From: Wim Nusselder (wim.nusselder@antenna.nl)
Date: Tue Jun 08 2004 - 05:55:44 BST
Dear all,
Money measures status. Not the amount you have but the speed with which you
'earn' it.
Society's wealth (symbol of its status) is measured by national income, the
amount of money changing hands in a year.
Societies can associate status with other symbols: living more strictly
according to religious rules, spending money/goods on (potential) relations
(potlach economy), number of relatives/wives/(male) children. These only be
dominant in small, isolated societies, because global society as a whole
needs money/income to hold it together. Without enough income (or even
income growth) global society (and national parts of it) are unable to
distribute the means of living (produced to a large extent collectively)
without conflict. Conflict leads to competitive hoarding of (means of) power
to extort a larger part of the pie from one's fellow members of (global)
society. Hoarding means of power uses productive capacity that then cannot
be used to produce means of meeting other needs and tempts people/nations to
use them to take (rather than 'earn') a bigger part of the national/global
pie by force. National and global income grows to the extent that a society
manages to limit this appropriation of wealth by force and stimulates
appropriation by exchange: offering attractive labour/services/goods to
others in order to get back what you want in exchange. For higher (relative)
income and status you then need unequal exchange. This is a
self-re-inforcing mechanism, as higher status increases the value in other
people's perception of what you have to offer. It creates the
'Mathew-effect' (Mt 13.12 - "For to him who has will more be given, and he
will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be
taken away.")
Understanding (i.e. being able to represent symbolically) this habitual
pattern of value makes it impossible for me to make an ordinary career. I
have a relatively strong drive (a personal habitual pattern of value) to
follow alternative roads (other than by means of accumulating status).
An exchange of views in an earlier discussion on the MD-list is also
relevant here:
I wrote 23 Sep 2001 23:51:10 +0200:
'Unlike Sam I think luck and merit are only marginally involved.
It is not the virtue of me and my contemporaries that has created
Dutch infrastructure that values (not causes) Dutch wealth. Being
the main drain of Western Europe (the delta of a couple of big
rivers) helped to create a big transport industry, but the same
could have been true of say Egypt or Irak and was true at earlier
points in history... Western Europe's "geographical and
ecological quirks" were of such marginal importance, that the
center of gravity of fortune has been moving over the earth quite
a bit during those past 4000 years: Egypt, Irak, Greece, Italy
(Roman empire), Constantinopel (Byzantium), Northern Italy,
Spain, the Netherlands, England, the USA ... (I am not trying to
be precise and there were of course more centers of gravity at
most points in history. From before the Roman empire until the
end of "our" Middle Ages China may have been the most wealthy and
civilized part of the world.)
Every center of gravity of fortune in history suppressed economic
advancement in a wide circle around itself by attracting greedy people
and/or their investments and by creating political structures defending
their interests. Today the circle encloses the whole globe. Flocking
together created economies of scale and relatively cheaper infrastructure
(infrastructure in a broad sense: including at the beginning of recorded
history the creation of written language itself). Exploitation has always
been first and foremost something between local/regional privileged and
underprivileged primarily facilitated by ideological legitimization (systems
of ideas of the privileged dominating those of the underprivileged) and only
secondary by brute force. International exploitation is therefore less a
matter of "stealing" and more a matter of "receiving" (buying something
knowing it has been stolen). You [Roger Parker] implicitly acknowledge this
when you write to Squonk 18/9 21:49 -0400: "I steal oil? No, I buy oil.
Saudis sell oil. ... If you have problems with exploitation by totalitarian
Saudis of their people, then say so." And of course international
exploitation is offering prices for what you buy and asking prices for what
you produce that imply hugely different wage levels of the producers and
getting away with that because of the oligopolistic structure of markets,
home market protection, protection against spreading of technology etc. In
the end the unfavorable terms of exchange for underprivileged countries are
due to status differences. One cannot really blame Western countries that
our way of life and our products have more status than those produced
elsewhere, but we can be blamed that we don't share our unmerited wealth.
Who decides what is equal? That is the result of a struggle
between systems of ideas... for instance on this list.
Those "values of allowing people to have the freedom and
creativity to pursue their own interests", which you see as the
root and legitimization of Western wealth, may rather be the
result of the flocking together of greedy and resourceful people
from everywhere.'
Sam replied 24 Sep 2001 09:57:34 +0100:
'This is an interesting point, from an angle I hadn't appreciated before.
Are you saying that valuing wealth is not a human universal? By that I don't
mean the idolatry of wealth, which excludes other values, but the importance
given to, eg an abundant food supply and clean water? Perhaps I'm conflating
two different things here, the wealth and what that wealth can provide, but
I would argue that all human societies place value on wealth *for what it
can provide* - and that therefore a system which fosters that will generally
be preferred by a majority of the human race. More fundamentally, the US
system doesn't preclude the pursuit of goals other than wealth - in fact it
allows more scope for alternative goals. Historically the pioneers in the US
and the puritan settlers (amongst others) were attracted because it allowed
for a different way of life compared to the old world (presumably a more
just and God-directed society).'
In the present context I would like to add:
Valuing money and material wealth is indeed not a human universal. All human
societies place value on wealth for meeting their survival needs, but our
present global society places much more value on it than can be accounted
for by survival needs. Nathan asked: 'why do those you have more than enough
still strive for more?' Because it is not the amount you have that gives
status, but the speed with which you add to that amount (without taking into
account to what extent you spend/deplete it). The pursuit of (any) goals is
not precluded by the habit to hoard wealth/status, but the scope for it IS
limited, if only because of the psychological and social need to justify
this habitual behaviour as rational: telling ourselves that we really need
more when actually we don't. In a society in which you always have to do
something in return for what you get in exchange (in principle...) pursuit
of wealth reduces the scope for pursuit of other values.
With friendly greetings,
Wim
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