Ritual and Administration

Happy New Year!

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. 

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. 

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. 

Money Wisdom #500

"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.

[...]

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.

[...]

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?

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.

[...]

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.

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.

Lana Swartz 'Bitcoin As A Meme And A Future'

in Noema (2021) (link)

Money Wisdom #499

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: 

“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). 

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.

Tony Lawson Money’s relation to debt: Some problems with MMT’s conception of money (2019)

Real-world Economics Review, issue no. 89

Money Wisdom #498

"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."

Tony Lawson The Constitution and Nature of Money 

in Cambridge Journal of Economics (2018) 42, 851–873

MoneyWisdom #497

 "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."

Devin Singh Divine Currency (2018) p.206

MoneyWisdom #496

 "...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."

Devin Singh Divine Currency (2018) p.183

MoneyWisdom #495

 "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."

S. Herbert Frankel Money: Two Philosophies - The Conflict of Trust and Authority (1977) p.25

MoneyWisdom #494

 "Counterintuitive as it may seem, to receive money from the sovereign issuing center is to receive a burden, a token of obligation. Reflecting on various historical instances of taxation, Alfred Mitchell Innes observes:

Every time a coin or certificate is issued a solemn obligation is laid on the people of the country. A credit on the public treasury is opened, a public debt incurred. It is true that a coin does not purport to convey an obligation, there is no law which imposes an obligation, and the fact is not generally recognized. It is nevertheless the simple truth. A credit, it cannot be too often or too emphatically stated, is the right to 'satisfaction.' This right depends on no statute, but on common or customary law. It is inherent in the very nature of credit throughout the world.

The issuance of currency betrays the imposition of debt by a governing power. The burden is shared and passed around to all of the governed, who labor and exchange under the mark of the king. Recognition is given that the power center has rightful claim to determine the weights and measures for transaction, and tacit thanks and honor are rendered to the one whose image is on the circulating tokens. Like Gregory of Nyssa, Innes asserts that the right or justice on monetary obligation needs no external law or statute. It is justice unto itself. In this case, it is right and just that the one who oversees economy, the one whose image makes possible transaction and resource allocation, should be the ultimate destination of value that is returned through the praises of tribute, tithe and taxes."

Devin Singh Divine Currency (2018) p.182

quoting Alfred Mitchell Innes The Credit Theory of Money in The Bank Law Journal (1914) p160-161 

MoneyWisdom #493

"The presence of ransom motifs in many of the patristic accounts [Aulén] summarizes is not happenstance, and these narratives do not merely tell an ancillary tale of divine concern in the midst of victory over the devil. Rather, they fit completely within and function as a central conceptual mechanism for such a story of God's triumph over opposing powers. 

This dynamic of conquest is crucial to recognize because tales of ransom, redemption and sacrifice are often told simply as gestures of divine love and compassion. From humanity's perspective, they certainly are this, but they also serve as so much more. An interpretive framework informed by monetary economy helps to reveal that ransom tales fit into and substantiate claims of divine reign and government. Ransome theory shows the inner workings of the divine oikonomia as it overcomes opposition and moves forward its governance of creation and management of redemption. [...] If ransom is simply told as a tale of divine benevolence without attending to the details of economic struggle at its center, this is analogous, for instance, to endorsing governmental programs in the name of the benefit they purportedly offer the governed without considering the forms of institutionalized, economic violence they might contain."

Devin Singh Divine Currency (2018) p.173 

MoneyWisdom #492

 "...for Plato, money is not simply another vice among others but is 'the chief instrument for the gratification of such desires' (Plato, Republic IX.580e). Thus the question of limits and boundlessness with regard to desire in Greek thought often relates to the anxieties around money. Developing Plato, Aristotle claims that the principle threat of money is precisely its capacity to fuel unlimited desire (Aristotle , Politics I:2256-58) Use of money to procure goods to satisfy finite needs is legitimate and, as such, permitted within oikonomia, but unlimited accumulation (chrematistike) of money is illegitimate or unnatural. Partaking of the order not of need but of desire, which knows no bounds, money directly indexes desire, for 'in this art of wealth-getting there is no limit of the end' (Aristotle, Politics I:1257). What is more, as Aristotle observes, money is unique in its capacity as a universal equivalent to define the values of all other goods and pursuits. Money is of a different order and functions as a potential governing framework, both in the register of desire and rational capacity to assess what is good. These monetarily inflected concerns about desire that stem from philosophical critiques of money lurk in the background and make themselves felt in Gregory's ensuing description of satanic entrapment and liberation.

Having recounted both the changeable nature of humankind as well as the potential for deceptive appearances, Gregory proceeds to build a case for the presence of justice in humanity's plight:

[...] the mind, being cheated of its desire for that which is really good, was carried away to what is unreal through the deception of the counsellor and inventor of evil, by having been persuaded that that truly is beautiful, which is the opposite of beautiful. For his guile would have been ineffectual, had not the semblance of the good been spread upon the hook of evil like a bait.

The devil made use of the potential both for malleable human nature to be 'carried away' and for appearances to deceive. Gregory here introduces his famous 'fishhook' and 'bait' metaphor to describe the process. Humanity was lured into a snare just as a fish is led to bite a hook: because the trap was made appealing. 

Despite this deceit, Gregory holds humanity to account: 'Man then was freely involved in this disaster; he had yoked himself to the enemy of life through pleasure'. Driven by desire, humankind opted for bondage and slavery. Humanity is responsible for choosing, just as a fish is responsible for biting the bait. It does not matter that the bait is a deceit. To bite is a free choice, an act without coercion. Mutable humankind followed its own inordinate desires and, failing to distinguish between surface appeal and the true depth of beauty, chased an empty reflection. In doing so, it lost what it already had as gifts of divine grace. The consequences are therefore just. As there is a logic and order to redemption, there is a logic and order to the initial process of enslavement. God's fair measures to counteract this tyranny will match in inverse fashion the steps taken to bind humanity'. 

Devin Singh Divine Currency (2018) p.153