Calling money an illusion and describing at as a way of temporarily motivating strangers seems like a misunderstanding of what money is. It’s true that money itself is just a piece of paper that we agree to treat a specific way, but the way we treat it is as a representation of real work done and real favors owed.
When I give you a dollar, I’m saying that you’ve done something worth (at least) a dollar for me and that I now owe you a favor worth (at least) a dollar. This works without money (“IOU’s”, or just keeping track of favors). The innovation of money itself is that we can get favors repaid by complete strangers without having to figure out the chain of favors every time (and in some cases, being able to get a favor repaid before it’s owed).
Which is all a long way of saying that if you do something to make someone owe you a favor, you can transfer that favor to a charity instead of calling it in yourself. The piece of paper won’t feed a hungry person but the favor attached to it can.
describing at as a way of temporarily motivating strangers seems like a misunderstanding of what money is
Compare to:
The innovation of money itself is that we can get favors repaid by complete strangers without having to figure out the chain of favors every time
What’s the difference? It sounds like the two of you are saying the same thing. Except just that you don’t like using the term “illusion” to describe it?
My original response was a more abstract explaination of why I think describing money as “not real” is misleading but maybe I more direct response to the article would be more useful since I think that part actually isn’t core to your question.
Money is a shared illusion. Neither paper, gold, nor electron patterns can stop a mosquito or feed a hungry person directly.
I’m assuming this is for rhetorical effect, but “money is a shared illusion because you can’t eat it” is a strange definition.
[...] Transfer of money is a temporary, low friction way to motivate unidentified strangers to preform an action.
So what’s the mechanism by which monetary charity works?
The mechanism by which monetary charity works is by motivating unidentified strangers to perform a charitable action.
Or alternately, if you mean charities like GiveDirectly, the charity works by giving money to poor people who can then motivate unidentified strangers to perform charitable actions (like building roofs for them).
Are we “just” exploiting a comparative advantage in dollar-gathering in order to force the people on the ground to behave the way we prefer? Do we have any evidence that it can create channels of behavior that are self-sustaining?
This depends entirely on the charitable action and has nothing to do with money. How can we answer if a particular charity is helpful if we don’t know what the charity does? As you say above, money works indirectly so we need to know the thing we’re doing with it.
On small (and not-so-small, but not universal) margins, money is a fine way to change some behaviors. I’m wondering if there are ways to shift the equilibria at the core rather than the margin.
If you come up with a way to shift the equilibria at the core, you could pay people to implement that..
My original response was a more abstract explaination of why I think describing money as “not real” is misleading but maybe I more direct response to the article would be more useful since I think that part actually isn’t core to your question.
Just to clarify, I’m not the OP. It just seemed to me like you and the OP were saying something similar.
I guess “temporarily motivating strangers” is a reasonable description of what money does. I should have argued against calling that motivation illusory or not-real.
Calling money an illusion and describing at as a way of temporarily motivating strangers seems like a misunderstanding of what money is. It’s true that money itself is just a piece of paper that we agree to treat a specific way, but the way we treat it is as a representation of real work done and real favors owed.
When I give you a dollar, I’m saying that you’ve done something worth (at least) a dollar for me and that I now owe you a favor worth (at least) a dollar. This works without money (“IOU’s”, or just keeping track of favors). The innovation of money itself is that we can get favors repaid by complete strangers without having to figure out the chain of favors every time (and in some cases, being able to get a favor repaid before it’s owed).
Which is all a long way of saying that if you do something to make someone owe you a favor, you can transfer that favor to a charity instead of calling it in yourself. The piece of paper won’t feed a hungry person but the favor attached to it can.
Compare to:
What’s the difference? It sounds like the two of you are saying the same thing. Except just that you don’t like using the term “illusion” to describe it?
My original response was a more abstract explaination of why I think describing money as “not real” is misleading but maybe I more direct response to the article would be more useful since I think that part actually isn’t core to your question.
I’m assuming this is for rhetorical effect, but “money is a shared illusion because you can’t eat it” is a strange definition.
The mechanism by which monetary charity works is by motivating unidentified strangers to perform a charitable action.
Or alternately, if you mean charities like GiveDirectly, the charity works by giving money to poor people who can then motivate unidentified strangers to perform charitable actions (like building roofs for them).
This depends entirely on the charitable action and has nothing to do with money. How can we answer if a particular charity is helpful if we don’t know what the charity does? As you say above, money works indirectly so we need to know the thing we’re doing with it.
If you come up with a way to shift the equilibria at the core, you could pay people to implement that..
Just to clarify, I’m not the OP. It just seemed to me like you and the OP were saying something similar.
I guess “temporarily motivating strangers” is a reasonable description of what money does. I should have argued against calling that motivation illusory or not-real.