Sunday 24 September 2006

Pic of the day: Sometimes, in brief glimpses, a human can see that someone else beside themselves can be equally valuable. Usually it doesn't last, though, because it is not founded on true insight.

The final fate of money

Let me preface this by saying that I am at least in part an economist.  I can hardly claim it as a career these days, as I mainly do user support on computer systems, but I am still interested in the subject. At the same time, as I have tried to put life in perspective, I have increasingly been thinking about the future of humanity as a whole. I believe that we may be facing a profound change, the like of which we have not seen since the Ice Age, where culture suddenly exploded onto the scene in the form of art, religion and invention. Do these two interests have any connection whatsoever? I think so. I think the next step in human development will do away with money as we know it, completely and forever.

As I mentioned yesterday, money has gradually changed over time. From being purely physical objects, pieces of gold or silver or copper, the coins became symbols, until today they are mostly numbers within a computer. Money is increasingly just an abstract unit of measure, like centimeters or decibel, but for value rather than physical properties. In a manner of speaking, money is getting more spiritual... it is undergoing a transition from pure matter to pure thought.

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With the next change in humankind, I believe that we will become fully self-aware, and at the same time fully aware that each of us is no greater or more valuable than anybody else, at least by default. Realism, if we were capable of such a thing, would tell us this. But our instincts tell us that "I", this body, this particular blend of memories, is the most important thing in the universe. In brief glimpses we may see someone else as more important, usually our children if any, occasionally their mother if one is a man. That's pretty much it. The genes still reign, like they did in the apes, in the first mammals, in the reptiles and amphibians and fish and slugs. We are able to observe our instincts, but there are limits to how much we can modify them. These limits must fall, or our species does. But what does this have to do with money?

Everything. You may have noticed that I used the word "valuable" in the previous paragraph, and "value" in the one before that. We are gradually extending the use of money to describe the value of more and more things. Ecologists now encourage putting into numbers the value of clean ear and water, green forests, or the benefits of keeping species alive. In the past we have refused to do such, saying that some values cannot be described in terms of money. This has been true, but it has also been true that whenever these "indefinite" values collided with monetary values, the money won out. Now, bit by bit, we start to assign values to more and more such things. And while this may seem to cheapen that which we put a price on, it also has the opposite effect: To make money even more abstract and generic.

In the end, money will cease to be money. It will be a generic value system, an agreed-on but fluid standard. The last thing that will be assigned a value will probably be the ego itself, the individual life. At some point, we will have to accept the terrible truth, that my unique life has a finite value when compared with all other things in the world. This is worthless if that value is set by experts or by some kind of referendum. It must be agreed on by each person. We must accept, agree as a natural thing, that my life does not have infinite value. This, I think, is the last hurdle. If we manage to get past it, then the next transition will fall into place. We will start to employ our skills where they make the most use, even if that use is for someone else rather than our body and our genes. A few people have done so before, but very few. When everyone does it, as a matter of course, we will begin to cooperate seamlessly.

At that point, money as we know it today loses all meaning. Money was an instrument of barter, a way for the colliding egos to perform an exchange without having infinite trust in each other. But there will be no need for barter when the simple knowledge of need is enough to move us to action.

Seen in this perspective, today's economy is a halfway step from our roots to that future. Look at yourself going to the supermarket. You do not need to know and trust the people who work in the supermarket – they trust your money and it is enough. The money represents an agreement: Even if you don't write and sign a contract when you buy a cartload of food, it is a perfectly legal transaction. Simply by paying you have completed a transaction; the trust is implicit. In money we trust, not in each other, but in the agreed-upon standard of values.

In the future, we will not need to know everybody to trust everybody, and for them to trust us. The tokens of trust, already today reduced to electronic signals, will fall away completely or be internalized in the mind as pure thought. This is the paradise of communism, where everyone gives according to their ability and receives according to their need. Today this cannot work, because we cannot agree on our ability and our need. Each of us honestly perceives ourselves to have infinite need! This is because our instincts still have the power to make us believe that. But their power is fading. The power of money is rising. This may sound like a bad thing, but it is not. Or not exactly.

We have to find ways to agree on the values, and this will require something other than economics. It will require enlightenment. In this regard, we will still have to choose "God" over "Mammon", because a purely materialist view will always favor the selfish gene. We have to literally love our neighbor as ourselves, which today is all but impossible. How could we, as long as we insist that my personal body and genes have infinite value? Obviously when there are finite resources, this equation cannot be solved. We have to accept humility, the subset of realism that says that I am not the center of the universe. This is really hard, take my word for it if you have never tried. But once it is done, it becomes possible to give everything its correct value in our mind.

The final fate of money, then, is the final fate of mankind. Both the money and we have to complete our transition from pure matter to pure spirit. As a pure measurement, money will have no power over us, just like gallons or seconds have no power over us. They are units of information, but they cause us to act on the knowledge they express. The same will be true for money, only more so, since value is such a central concept in so many decisions.

With the next upgrade of humanity, money will cease to exist.  Not by return to a pre-monetary form of life, but by completing its abstraction to become pure value. It will complete its transformation from matter to spirit. And so will we.