The Story

A new story of being human in the world, in society, through economy, exchanging unique artifact of technology, in abundance, using money, and the law

We start with where we are, shackled to a locked imaginary that Growth is the highest and best expression of our human way of being in the world, as Firms and Households exchanging labor and capital for goods and services.

In this story, we are each and all required to work hard to produce and consume more, so this economy of Firms and Households can give us more, on the promise that:

• more , quantitatively, will always also be better, qualitatively; and
• we each, as freely self-determining participants in this Economy, will also always be free to each determine, freely, for ourselves our own fair share of that more, quantitatively, that is always, also, better, qualitatively.

I have a lot of problems with this story, beginning with the false promise, on which the whole house of cards is built, that we are each free to determine for ourselves our own lot in life.

This is not true.

We do each have some freedom to make choices for ourselves, in the markets for choosing stuff, based on our own personal and private judgements of fitness for our own personal and private purposes, and price for performance, compared to other competing choices that we also could make.

But our freedom to choose based on self-determinations of fitness for purpose and price for performance, is constrained by the facts of what is available for us, from which to choose, and whether or not we actually have the power to make that choice, by paying the associated price.

And these constraints, of availability and ability to pay, are in some ways determined by use for ourselves, in how we choose to live our own lives, but mostly they are determined for us, by small numbers of people who are empowered by their roles within our institutions of social choosing, through which society makes social choices, socially.

The prevailing popular story works hard to tell us that institutions don’t matter, that everything that does matter is personal and individual.

The tellers of this tale tell us this tale, that money is THE measure of personal morality and worth as a person: those of us who have more money are, objectively, better, more morally upright, people.

According to this story, it doesn’t matter HOW we get more money, whether we actually earn it “by the sweat of our brow”, conferring a great good on a great many people, our reward for which is control of a great deal of money; or we simply inherited, by accident of birth and the laws of inheritance; or we got it by immoral means.

Conversely, according to this story, those of us who have less, have less because we are less. Just as the social structures that give more to many who have more do not matter, the social structures that give less to those who have less also do not matter.

It’s all down to us, and what each of us chooses to do with what we have been given.

This to me, is nonsense.

It is a narrative conjured up by the privileged and entitled, in league with the devious and immoral, to put their right to the social standing over others that they claim by virtue of the money they have, that they got by accident of birth, or by the bad actions of bad actors, beyond question, so that they can never be called on to account for how it is that they came by their money, or why that money makes them better, and entitles them to rule over others.

I reject this narrative, that Money IS Morality, and a true and accurate measure of a persons worth, the reward for merit and the punishment for being without merit.

Humanity is much more complicated than that.

Money is much more complicated than that.

And the narrative we really need, to live our own best lives, in pursuit of peace, and social belonging and cohesion, is a narrative that makes us familiar with the true complexity of this uniquely human invention of this thing that does not exist in Nature, and is not a gift from God, but is entirely of our own making: this thing we call:

MONEY