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.
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.