Episode 16 - The Metaphysics of Money

Three Modern Functions (Plus One)

1. Medium of Exchange

2. Unit of Account

3. Store of Value

4. Established by Convention/Law

Account of Money

• Necessity of exchange

• Commutative Justice

• Equality in exchange

  • How many shoes is a house?

• Money enters as a measure of diverse goods

  • measure of human need or desire

  • Measure must contain that which it measures

    • Law - measures human behavior (definition of murder)

    • time - measures motion (clock)

• Established by Convention

Aristotelian Causes

1. Final Cause - Faciliate exchange (medium of exchange)

2. Formal Cause - Measure of value (unit of account)

3. Material Cause - Something valuable (store of value)

4. Efficient Cause - Legislator or Community agreeement

Implications

• In order to be money, a thing must be valuable

  • cigarettes are valuable before they become money

  • USD is valuable as a tax coupon

  • Bitcoin is not valuable and is a waste of time and energy

    • acts as money only as a sort of similitude

    • money as measure of human desire, but desire can be irrational

    • see podcast on economic value

• Good Money - Final Cause

  • needs to be stable

  • needs to be apt to receive the form

  • easily divisible and transferable

  • Bank accounts

    • securities in themselves, but are not USD

• Anything valuable in principle can be money

• Money is not a different sort of thing, but a way of using things

• All exchange is fundamentally barter