Money Wisdom #22

"Whatever has value in our world now does not have value in itself, according to its nature - nature is always value-less, but has been given value at some time, as a present - and it was we who gave and bestowed it."

Friedrich Nietzsche The Gay Science (1882:301)

A Bit of Christmas Wisdom

I'd thought I'd share this little bit of wisdom with you. You're unlikely to have come across it unless you're a money freak like me because it comes from Theodore Caplow's 1984 paper Rule enforcement without visible means: Christmas Gift Giving in Middletown which was originally published in American Journal of Sociology 89:1306-23. I came across it in James Carrier's excellent Gifts and Commodities - Exchange & Western Capitalism since 1700. Are you ready for this?

Women are particularly resentful of oversized items that seem to say that the giver perceives them as "fat".

 Theodore Caplow (1984: 1314) 

You can keep your Higgs Boson, this is the sort of thing we need to know.

Anyways, to briefly update you, I'm still working on my Owning & Owing piece. Its turned from and extended blog post into something more like an essay.

Have a Merry Christmas!