The Ethics of Money (a response to Meno's post entitled "The Morality of Money")

Helloo folks, and most especially meno,

I was writing a response to your article in the comments section and it got rather in depth. SO, i decided to post it as a separate blog right here. I hope it'll spark some more in depth dialogue between us, and between whoever else wants to comment. So without adieu... YARG!!!

I've got a document waiting to be written on this same topic, entitled "The Ethics of Interest-Bearing Debt Based Currency (IDBC). The idea being that any social structure or context defines certain behaviors as "good" since they are rewarded by the context, and other behaviors as "bad" since they are "punished" (for lack of a more accurate term) by that context. Let's see if i can scrape together a bit of mental capital to throw into the pond, and respond here with some systematic analysis...

"We can conclude that corruption, just like lying, was an evolved social adaptation that in some way or another gave those who became more adept at it a bigger advantage."

Yeah. It seems clear when i observe human behavior within various contexts that "gaming the system" is a natural part of human behavior. Some examples i've seen: speed skating, where skaters stick their foot out right before they cross the finish line; buffalo jumps, where indigenous people caused buffalo to stampede over cliffs rather than killing an individual buffalo like a wolf would; tactics of provocation, used to get people fighting amongst themselves in order to move their attention away from something one wishes to remain hidden. So "corruption" in those senses seems to be intrinsic to human nature. Of course, "honor" is also intrinsic.

"[The invention of money] Not only gave us sapiens a way to escape feudality, but it also gave birth to surplus."

We need more nuance here. If you read books like "1491" by Charles C. Mann, you start to understand that indigenous people were busily sculpting ecosystems in the Americas for thousands of years creating "surplus" or abundance by, for example, burning a grassland corridor from the midwest to the east coast for the buffalo to eat, and thereby increasing buffalo numbers across the continent. Another example: planting fruit and nut trees to such an extent that anthropologist's are now in general agreement that the "pristine natural woodlands" filled with American chestnut, hazelnut, pawpaw's etc were in fact managed orchard/ food forests sculpted by human hands for thousands of miles across the continent. So you might say that money didn't create SURPLUS, but rather it created SCARCITY in the sense of "the few and the many", taking the power of holding surplus, or the activity of "storing value", away from the land itself and putting it into the hands of some few people to whom the many people would have to go to for their sustenance, rather than going to the land itself for sustenance. That would be the ARISING of "feudality" not a way to escape from it.

"it's not difficult to think of a system where there is no exchange of currencies, of representative value, where harvesting more that you could consume would be pointless, since it would give our primitive ancestors absolutely no advantage."

Harvesting more than you can consume has an advantage in terms of "social capital", itself of great survival value. If you give your harvested "surplus" to your neighbors, since you cannot store it personally, and thereby create networks of gratitude, then when your neighbors have a surplus, and knowing that they cannot store it, they give it to you thereby propping you up when you do not have. That is a survival strategy which is promoted by a LACK of a representative store of value e.g. money, which begins to diminish as soon as money arises. An example of such activity is the "potlatch". From wikepedia: "A potlatch is a gift-giving feast practiced by indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of Canada and the United States, among whom it is traditionally THE PRIMARY ECONOMIC SYSTEM [emphasis mine]".

Pardon the CAPSLOCK. I'm actually not shouting at you, i just don't know how to format italics and whatnot. My intention is simply to have a stimulating "back and forth" with you wherein we both come to understand more than we had before. I've explored this conceptual territory many times for several years, and still do not have a complete grasp of it. Moving on...

"with the creation of currencies, even in their ancient representations like salt or sea shells,"

If by "seashells" you mean such things as "wampum" i think you will find, if you look a bit deeper into the history of it, that while wampum shared some characteristics of money, such as being a representation of an agreement made between people, its use as "money" per se was a result of interaction with European peoples which ultimately led to its relative extinction. It misleads our own intellect to hear about or see shells being "traded" in a completely different social, cultural, and "governmental" context i.e the Haudenosaunee confederacy (Iroquois), then to equate it with money as we mean and experience it, and then analyze it as such. The knowledge of whether OR NOT it is "money" per se, to be accurate knowledge, must arise from a study of the practice of wampum itself, apart from any preconceived notions of it being “money” as such.

"we all of the sudden had a system where surplus could be sold, those early transactions would give our ancestors the ability to secure sustenance in the future."

Yes, surplus could be SOLD for a SYMBOLIC return NOW, rather than being GIVEN for a promised, and often unspecified, LITERAL return LATER. This begins a change in values, in the human moral sense, conditioning us to value differently as an unforeseen side-effect of the use of money. Let’s see… For example, apart from a system of money, the quality of patience in ones economic dealings with others is close to a psychological necessity, and is rewarded by the social system of trade apart from money, because on the one hand, one is more likely to trade with someone who does not demand an immediate return for “gifts”, and on the other, one is more likely to give, and to see their own surplus’s AS gifts, when there is no incentive, no social mechanism (or less of one), for WITHHOLDING ones surplus in the first place, or for demanding an immediate return. Now we run into the pair of human values of appreciation and the joy of giving. Those values are some of what heart-felt social bonds are made of and “cascades upward” creating culture and governmental structure in their image to a certain extent. There is a marked difference between the solidarity and kinship feeling that such a system creates, and the feeling of “customers” and “business partners” created by a symbolic monetary system. Also, to continue the comparison, the value of “trust” apart from money, is given over to the person one gives to, or at the very least it is given over to ones cultural system of the gift itself, in the sense that we have trust or “faith” that we will be taken care of tomorrow for the generosity we show today. Whereas, in a symbolic monetary system, that very same value of trust, that quality called “faith” is given over instead to the symbol called “money.” IT then is what provides. Not ones neighbor, not ones culture, and not the earth itself. You see, those are examples of social, cultural, and ecological “capital” being turned into money; examples of some fundamental psychological causes of how and why that effect takes place, which can explain for example the birth and continued growth of the child and geriatric care industries. Used to be that you and your neighbors cared for the young and old out of necessity with the benefit of the strengthening of social bonds on the level of the heart. Today, in many places, a stranger does those things for profit. What cascading unintentional psychological effects does that have on a population? I would argue that the news is full of examples of actions arising from those very same psychological effects.

Now, did “those early transactions[...] give our ancestors the ability to secure sustenance in the future."? Yes, some of them, but only through the mechanism of withholding from others. That is, it traded COLLECTIVE abundance and scarcity for INDIVIDUAL abundance for some and scarcity for others, and furthermore, it did so by actually depleting the total amount of abundance that existed inherently as an ecological potential within the landbase. If that is doubted, just look to the extinction of species today which, as i understand it, has outpaced all prior extinction events in the history of the planet. Back to Wikipedia: "Potlatching was made illegal in Canada in 1884 in an amendment to the Indian Act,[20] largely at the urging of missionaries and government agents who considered it "a worse than useless custom" that was seen as wasteful, unproductive, and contrary to 'civilized values' of ACCUMULATION [emphasis mine]."

Moving on…

“...currency was born out of the necessity to manage surplus.”

Given the territory we’ve covered thus far i can say, with some confidence, that the above statement is false. To state my reasoning plainly: If there were a surplus of foodstuffs (let’s not say goods) in a given culture prior to the invention or utilization of money within that culture, and that surplus was managed through an economy of gift-giving or barter, then it’s logically impossible for currency to have been born out of a necessity to manage surplus. So that begs the question: what was currency born out of? I can only hazard a guess… Looks something like “rulership”… Too big a leap though i think… Somewhere in the intellectual neighborhood of a conceptual change from communal land stewardship of “territories” or landbases to “ownership” of “private property” i think, precipitated by neolithic (and degenerative it turns out) agricultural practices. That’s where it became increasingly possible for some to have, horde, and withhold, while others didn’t. Money then would seem to be the codification and pretextual legitimization of hording practices already taking place. Then, historically speaking, it takes up the function of trade where barter and gift-giving economics once served that function. It may be that defended granaries were the first banks and STORED grain the first thing deserving the title “money” in the sense of interest-bearing debt based currency (IDBC). Then arises “rulership” i think… Whew! I’ve strayed into intellectual territory that taxes my own conceptual ability to reason out correctly… Alright, leaving that in your court to bat back, and moving on…

“Money is intrinsically neither [...] moral or ethical”

Not sure this is so. Even a neutral store of value, which a society might approach with a completely fiat currency for instance, is encoding the idea that it is desirable to have a SYMBOLIC store of value; that it is GOOD for society to have one, and it would do that in most cases without examining the unforeseen consequences of having such a symbolic store of value. And an IDBC is by no means a NEUTRAL store of value. On the contrary, it’s one of the, if not the sole symbolic engine DRIVING growth; forcing growth in fact. Moreover, it rewards having, hording, withholding, and depleting, and punishes giving, renewing, or leaving things alone. An example by way of question: is there more money to be had in the stewardship of a forest, or in cutting a forest down? Every human system encodes values (at least all the ones i have personally analyzed do), in the human moral sense, because it rewards some behaviors while punishing others. It encodes such values, whether or not we know that it is doing so, as a side-effect. That is largely what psychological “conditioning” or “socialization” is made of, and it is in part why a person who looses their house for example may feel shame, then further shame for “asking for a handout” from ones family, or society in general. And many of them do. See, those feelings of shame have systemic economic causes, while having as well psychological causes, historic causes etc… Or take a school grading system from “A” to “F”. The basic set-up in many of them is that, largely speaking, if you listen to your teacher, read the books you are told to read, and take notes, then when the test comes, and you have memorized what you read or were told, you spit it back out and you get an “A” if you spit it out as accurately as it was “spit into” you. But if you spit it out completely inaccurately, then you get an “F”. What’s remarkable is that you get the “F” or the “A” even if the book or teacher is WRONG. That system is encoding values: “A” good, “F” bad; memorizing answers good, forgetting bad; listening to authority good, not listening bad (Oh!); memorizing good, thinking for yourself bad (Uh Oh!); knowledge as memorization correct, knowledge as systematic thought (which may not lead to the answer you’re supposed to have) bad (Oooow!); learning what you are told to learn good, learning what you want to learn bad (Oh shit!). An analysis of that system goes a long way in explaining why people rarely think systematically for themselves; why we often accept political sloganizing hook, line, and sinker; why there is so much general malaise in our cultures. We are literally being trained to ignore our own inborn interests! A human made system encodes values, in the human moral sense, whether or not we know that it is doing it.

“Why is everyone confused? I think the answer is somewhat scary. People are confused by design, because it serves the corrupted systems in the best way possible. That being said, I'm not fully aware of how does one begin to educate people into realizing the cognitive inconsistency in their thinking and that is the part of the puzzle that is not obvious to anyone.”

And now, you and i, delightfully meet about the middle! Roughly. In part i think that it doesn’t matter whether our confusion is a side-effect of our human made systems or affected by conspiratorial design, since we’re in the bind of confusion in either case. There probably is conspiracy to keep us confused in some instances, and in others the confusion is side-effect. But if we turn our heads towards the problem of our confusion we can understand and even predict the consequences that systems may have and are having upon us. Even steem has unforeseen consequences since it rewards some behaviors and punishes others and to a certain extent doesn’t know it’s doing that. I mean, look at all the bots that have more steem than either of us. The bots don’t care if you or i write good content, they ride on the coattails of popularity. Also steem as a platform, incentivizes popularity as such, as well as marketing oneself, rather than incentivizing stimulating content per se. Not sure how steem as an organization might do that, but SIDE-EFFECTS happen. Don’t have to be planned. What’s the psychological effect of monetizing popularity as such? On and on i could go. Where in all of society is there incentive of any kind for “realizing the cognitive inconsistency in [our] thinking”? And how much incentive does society give in any form for REMAINING ignorant of inconsistencies? I mean those as real questions to you, or anybody else reading this. I don’t myself know the answers to those questions off the top of my head, but i’d love it if you batted that one back to me after chewing on it a bit.

“At least one thing I can conclude with conviction. There is nothing intrinsically moral or ethical about money, the attempt to create sound money is fundamental to equalizing the system, cleaning out the economy as to eliminate authoritarian corruption. And if fingers have to be pointed, they should be pointed in the right direction, towards the corrupt "capitalist" governments who edified a game with two sets of rules, a strict one for us, and a conveniently flexible one for them.”

Right, right, and sort-of right! The effect that any monetary system will have depends on what that monetary system is based on. An IDBC, based on interest-bearing debt, going along rewarding, and indeed DEMANDING having, hording, whithholding, developing, exploiting, and growing is going to have certain effects whether foreseen or not. Another monetary system say based on regenerating degraded ecosystems, or taking care of ones own young and old people, is going to have other very different consequences whether foreseen or not. So you are right in my view when you say "There is nothing intrinsically moral or ethical about money". But money, any money, any system WILL and DOES encode values, morals, ethics. Charles Eisenstein discusses all of these issues in his books. One of which is "Sacred Economics". Worth the read, although in it's technicality it's a bit over my head. There's also his "The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible" which is much less technical.

I think it comes down to questions like these: Am i a student, steward, and dependent primarily of human made systems, or a steward, student, and dependent of the more than human lifeworld of which i’m a part? Is (insert specific human made system) this system dependent upon and engaged in stewardship of primarily human made systems, whether itself or others, or dependent upon and engaged in stewardship of the more than human lifeworld of which it’s a part?