the predominant style of art influences our way of viewing nature, then the quantitative structure of monetary relations, which is superimposed upon qualitative actuality, must greatly influence our viewing of it. The calculating intellect which operates through the money economy receives back from that same money economy some of the mental characteristics in terms of which it dominates modern life. There is an analogy between the mentality which the money economy engenders and the conviction that nothing is real in any ultimate sense if it cannot be measured. This objective and impersonal character of money, indeed its very lack of character, is important in the development of individuality. Money acts, as it were, in a double role: On the one hand it negates the subjective, the unique and qualitative factors, on the other it allows the individual to realize his personal ends by impersonal means."</p><p style="text-align: right;"><b>S. Herbert Frankel</b> <i>Money: Two Philosophies - The Conflict of Trust and Authority </i>(1977) p.25</p>MBGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18404729484594219550noreply@blogger.com