Everyone works for money. Only one person, Mr. Purchaser, spends his money and everyone else just saves theirs forever. Suddenly money got a lot more powerful. Mr. Purchaser has literally all the money in the world and has pretty much infinite power, even if he only has $100k. He can make anyone do whatever he wants by paying them a penny, which is now worth about a million dollars[4].
I don’t understand this. What use is money that is never spent? Why would Mr. Purchaser’s penny induce me to do anything for him?
[4] Not that they’ll ever spend the penny on anything, since they’re one of the people who never spends any money, but let’s pretend they still have motivation to earn it.
This is a pretence too far. The imaginary world you are describing is incoherent.
Money is the slack in the system of trade that saves us from having to exchange only by barter or informal systems of credit — doing each other good turns, in your terminology. In Adam Smith’s words, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest.”
If I imagine a world without any money, but where everyone is somehow able to coordinate and act rationally for the good of all...
If I imagine that, my thoughts run to hive minds in which there are no people as we know them today.
Adam Smith continues: “We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.” A sentence that could have been penned by Dale Carnegie.
I don’t understand this. What use is money that is never spent? Why would Mr. Purchaser’s penny induce me to do anything for him?
This is a pretence too far. The imaginary world you are describing is incoherent.
Money is the slack in the system of trade that saves us from having to exchange only by barter or informal systems of credit — doing each other good turns, in your terminology. In Adam Smith’s words, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest.”
If I imagine that, my thoughts run to hive minds in which there are no people as we know them today.
Adam Smith continues: “We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.” A sentence that could have been penned by Dale Carnegie.