Its little more than a symbol of capitalist oppression. In a sense its all fake, the entire monetary system is entirely designed to pretend that a small group of elites who do not work create value.
this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2025
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It's as real as everyone is willing to pretend.
The original network effect, bitches.
If money isn't real, then nothing is real, because money can buy you anything. Maybe not a good lesson for a 4 year old but that doesn't make it untrue.
Money isn't real but the idea everyone agrees on subconsciously is it is a medium of exchange.
You have a goat and I have 50 apples. You want my apples but I don't want your goat. OK. Bye bye, good luck finding the next customer.
Or
Sell the goat for the value of 50 apples, and then I can turn that into the new lamp I wanted instead.
Not everyone wants a goat but if you can float the value of something as an IOU (cash) then it's useful.
Same reason why people like crypto, it's the idea of cash but with math securing it's scarcity vs guns and vaults of gold.
You have a goat and I have 50 apples. You want my apples but I don’t want your goat. OK. Bye bye, good luck finding the next customer.
In the real world:
Ok, I'll let you have my apples, but you owe me.
Or
You want some apples? Sure, have some!
The world operated on debt and gifts for a long time before monetary systems were common. Debt was sometimes formal, sometimes informal. Gifts were sometimes pure acts of generosity, sometimes they were rituals.
Maybe that worked when you knew everyone in town or that they'd be where you can find them again, but not in a global economy. You can't lend Joe Random 3 goats and he will pay you back if he simply is in another country doing business or is in town for the weekend. Try getting in your car and telling a random shop you don't have cash but you'll pay them back. This logic goes out the window as soon as you involve strangers.
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Fiat currency is as real as the law (and all the baggage and corruption that entails).
Crypto is "Trust me, bro! I keep a spreadsheet in the cloud!"
We'll all be using bottle caps soon enough.
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It’s as real as a word is.
The only reason we pretend that money is real is because of the Chinese having a big brain idea that it's more convenient to trade conceptual values, than having to exchange literal five chickens for one cow; one and a half cow for a table; and a table for a room in an inn for one night.
We also pretend it's real because that's simpler that treating it as a useful fantasy or whatever.
That's a danger of too much pretending.
Boff