Money Wisdom #313

"Money has no present being. It merely has a past value that is recorded and a future value that is anticipated. Money only exists in memory or anticipation as a record in account books. One never sees money come and go. Even with live electronic access to markets, a change in value occurs instantaneously when a price is marked up or down. One never sees money make money; one never watches it breed. One has to send it away first, so that it may return at a profit. Money always breeds elsewhere, outside possession, beyond the limits of attention. It leaves when it is invested and returns already changed, for profit or loss."

Philip Goodchild Theology of Money (2009) p.170

Record of Burn

I've been meaning to do this for a while.

So now if you look to the right of this post there is a link to Record of Burn - as the title suggests it lists my money burning events. And shows the total burn currency value.
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First I need to do a bit of housekeeping.

There is no burn recorded in 2010. I have made a note of this on my burn spreadsheet but it doesn't seem to want to show up on the public version. So here's the full story.

My intention in 2010 was to burn £100, but I lost my nerve. When I started burning in 2007 I got the idea in my head that I would, more or less, double the amount I burned every year. An ambitious plan. I mentioned the plan in this post from 2009. And I had intended to do the £100 burn right up until the last moment as this tweet from 23/10/10 testifies. But things were very tough for me at the time. I was exhausted after finishing an extended summer tour and had returned home to considerable domestic strife. Not only was Sally extremely unhappy, but the money I'd earned, which might have offered a crumb of comfort to the both of us, was snapped up by some eager bailiffs who visited on the morning following my return. That sort of thing can test your spirit.

So anyway, burning the £100 would, I think, have been regarded as an aggressive or petulant or just plain insane act. Not only by Sally, but by my kids too. 'Why have we got no dinner tonight?' 'Because your Dad just burned the last of our money'. The fact that I would subsequently have blogged about the philosophical nature of money and what burning means would have rubbed salt into the wound. As I looked back at the archive of my tweets from that time to write this post, I do seem desperate. I was playing a lot of low-stakes poker, and tweeting about the bad beats I'd gotten.

A bit on poker. It'll make sense later on in the post.

With the exception of £100 I lost in one sitting at a cash game in the West End (straight after I attended this, and around the time Sally and I separated), I've always been pretty tight with what poker players refer to as 'bankroll management'. This issue with my poker playing has generally been about the time and head-space I give to it, rather than the money. I do win occasionally. And like all poker players, I like to think I play well.

I've always seen poker as a tax on hope. I used to say this to Sally back in 2010. If you're facing bailiffs, or if your worried the constant strain of your financial position is having an effect on your relationship, or whatever your financial woes and their effects, a poker tournament is a respite. For the time you're playing, a potential future exists where you win and your financial problems are alleviated. Of course, most of the time you lose, but when a tournament just costs a couple of dollars to enter and will last for several hours (even if you still lose) that 'tax' is a light burden for a blessed relief. (I play much less these days. The rule I have - aside from the bankroll ones - is that I must 'want' to play, that is, I must play for the pleasure of playing, rather than the pleasure that winning will bring in the form of money).

So it ended up that on the night of 23/10/10 I chose not to burn £100. Instead I wrote out my own promissory note and burned that. Somewhere, I have a record of the promise I made on it. I can't find it at the moment, but it was to the effect that when I die, and in the unlikely event I leave any money behind, someone should burn a £100 of it for me. I owe £100 to karma.

The non-burning still bugs me. Although, the fact that it does still bug me, is quite instructive. I can access the feeling I have about it every time I read 'money is just credit' or similar statements that try to wish away the profound and sacred reality of Money. There seems to be a critical point - a psychical one - between burning a bit of paper with my promise on it (no matter how solemnly made) and burning a £50 note (with the BoE's promise on it). I guess it has to do with the difference between individual and collective belief. At that critical point you pass from the purely imaginary into the very real.
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Recently, I re-watched Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty being interviewed on the Irish Late Late Show (sometime around 1995). At the point I've linked to in the video Bill is trying to explain that their burning of a million quid doesn't mean there are any less apples or loaves of bread in the world. This is of course absolutely and indisputably correct.

The interviewer, Gay Byrne's line of argument is that 'there's not less, but there could have been a little more'. He then confusingly says, 'you could have bought loaves of bread for people who needed them'. Bill stands his ground as says that the only thing less in the world is a pile of paper. But you can see from this freeze frame, Bill looks uncomfortable.

The blond bloke sitting next to Jimmy is Joe Elliott, from Def Leppard. He says of Bill's argument that 'I used to talk to my dad like that when I was sixteen'. Bill's reply is 'I'm still talking to my Dad like that and I'm 42.'

If I owned any Def Leppard records I'd burn them. No. In fact, burning would be to good for them. I'd reverse sell them. I'd stick a tenner in them and sell them on ebay for a fiver. I bristle when I'm told that these arguments around the nature of money are wrong because they're naive or immature. As if, a common sense, grown up, hometown, belt and braces, bread and butter, look after the pennies, know the value of money wisdom is what really penetrates the nature of money. Its completely the other way round. All those common sense views are a distorted reflection of money itself. Money has penetrated them

Let me briefly try to unpick the argument here. Not Joe Elliot's, but Gay Byrne's and Bill's.

Essentially Gay Byrne is saying that by destroying the million quid, Bill and Jimmy have destroyed 'demand'. That demand would have caused more apples and bread to be produced in future so long as it was spent and not destroyed. This line of argument is an economic one, although in the interview it is pursued (albeit quite gently by Gay Byrne) as a line of moral inquiry. I've dealt, and am dealing, with the moral aspects of burning elsewhere (for example in my Horse Hospital post) but for now, I just want briefly to focus on the economic.

The crucial difference in the economic perspective is how you regard money. Is it a social relation or a commodity? However, the arguments that are overlaid on the basic conceptualization of money quickly become confused and twisted round one another - and that happens on TV chat shows and academic journals. Gay Byrne's argument is based on money being a social relation - demand-side economics needs money to be a social relation. And yet in his reaction, he seems to regard money as commodity - as if the money, and its direct equation into apples and bread, were a real thing that was destroyed. Bill's argument too is a little confusing. He's saying that money is all just bits of paper - a social relation - and yet he is denying the conclusion drawn by demand-side economics that increases or decreases in the amount of money in the economy have a real effect.

Current economic orthodoxy - if there is such a thing, as it does seem to be dissolving fast - is that money is neutral, so that the destruction of the million quid will have no effect on the quantities of apples or bread, now or in the future. Money for orthodox economics is a veil over the real economy. Weirdly though, and in direct contradiction, orthodoxy sometimes seems to regard money philosophically like its a commodity with inherent value, and all the time seems to regard money as a divine measure of well-being or 'the good'. Perhaps its a hang up from the days of Gold and Silver.

This 'neutrality' point of view is strongly contested. It's what underlies the recent debate in the House of Commons. To characterize the two strands of criticism, both Left and Right (Democrat and Republican, for American readers) regard money, and its creation, as non-neutral. Groups like Positive Money on the Left want to move money creation into the democratic process. They regard money as a social relation. Those on the Right - and I include alt-currencies like bitcoin in this characterization - want to liberalize money and its creation, making money a pure product of the market. Although its more popular to talk about things like bitcoin in terms of it being an emergent value from networks, essentially its conceptualization as money is akin to commodity.

[Only this morning, Francis Coppella posted 'Magical Thinking at the G20' which explores the contradictory nature of economic orthodoxy from her viewpoint. Its not a viewpoint with which I concur but the demand/supply contradiction is neatly illustrated. And of course, although Francis means 'Magical Thinking' negatively, the title really appeals to me !]

So if Bill's argument does sound a like a naive confused sixteen year old, he's in very good company with the rest of the world. The difference being that Bill and Jimmy actually did something about it. Something that still has people talking and thinking 20 years later. Fucking Joe fucking Elliott. Dick.

Anyway. my take on the economic arguments is that ultimate source of confusion lies in our ontology and epistemology of money. We seem to have difficulty in understanding being, other than in terms of possessing something of it. That's why the burning is so confusing to us. Bill and Jimmy have given up their possession of the million quid. And we're left wondering about what it actually is that they have given up possession of. The million quid only seems to be when it's possessed. The moment it's freed, it becomes a phantom that we can't quite see or grasp, As a consequence of this ontological uncertainty we also get confused as to how we know about money and it's effects. We all understand that no apples or bread were harmed in the burning of the million quid, but when you add the element of time to that basic equation of equivalence, that certainty disappears. We don't know in the future whether there would have been more or less apples and bread because of the burning. This knowledge is fundamentally unknowable. Certainty of knowledge only exists in the moment of the burn, and perversely that certainty, is about the certainty of not knowing. Burning crystallizes the unknowing. By burning money, you know you can't know.

This epistemological problem echoes through the great economic debate of the C20th. For those on the right, marching under Hayek's flag to the tune of The Law of Unintended Consequences we cannot know the effect of collective spending. So we shouldn't spend. For those on the Left under Keynes' flag life is short. We should whistle while we dig holes and fill them up again. Precisely because we don't know what its effect will be we should spend. Pessimism versus optimism, or realism versus wishful thinking? You decide.
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Part of what I want to achieve with my 'Record of Burn' is to set a kind of new Cosmic Clock for myself. I've put the time and date of burning in the second column, and described it as 'a marker'. I want the burn itself to be the tick of the Cosmic Clock. Each tick being a point where we know, we don't know.

This relates back to what I was saying about poker. When we know we don't know, the possibility for hope is alive. 

I've made my own stumbling attempts to make this argument philosophically (mainly in un-posted essays) when I talk about the inside and outside of time and space and the way that a £20 note and the burning of it joins them. Particularly influential upon me, and directly connected to the ontological and epistemological status of money is the work of (a) Norman O Brown in Life Against Death (and specifically his development of a psychoanalytical theory of time) and (b) Nigel Dodd (who is also a fan of Norman O Brown) and specifically the ideas Nigel approaches in his earlier Sociology of Money where he distinguishes between Money and currency (money and monetary networks, in his words) and their relationships to time and space. Nigel also attacks 'the epistemological claims on which its [economic reasoning's] significance for the role of money in contemporary society fundamentally depends'.

What we all seem to be striving for (and I don't just mean me, Nigel and Norman, but all of us - including Bill and Jimmy) is an understanding of the relation between Money, Time and Knowledge.

[If you look at this bitcoin twitter exchange I had with Jonathan Levin while writing this piece you'll see that this issue won't go away. Its fundamental to our understanding and conceptualization money and so too, any currency... even ones that most folks consider to be radically different like bitcoin]
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Between the iron gates of fate,
The seeds of time were sown,
And watered by the deeds of those
Who know and who are known;

~ Peter Sinfield Epitaph

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I recently did a burn that wasn't on the 23rd of October. I thought about doing another burn since the 23rd of October and then burned £10 on 23/11/14. This happens to be the holy day of Discordianism and, as you'll know if you follow my twitter stream was the wonderful weekend of the Cosmic Trigger play and conferestival.

I'm keen to explore incorporating a burning into my life at different intervals. But I don't just want to follow a set pattern, like on the 23rd of every month, or every Sunday, or at Easter and Christmas, or on the summer and winter solstice. I want my burning to find its own path, to create its own time. So it may well be that my burnings do indeed coincide with a particular festival or cosmic event, and also that I repeat them annually. But I want to let the events lead me there as much as I can, Although I have a feeling that this awful US import of Black Friday will be an entirely appropriate Burn Day next year, 

It seems to be that the space between the burnings is the time of knowing, and the burnings themselves combine the crystallization of unknowing with a ritual of pure forgiveness. 

Looking back through my posts to write this one, I came across a little thing I did on hope. It's really embarrassing now, but it does express something important. It's the idea that there is no such thing as false hope. There is hope, and then things don't work out. The hope itself cannot be false, or else it is not hope. This seems to me quite an important philosophical point. And I think perhaps the purity of money burning, the 'certain space of unknowing' it creates, and its essence of forgiveness relate to this idea of hope being un-falsifiable. 

[If I'd read it, at this point I'd divert off for a ramble on Derrida's Given Time:Counterfeit Money. The notion of the impossibility of false (or counterfeit?) hope seems very Derrida. And no doubt there are very many other things that we talk about (like pure forgiveness for example) that are actually impossible. I'd be tempted to talk about despair and consider the idea of false despair too. And I might wonder if the 'certain space of unknowing' money burning creates manifests hope because it is a ritual of forgiveness. And wonder too if despair becomes manifest through rituals of guilt. My mind would flip back to the performance of Electra I saw earlier in the week. And I'd talk about the opposite of redemptive cycles - the cycles of vengeance manifest in Electra and how despair is manifest through the 'certain space of knowing' where there is an exact price of payment (a life for a life). Then I'd go back to the performance of Oedipus Rex I saw at the National - I'd wonder about Oedipus plucking out his eyes and think about the visibility of value, Gyges and Marc Shell's work. It would all get very messy and deeply Freudian. But fortunately I haven't read Derrida, so you can relax.]

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Another thing about the burning that came home to me most especially doing the £20 burn with the GMT marker 23/10/14 23:23 (I'll try to remember to refer to specific burns in this way in future) was that doing things like taking photos during the burn really do distract from my experience of the ritual. I'm torn between my desire to share the ritual with an audience (last year's Horse Hospital burn had a powerful impact) as a means of evangelizing (and amplifying) its power on the one hand, and wanting to lose myself in the ritual itself, on the other. I don't think those two things are necessarily incompatible, but I just get the balance wrong sometimes. 

And actually putting up this public Record of Burn helps with that. I'll feel under less pressure (self-induced of course) to shout about a burn as I do it. Indeed, I think the spaces in between the burn will soon become the place where I shout about it most loudly, and the burns themselves will become the quiet points in between. 

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THE END

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Money Wisdom #312

"The power of money is spiritual, not purely social. It calls individuals into the state of subjectivity of the one who participates in the market; it calls them out to be individuals, characterized by violent claims to property, the self-discipline of labor, and enjoyment of freedom and prosperity. It is not sufficient, therefore, to point out the destructive effects of market society and to advise people to return to local or traditional economic activities, for the blessings of enhanced productivity and prosperity available to individuals through the market can always be contraposed to the curses and limitations of traditional life. The morality of the market will always prove more attractive to those who stand to benefit from it than other bases for morality. The theology of money, with its promises, its narcissistic self-positing as the supreme standard and measure of all value, its speculative detachment from current conditions, and its despotic power expressed in debt, can be transformed only by a stronger spiritual power."

Philip Goodchild Theology of Money (2009) p.129

Money Creation and Society

Yesterday there was a general debate in the House of Commons on 'Money Creation and Society' - which was, as noted in the debate itself, the first time 'money creation' has been a subject of parliamentary debate since the Banking Act of 1844. (You may remember in the post I did on the Giro that there was no need for a new act of parliament to get it going, and so there was no debate)

By way of marking this momentous event then, I thought it'd be appropriate, at the very least, to post the video of the debate.

I'd guess that if you're reading my blog you'll already be familiar with the ideas discussed. This Quarterly Bulletin from the BoE is referenced as a good explanation of 'modern money creation'. The reform group Positive Money lobbied for the debate. I'm not sure how the process works but the debate was secured by a cross party group of money-reformers [Michael Meacher (Lab), Caroline Lucas (Green), Douglas Carswell (UKIP) and David Davis (Con)] but the leader of the pack seemed to be Steve Baker who is the conservative MP for High Wycombe. Steve comes across as a fairly hardcore libertarian, quoting Mises, referencing Hayek, extolling the virtue of crypto-currencies and name-checking bitcoin.

As for the debate itself, all participants seem to share a dissatisfaction with the current situation where private banks have an effective monopoly on money creation. This they claim - and I think they're right - is the cause of many social and economic ills. Broadly, their suggested remedies divide along political lines. The Left suggests that money creation should fall under the remit of parliamentary committees, the Right thinks the market should decide.

No surprises there, then.

It was a special moment for me to hear the question 'What is Money?' being asked in the House of Commons. It was in Steve Baker's opening speech at around 18.40 in the video. He asks "What is Money? and then answers with 'Money is the basis of our moral existence'. That perked me up. I thought for a moment that he might talk about Value monism and money in the moral universe and all the weird stuff I love. But no. It was wishful thinking on my part. He was meaning it in a Hayekean free-market sense. And as I've explained elsewhere there is a fundamental ontological problem with Hayek's idea of Money (For Hayek money comes through price from markets; but actually money precedes markets and prices - chronologically, logically, and ontologically)

This links into a troubling theme for me. It seems to be received wisdom - accepted and unquestioned by all those in the debate - that money is a social institution subject to political will. This will expresses a desire for freedom and equality, and depending on the balance of those desires, finds its form in actions that seek either to bureaucratize or to democratize currency. The problem occurs when those alternate actions inevitably fail. The response that follows is a greater expression of political will and a subsequent energizing of the particular action. This too inevitably fails. And so, when a critical point is reached the action is switched, from bureaucratization to democratization or vice versa, and the process begins a new. The eternal reoccurrance of the eversame.

There are two basic problems.

Firstly, the assumption of causality - of money creation as subject to, or a function of, political will - is wrong. (Money cannot be wholly defined as a social institution either, but we'll deal with that another time).

And secondly, Money has the capacity to reflect back any duality - the political duality, of left and right; the economic duality of supply and demand; the moral duality of right and wrong. And the louder we shout at money, the more deafening its echo.

And there is one much more fundamental problem for the political will in regard to money.

(For me) Understanding money requires a total prestation of being. Of our being, to money's being. By their very nature political prestations are partial and so will always be in a confused conflict with money, as money reflects back the schizophrenic essence of the political. As such, there is no political vision that can achieve a new and meaningful understanding of money. As far as money and politics goes there can be no new heaven, and therefore no new earth.

It is in the realm of the sacred where we present ourselves (to God) as whole; as a complete being. All our thoughts, deeds, feelings, emotions, and actions are known to God. And, so the story goes, we can only know God if we stand before him naked, with our soul exposed.

What I'm arguing for in respect of money, is that we must expose ourselves to it in this way. I'm saying that intellectual understanding is good. That emotional, visceral, aesthetic, and even a sexual understanding of money, are all good. But our understanding of money will forever fall short until we can experience its sacred nature in a spiritual way.

I know that might sound totally alien. Even sacrilegious. But monetary reform - and by that I mean real monetary reform not just tinkering with currency - is about our relationship, both mundane and profound, with money. A change in ourselves will reflect in money, and we will see that change reflect back to us.

Burn it !

Money Wisdom #311

2 PEOPLE, 2 COMMENTS

Moaning

19 November 2014 2:02am

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I've never known what to think about that million quid stunt. if I remember rightly I think it was Drummond who was interviewed in the guardian not long after when they did that post-burn tour, something like 'is it art? is it bollocks?' like they didn't really have a clue themselves. The same arguments reactions and debates raged as now and the indignation of how could they, or what they should have done with the money. But that article really stuck with me, the timeline of events, how the bank didn't want them to draw the cash out and how it tried to make them insure the cash but they wouldn't. The solicitor or witness or whoever it was who was present with them at the burning in some derelict cottage in the outer hebrides I think it was. And how it was all over so quickly, and the emptyness after the flames went out, and the ash in the old fireplace. I told my daughter about it not long ago and she just went wide eyed and said 'wow', and we didn't talk about it any further. The conversation just petered out. I'm sort of glad they did it I suppose. It doesn't fit with logic. Just an event that has no ryhme or reason, but they did it. It was just an act that was carried out, and depending how you look at it create certain reactions. But it still leaves me scratching my head. It would make a great film with no music.

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  JDHUK Moaning
  

  19 November 2014 3:06am

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  It is a film without music.
  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114897/
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Comments on Bill Drummond the five lessons I learned from Ken Campbell 18/11/2014 in the Guardian

Money Wisdom #310

"It is no longer sufficient to oppose will and matter, representation and production, being and becoming, the one and the many, transcendence and immanence, for the relations between these dualisms are always mediated by a spectral power that authorizes their realization. It is a question of belief and desire. Even if no-one really wants money - it is always a means, never an end - everyone believes in money, or, rather, money is the reality, the interiority of belief and desire in which we dwell. It is not we who desire money; it is money that desires us."

Philip Goodchild Theology of Money (2009) p.69

Money Wisdom #309

Money... ....reconstitutes the social order as an order of interdependence, desire, and credit, it is that which is the supreme principle of reality. In a market society, there is no higher aim than making money, for money is the reality principle. Within a market society there is an unlimited demand for profits. This power of realization and this demand are purely social forces, subsisting outside the human will in society itself. It is an impersonal and abstract force, beyond the pleasure principle. Indeed, as the means of access to pleasure, the means of making desire effective, money must be acquired through profits or hoarding. One passes through that which has no intrinsic desirability - the acquisition of money - to gain access to pleasure. This is the profound link between capitalism and the structure of the Oedipus complex.

Philip Goodchild Theology of Money (2009) p.62

Money Wisdom #308

In the last instance, representation rests on a utopian faith. Modern values are supported not by nature or reason but by nothing less than a secular theology, Theological questions may be reintroduced as soon as one places representation - that which abstracts from time - back within time. Saving time forms the essence of the modern project of emancipation. Only when one is liberated from the constraints of natural necessity that may foreshorten our life spans, and one is liberated from the constraints of social obligation that occupy our time, does one have the freedom to become what one wishes to be, The aspiration is for a condition of atheism where on is finally unconditioned by God or nature. Economic rationality depends on a symbolization of time so that a calculation can be performed that minimizes relative expenditure while maximizing control over nature through technology and maximizing control over social obligation through money. The certainty that attaches to economic rationality derives from its proofs in practice: technological invention and acquisition of wealth.  Yet the knowledge power and wealth acquired are always local and partial. Projecting a future when liberation will be complete, economic reasoning is faith seeking understanding. In this total future, abstract symbols of time will effectively represent time as open, empty, and undetermined in a glorious, heavenly future where the passage of time is no longer constrained by natural necessity or social obligation. Trust in the transcendent will vanish only when one finally attains the complete repeatability and universality required for scientific certainty, and when all knowledge is grounded on evidence. Only as such will the secular sphere be constituted, the sphere of the present age untrammeled by obligation to repeat the past or anxious expectation of the judgments of the future, where all causes are mediated to their consequence by knowledge.

Philip Goodchild Theology of Money (2009) p.53-54

Money Wisdom #307

"Democracy is corrupted at the origin because it subscribes to an impossible ideal.
      Similarly, the political ideal of freedom echoes modern humanism. It is a freedom from public representation of divine command or the scared common good; it is freedom to determine one's own will by entering into contracts in the marketplace; and it is freedom to master a portion of nature or dispose of one's property as one pleases. Lacking public representations or manifestations of a common good, free and open debate must necessarily settle on such individual freedom as its lowest common denominator.Once guarding against threats to the individual or property becomes the essence of the common good, then manipulation of fear becomes the pre-eminent tool of governance, and absolute rule by the state may be sanctioned to defend against an emergency. Yet this very perception of the primacy of threat and consequent absolutism derives not from taking freedom and property as ontological points of departure. Instead, the positing of freedom and property as a basis derives from the mechanisms of representation and discussion themselves. For freedom and property alone have universal appeal to immediate interests."

Philip Goodchild Theology of Money (2009) p.53

Money is as Innocent as the Gun by Geoff Winde

This is so brilliant I just had to give it its own post.

It's a thirty minute talking head performance of a poem about money. Now. If you're anything like me, even with my obvious interest in money, you'll be thinking, yeah, but thirty minutes. Of poetry. I can manage Under Milk Wood, but I dunno. Thirty minutes is long.

But trust me. This is absolutely brilliant. All the themes and features of money I've been discussing on this blog these past few years are in there. Even the golden shower thing.

And everything about the performance resonates too. From the less-than-sartorial-elegance of Geoff's attire to the yellow/gold walls. It all works. If you're prepared to let it.

30 minutes.

I offer you a full money back guarantee should you not be entirely satisfied.

 

Money is as Innocent as the Gun from moneyisasinnocentasthegun on Vimeo.

Geoff's site is moneyisasinnocentasthegun.com

Here's a few extracts
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minted?

Have you ever heard, such a smoke screen of a word,

for something that’s just printed?

Well, if money is just printed, just a print!

Then deep down, deep down we’re all skint.

________________

money is not worth the paper it’s printed on,

hold on, that’s a bit strong,

Money is worth more than the paper it’s printed on,

wait a minute that sounds like a con,

Money is worth more and less than the paper its printed on,

Hold on that’s a contradiction,

but, money is worth more and less than the papers it’s printed on …

How can what something is worth, be more and less than what it is?

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Money is … more … or … less … money! more or less,

money is more or less money, more or less,
The more money there is, the less money is, the less the numbers are worth,
The less money there is, the more money is, the more the numbers are worth,
It realy does make you wonder whether money is of this earth

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But don't read! Listen and watch.