"In seeking to define the technological model of money in administration, many of the elements of money in exchange are applicable. In both cases money serves as an extendable, divisable, graded, and numbered continuum used as a common scale of measurement. But there are important differences. Money in exchange facilitates relation by expressing the diverse and shifting values of all commodities in common numerical terms. Money in administration also facilitates relation but it does so along a single axis. It provides a numbered scale superimposed on pre-existing relationships within a unified field. Within each field it acts as an instrument of proportionalization. Where money in exchange serves as a
medium for
connecting diverse goods and services by making them commensurable, money in administration serves as a
medium for
dividing values along a single continuous axis.
Joel Kaye Economy and Nature in the Fourteenth Century p.174 (1998)
