How Money Forever Changed Us
How Money Forever Changed Us
June 24, 2020 by Lawrence Yeo
During my six years of elementary school, many fads came and went. But there was one fad I remember that not only took our school by storm, but schools all across the country as well. It grew so feverish that after a few months, schools had to actually ban this activity because too many students were getting obsessed with it. If you were an ‘80s or ‘90s kid, chances are you’ll remember it too. I’m referring to the infamous world of pogs:
It’s interesting how money is accepted as an inevitable force in our lives, yet when we take out the concept and wrap it in unfamiliar packaging, it seems weird and dumb.
To the school staff, the whole pogs phenomenon probably seemed silly because they couldn’t understand what could be so compelling about flipping over paper and metal discs. But they wouldn’t think twice at the thought of coming into an office everyday, flipping over documents, and depositing a bi-weekly paper check in a metal machine.
In essence, the kids were doing the same thing the adults were doing: they were accumulating value in the form of a communal good. But because it took the form of something unrecognizable, it was considered dumb rather than profound. In the eyes of the adults, pogs were shittily constructed paper discs that had no intrinsic value, and only held importance because the kids themselves thought they were.
Well, those kids could say the same thing about the way we regard our own currency as well.
The most fascinating thing about the pogs phenomenon is how closely it mirrors the story of money, and how that concept naturally manifested in children.
On one side you have paper, aluminum, and plastic discs that have no inherent value – they can’t be eaten, worn, or slept on. On their own, they’re useless. On the other side you have paper bills, metal coins, and digits on a screen that can’t be used as ends in themselves either. They’re just as useless.
Yet in both scenarios, a united story emerged that turned an intrinsically useless thing into the distributor of status, value, and prestige.
How in the world does this happen?
How does something with no intrinsic value become the universal determinant of value? And what are the implications this has on human behavior as a whole?
Discussions of money usually come with the implicit understanding that money is valuable, so they revolve around how one could accumulate more of it, or why it introduces all kinds of strange behaviors. But in this post, we’re going to take one step back and actually look at the concept of money itself: why we need it to represent value, how it impacts our goals, and how it reconstructs our idea of individuality.
This is a dive into the philosophy of money. It’s a look into humanity’s greatest idea, its greatest paradox, and the story that forever changed human behavior. Let’s begin.
Money and The Great Abstraction
Everything starts with the fact that money has no intrinsic value.
To continue reading, please go to the original article here: