Money and the Non-Equivalence of Projects

August 11th, 2008 Posted in Money

Some people can not chew gum and walk at the same time, but social groups and societies can though they might not. We are plural, there are several of us, and we have the division of labor option. You work the waving field of grain and I’ll work the vegetable patch.

Yet politicians are constantly assuring us that if we would only stop the military commitment in Iraq we could transfer all the money used there to finish all the projects now in abeyance at home like universal medical care and global warming. It is as though all projects, because they can be stated in a universal money code, are similar in content.

But money can be a false measure. The apple and the orange are distinctly different though both have a price. Despite budgetary logic we can have both guns and butter, in moderation (as though mayhem in small doses were acceptable). The British Empire chugged along chomping and stomping through an entire era. (I am not advocating war, only trying to outline a normal way to compare projects.)

Patching a pair of pants is not the same as fixing a hole in the roof. Each act needs its own kind of expert worker and its own specialized tools and resources. It is actually possible for members of a social group, community or society to do both without the one interfering with the other.

The multiplicity of projects does not work in two settings. (1) the project is impossible. Giving up a trip to Atlantic City and taking the money saved for a visit to the star Alpha Centauri, only 4.37 light years away, is futile in our time. No amount of money will scratch up the necessary skilled workers and technology. You can’t buy love either, Baby.

And (2) where two projects overlap and both mobilize the same sector of skill and resource. If you are fighting a war on two fronts and you only have enough soldiers and supplies and equipment to cover one there is an equivalence and you are over-extended and the two projects are in contradiction. It is like one person walking north and south at the same time. You have a problem and while an accountant may find a way of stating it in the money code it is the underlying reality of people and things that explains what is happening.

Take for example the notorious smog and air pollution of Mexico City which goes on year after year while millions of energetic unemployed workers head north. With a little attention and planning by that country’s ruling cadre a small fraction of these workers could be trained and supplied to remove this health and welfare blot. An obvious surplus is available in Mexico that is not being mobilized.

That China, so proud and successful in building the Bird’s Nest and assorted Olympic infrastructure and organization, couldn’t at the same time permanently erase the air pollution over Beijing (which I am presuming would be a separate and non-overlapping project) is a failure of socialist imagination and energy.

Money tricks thought. It can lead us to think that certain projects are impossible that are easily within our grasp and to encourage us to persist in other projects that are clearly, given the underlying reality, unattainable.

The sociology of money, which we are only broaching here, starts with the physically obvious. It is, like a Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David television series and a Shakespearian comedy, much ado about nothing–some slabs of printed paper, base coins, electronic bits on computer programs. And there you are amidst another paradox of culture. Our mysterious unity of understanding active, we have imbued this fluff with a universal value into which all our motives can supposedly be translated. The illusion of equivalence begins here. (I am aware that law and the police and economic theory support this unity and contribute to sustaining it.)

Cut to the chase. We, as a group or society, bypass money and innovate projects directly according to availability of skilled workers and tools and resources. But the money illusion dropped, how do we motivate ourselves to act and coordinate?

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In Nice. France a counterman in a cafe, sensing my confusion over the value of the local coins, overcharged me for a cup of moe. He was a minor thief and pimp but his coffee was delicious. If I could remember the name I might recommend this place but only with a caveat emptor warning. A good cup of coffee, after all, is hard to find.