The testimony and questionnaire of cryptocurrency purveyors to Congress in early December made clear we have lost our collective mind about the role of money to promote vibrant and renewable societies.
What Is Money?
Money is a manmade invention, a barter in which a trusted note is exchanged for products or services rendered. The trust in the note is equal to the perceived value of the products or services rendered, with its producer, the note’s recipient, now able to purchase products and services of similar perceived value.
Money relies heavily on trust. The trust that the note received can be used to purchase goods and services of similar value and that the note continues to hold its value while stored. The value of goods and services is determined by the workings and fluctuations of private-sector marketplaces. In contrast, the stored value is determined by the deflation and inflation of public-sector value during the holding period.
Simply put, the trust in money is determined by what products or services you can, or expect to purchase with it. Technically, the trust in money is determined by a dynamic pairing of personal and collective interests.
Trust In Money
The trust in money erodes when the products or services rendered do not live up to their promises or are damaging and illegal. Or when the stored value of money diminishes.
For example, the trust in money erodes when we allow the sale of cigarettes beginning some sixty years ago, now the third leading cause of death we all pay incremental health insurance premiums for. Trust in money erodes when universities charge astronomical amounts for education, leaving 44% of graduates underemployed. Trust in money erodes when crypto’s illegal pyramid schemes obfuscate as currencies.
Trust in money erodes when asset managers cannot produce investment returns to service pension payout commitments to retiring members. Trust in money erodes when stock markets violate the most rudimentary free-market principles. Trust in money erodes when the “systems of human excellence” are not systems at all. Trust in money erodes on a boulevard of broken ideologies.
Humanity’s biggest challenge is improving human adaptability to nature’s entropy—the decline of available energy on our planet that forces humanity to do more with less. Money’s new and higher-order purpose is to become the carrier of trust in our improved ability to adapt to the curveballs of entropy nature throws our way.
We can no longer afford to let the trust in money be eroded by constructs, strategies, and programs supporting the self-destructing “growth for the sake of growth” ideology of a cancer cell. Away from the solipsistic vile-maxims we use as the merit of money today; we must begin to redirect the value of money to our evolutionary excellence as a species.
New and regenerative trust in money will come from our adherence to nature’s evolutionary meritocracy that produces products and services designed to improve human adaptability to nature’s entropy.