Why Money Matters

I’ve been thinking about this panel for a few days. Four speakers: Pavlina Tcherneva, Philip Harvey, Rohan Grey, Darrick Hamilton each give insightful and distinct presentations. If you like what I say here, please take the time to listen to the panel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijSUfh33yO8&t=4525s

A monetary system attempts to solve the problem of how we get other people to work to accommodate us.

The government gets people to deliver public goods, e.g., roads and schools and police batons, by imposing debts and liabilities (taxes, fees, and fines) that can only be paid out in money, with the government being the sole issuer of money.

Citizens Together: “We need a school.”
Government Authority: “Let me go shake down some people to build it.”

Next day

Government Authority: “Give me money or go to jail.”
Citizen: “Okay. How do I earn money?”
Government Authority: “I’ll give you way more than enough money if you build this school.”
Citizen: “Cool. I’ll be able to use the extra money to go to the movies.”
Government Authority: “Whatever floats your boat. I just need a school.”
Citizen: Sweet.
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This isn’t oppression because the citizen has contributed through political action in forming her government’s demands. Now she contributes in private action in provisioning those demands.

Money in civil society is used to the same way. We need people to work in provisioning goods for other people, so we create the need for money, which forces people to work for other people.

This is fine because this work is in provisioning goods for civil society. It’s good for the entire community that there is a Kroger with stocked shelves, so we need to create a world where people need money in order to provision themselves, and Kroger is in a position to offer them money to stock shelves.

I’ll accommodate myself to you because I need your money, and this is legitimized because the government regulates money. This is how the government renders objective system of needs satisfaction through the desire for money.

Money serves as objective object of desire, as opposed to subjective objects of desire, for example, my desire for chocolate ice cream rather than vanilla.

This is where race and gender make things interesting.

What if I can get provisions without offering money? Instead of opting to get people to accommodate and provision me through their objective desire for my money, rendered objective and codified by the public authority within which we all participate, what if instead I trade on theirvsubjective desires?

For example, let’s take looks. We all know people who are so attractive that other people just give them things. If they need goods or services, other people give them goods or services. If they need money, other people give them money. But it’s not based on any objectively codified desire, it’s based subjective feelings, which are a fundamentally unstable way to secure provisions. But very effective. However, you can do rather well in America on looks. But if your entire life in America is based on trading on people’s subjective desire for you, you are going to have a distorted view of justice and its institutions, and the market. You’ll think cops always let people off with a warning instead of a ticket.

On the other side, your entire life can also be distorted by people treating your money as is it is inferior, for example, the need for a Green Book is an example of White people not wanting Black people’s money. In this way, Black money is worth less than White money, although money is supposed to be an objective unit of desire satisfaction.

What’s the take away? Well, we have to think about the legitimate and illegitimate uses of money’s ability to force other people to accommodate/provide provisions/labor for us to fulfill the needs and liabilities imposed on us.

It’s okay that we need money in order to function in America. It’s not okay that we generalize the need for money, but then restrict the supply of ways to earn money. This is why we need a Federal Job Guarantee. We need the Demand for money in order to drive the labor that provisions the community in real goods and service, but we restrict the supply of ways to earn money.

Also, we can’t just give everyone a check because the whole goal of money is as a mechanism to induce people to provide the provisions in the public and private sector that enable us to do anything. We can’t have parks without groundskeepers, and we can’t have supermarkets without people to stock the shelves. And the monetary system is the way that we objectively induce people into this labor, but in order to induce people into this labor, they need to create a world where they can’t function without money.