this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2025
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I personally suspect that the belief that money is real is problematic, psychologically.
There are all sorts of experiments that show we treat money in our minds differently from most other things.
A famous example is that many people would think nothing of taking a ten cent pen from work, but would be abhorred at the idea of taking money, even ten cents, from petty cash and just keeping it.
An experiment has shown that, if you give people the chance to cheat for money, or to cheat for tokens that can be immediately exchanged for money after the experiment, they will cheat more for tokens, despite the fact that at that point, the tokens are technically a type of money.
So, this sort of thing makes me suspect that beliefs about money also influence our ethics and our mental proclivities. So maybe people who believe money is more real are more likely to hoard it or to have gambling problems.
If I steal a cheap pen, it's because I wanted a cheap pen. There's no deeper meaning to it. I'm not going to fence it for a fifteenth of a baguette at the bakery.
If I steal ten cents though, I break a much deeper taboo because money is by definition fungible. Why do I need the money, what am I going to use it for, and why didn't I empty the cash register while I was at it? These are all worryingly open questions.
Furthermore I reject the premise that stealing 10 cents is functionally equivalent to stealing a pen worth 10 cents; if anything, the premise that these are equivalent depends on a very debatable modern consumerist idea that commodities are perfectly interchangeable for money and/or the belief in a "rational actor" that has never existed outside of economics classes. Sure that may have been be valid if I was in charge of doing a bulk purchase of pens (and even then people aren't as rational as economists would like but I digress). These economics concepts are all too theoretical to apply to individual actors in everyday life.
That pen is "worthless" to my employer (at least in my mind) and simultaneously worth a lot to me; I wouldn't part with it for 10 cents or even 1 euro because that wouldn't be worth the inconvenience of not having a pen, or simply because the idea of someone wanting to buy something I own and didn't intend to sell is offensive to me.
I do agree with the basic premise that we treat money as special, but to me that's a natural and rational consequence of its fungible and abstract nature. It's much weirder to consider physical objects to be fungible IMO (even if it makes sense on an abstract level for commodities), and that's why the sentence "you'll own nothing and be happy" induces so much existential dread despite being based on theoretically sound economic principles. I don't care if it's actually cheaper or more resource efficient, I'm not buying a subscription to my woodworking tools or selling my house. I like the psychological safety of owning things.
That part about rationality is huge. Far too many people believe that something costs an amount because it is worth that amount, and far too many people believe that something “is worth what someone will pay for it” while neglecting concepts like advertising and propoganda. So many things in this world cost far more than they should and wages are getting, relatively speaking, lower each year while those aforementioned costs rise and where’s the rationality in that? And all while people use that same belief to justify to themselves why a billionaire has “earned” their hoard.
It’s our biggest flaw, economically speaking and in my opinion, that we judge someone based on the money they have and not how they may have gained or lost it. A parasite with millions “must be pretty smart” and a hard worker out of a job “must just be lazy”.
I've never heard people say that someone with money must be pretty smart.
Is that something American?
I don’t know where you’re from but yes, Canadian and American conservatives at the very least are positive that if you don’t have money it’s because of your deliberate choice to make stupid decisions and if you have money it’s because you earned it. Generational wealth is a foreign concept to them and they detest the idea that maybe “unskilled” service jobs should also get a living wage. When they themselves don’t have much money though it’s because of taxes or woke-ism and also they’re smart for living out in the country where things are cheaper despite those places being cultureless hell-holes far from people’s families and friends.
It’s a way to justify their hatred toward poorer people and to not have to address the fact that maybe these rich people, including their own bosses, are taking them for a ride. Those comments pop up whenever someone who actually has a spine stands up for themselves and demands fair pay, probably because they hate themselves for being boot-licking cowards unable to do the same, but sometimes also because they make money for just being lucky that they had an interest in [high-paying field] and believe that actually they’re uniquely smart.
It’s fucking tiring.
From the movie 'The Magic Christian.'
Billionaire puts a swimming pool full of manure, blood, and other offal in the middle of the London financial district.
See what happens.
https://youtu.be/3Xg2v_T2XH8
If you don’t want to click it, he spray paints “ free money “ on the side of the swimming pool, and then begins to put stacks of money in the disgusting pool and the financial business man in their suits still choose to wade through the muck for the money.
Who wouldn't want to see a bunch of rich guys debase themselves?