Money

A friend's recent fascination with cryptocurrency has me thinking about money, real money. What is money, really?

This is a photo of real money. I know it is real money, because my buddy Wes found it there, in the bottom of the hopper, coated with a film of trash-slurry. At Wes' house there is a strict rule that nothing from the trash comes into the house. An exception was made for this item, however. So we know it's real.

We will never find cryptocurrency in the slurry. We find lots of coins, but will never come across a Bitcoin. I wish we could, since one "coin" is apparently worth several thousand dollars. Bitcoins cannot be tossed, flipped, or found. But they can be spent, traded, saved, or invested. They are virtual money, and only "exist" in computer code.

They're not like real money. Not like hard cash, or money in the bank or in a safe, or your mattress. You can't hold it, feel it, smell it (eeew, butt-sweat and leather).

There was a time, however, when paper money was an idea people did not trust:

It had been justly stated by a British writer that the power to make a small piece of paper, not worth one cent, by the inscribing of a few names, to be worth a thousand dollars, was a power too high to be entrusted to the hands of mortal man. [John C. Calhoun, speech, U.S. Senate, Dec. 29, 1841] 

But they got over it...

I am not interested in money but in the things of which money is the symbol. [Henry Ford]

In 1971 under Nixon, the U.S. departed from the gold standard, and our slooshable money became completely symbolic. I can't any longer claim the gold my money represents. My money does not represent any-thing. It is a fluctuating number among currencies, and only has the value people agree that it has--at the moment. That means at base, money is a form of relationship and trust. 

Our words for money betray both the reality of it's 
a) fluidity ("shlooshiness"), and 
b) our (false) hope to find security in it. 

a) "Currency." A moment's thought, and one realizes the root is "current," from the Latin currens--to flow. Good ol' John Locke seems to be the first to have applied it to the circulation of money. As with any relationship, there needs to be flow; circulation; movement; fluctuations. 


b) "Cash," on the other hand, comes from the same Latin word as "case." It means "box," or "money box." Or if you are Al Gore, "lock-box." Which I think everyone understood by then was only as secure as the internet. On the internet, it was said Gore claimed to have invented the internet; which he did not actually claim. Security is elusive.

We want security! Rock-solid, like Prudential...(oops, not like that.) Like a Chevy pickup truck! 

The root of "security" is to be care-free. Yet striving for security is anything but care-free. Hoarding, stockpiling, and building up defenses easily becomes an obsessive-compulsion rooted in insatiable fear.

Not, however, that there is nothing to fear. It's likely that the word money comes from a surname of the strict and exacting goddess Juno, sometimes called Juno Moneta, the one who warns or advises. As both divine queen and mother, she monitors the affairs of the divine oikos (Greek for household), from whence: economy.

In other words, money has value that commands respect--even though it is only perceived value. Money works because of trust--even though the trust is only as sturdy as the agreement. Perhaps Bitcoin and similar virtual currencies are just the natural evolution of the creation of money in the first place. 

But while we still have paper money, please feel care-free enough to throw some away---so we trash haulers can find it.