by Flemming Funch
Money can be a very useful thing. Its original purpose was probably to facilitate exchange. It allows you to trade things even when what you have to trade with doesn't match exactly what somebody else has to trade with. You know, you have an extra ox, but need eggs. The person who has extra eggs needs to have his roof fixed, etc. A monetary currency allows you to make an exchange, even if your items don't quite match. That assumes of course that you somehow have managed to have some money ready for when you need something. And there are various hidden issues and problems with the type of money we happen to use (fiat currency created by privately owned banks and lent out for interest). But the point I want to focus on is how the use of money tends to break down networks and communities.
The thing is that with money the buyer and seller don't have to know each other, don't have to know anything about each other, don't have to like each other, and don't really have to be happy with the transaction, as long as it goes through.
If I want to buy a donut, I can go into any donut store and tell them to give me donut, and they tell me "50 cents!". That's at first glance a real good thing, as it makes it easier to find and acquire the donut I want. But it also means that I'm quite likely to pick a donut store without knowing anything about it, other than that it is close and that it sells donuts. The clerk in the store might be a rude jerk, or he might think I am. Doesn't matter much, he'll probably still sell me the donut. Maybe he spit in the dough or dropped dishwashing liquid in it when he was making it, I don't know. Maybe I will think it tastes funny, but I probably won't do anything about it. The transaction happened and he got his money.
My ideal would be that I do business primarily with people I either already know, or that are recommended by people who's opinion I respect. I.e. a positive past history is important. And a positive future history is important, because I would recommend the service to my friends, or I would warn my friends against it. So, when I'm looking for something, I'd want look amongst my friends first.
If there were no "neutral" exchange medium such as money, I'd have to do it that way. If I couldn't find somebody to deliver a certain service or good amongst my friends, and those my friends would know, I'd be out of luck. And if there were only one person who could deliver the service amongst my associates, I'd have to accept it from them, whether it was of high quality or not.
So, I'm looking for something sort of in-between the local tribal community where you know everybody, and the wide open marketplace where you mostly don't know anybody.
Some of that is naturally developing in the current Internet world. There are trends towards customers wanting to talk with each other. Many people will now, before buying anything, go to an online community or information database and see what other people's experiences have been with that product or a certain vendor. Documents like the "Cluetrain Manifesto" are trying to wake the world (particularly corporations) up to the fact that this is the way things are headed.
But the nature of our money is sort of pulling things in the other directions. If you have enough money you don't have to be nice to anybody, and you don't have to maintain a network of friends. You can buy stuff from just anybody, and you can do it while being completely obnoxious to them, and they'll still give you the item and thank you, particularly if it is a high priced item. And if you're the vendor and you have managed to fight yourself up to having a monopoly, i.e. people have to give you their money, you don't have to be nice to anybody either, because there's nowhere else to go.
So, I will claim that money is an anti-networking agent. But I also think that money will eventually have to transform into something else, because we're increasingly insisting on something that the neutrality of money doesn't help us with. We're increasinly becoming aware of that $10 doesn't buy the same thing in different places, and there are some things we can't buy for money. There's an information and relationship structure that is increasingly more important than money.
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