Money is a Virus from Outer Space

 

 

Money is a Virus from Outer Space

By Don Curren 

Draft of EXECUTIVE SUMMARY of the Report of the Committee Responsible for Experimental Planetary Culture MFP1124 (also known as the Money Planet) to the Oversight Committee for Planetary Cultural Experiments

DATE: Lunar Cycle 34, Planetary Orbit 2,378

DEADLINE FOR RESPONSES: Cycle 35, Planetary Orbit 2,378

The following is a draft of executive summary of the report from the committee responsible for experimental planetary culture MFP1124, also known as the Money Planet.

It provides a concise account of an interesting, but ultimately failed experiment: how we implanted the idea of "money" in a primitive humanoid culture on a remote planet, as well as that experiment's results - at first encouraging, and then disastrous. 

The concept of “money” was first proposed by a radical school of sociologists as a way of allocating resources entirely different from the system that developed on our planet.

In essence, “money” is an abstract, quantifiable medium of exchange. Assets such as labor, food, and other essential items are all assigned a specific value in money and exchange is achieved through that medium.

The mechanism for assigning the specific value to each asset is called a “market.” Assets are offered at a “price” or specific value in money terms by a seller and acquired by a “buyer” if the price is agreeable. Individuals acquire a store of money by selling their own assets and can thereby acquire others.

The idea is so novel and so different from our own system of resource allocation it was deemed suitable for a planetary experiment.

An appropriate planet with abundant natural resources and a native humanoid species in the hunter-gatherer stage was located. The idea of “money” was implanted in some tribal groups considered particularly receptive.

(A word of caution to the reader: if the definition of life is a system of chemicals or other components that can catalyze its own reproduction and further evolution, money, for all intents and purposes, is alive.

It could be considered a kind of virus that, once implanted in the minds of its host species, can reproduce itself in new variations in that cultural medium. Like any other virus, its reproduction and further evolution may be inimical to the host species.

The new variations can also be difficult to understand in a cultural context like ours, where money is an abstraction rather than a concrete part of cultural evolution.

For a more detailed explanation of the novel mutations of money than we can provide in this summary, please see the complete report.)

There were some early indications of success. The idea of money as a medium of exchange became entrenched in some of the more advanced social groups.

While in some advanced cultures, money found a relatively subordinate place in an established hierarchy of values, in one region it began to overwhelm other cultural factors and become the key driver of cultural evolution.

One culture in that region showed signs of rationality and efficiency previously unseen on the planet. It was able to expand rapidly, primarily through military means but also through “trade” and other activities that were an outgrowth of the concept of money.

This culture established hegemony over a significant part of the planet, and achieved a relatively high level of technological sophistication, but at the peak of its powers began a rapid and mystifying decline.

In hindsight, this was partly due to the intrinsic instability and corrosive social effects of money.

 At the time, however, that was not clear to the scientists managing the experiment. Instead, they attributed it to the need for a more advanced culture, with higher levels of numeracy and literacy, for money to operate more effectively and sustainably.

It was decided at the time to suspend any more intervention in the planetary culture until development had reached a more appropriate level.

Several hundred planetary orbits passed where money faded to relative obscurity and other values and ideas dominated the more advanced cultures.

A cultural rebirth several hundred years later in the area dominated by the early money culture set the stage for a fuller and more revealing investigation of money.

Some of the more advanced elements of the money concept were implanted in a carefully selected island society, and that proved to be the beginning of the development of a money-dominated culture.

The society in question underwent rapid technological progress, in part due to the efficiency of money as a way of allocating resources.

Money and its associated ideas also began a rapid, autonomous development.

(One such idea, the remarkable concept of the ``limited liability corporation,” developed around this time. 

This is an organization of individuals who, when they are operating collectively with an aim to acquiring money, are allowed to dispense with their usual legal rights and obligations as individuals.

While our extraplanetary sociologists and anthropologists have found hundreds of planets with legal systems similar to the money planet`s, they have not once encountered this phenomenon of the “corporation” on any other planet.)

The last element for experimental success fell into place when the island-based money culture developed into an empire and expanded to a vast and resource-rich continent that had not previously experienced industrialization.

This was the perfect laboratory for money.  It was, in essence, a wholly new society without a stratified social structure to obstruct the full development of a money-oriented culture.

Our observers were overjoyed when the new colonies rebelled against the empire and began their accelerated development, much of it centered around money.

Some time later this society developed a money system that functioned without any direct reference to anything the society deemed intrinsically valuable.

That is the true essence of money, but because it is such a strange, abstract notion, money was originally introduced to the subject planet in conjunction with materials, generally precious metals, which were deemed to have some intrinsic value.

There had been previous instances of such abstract money – referred to as “fiat money” by native thinkers – but it had never previously become as pervasive and sustained as it did in this period and society.

This development opened the floodgates, as it were, to the astonishing final stages of the money experiment.

The culture in question underwent a period of extraordinarily rapid technological – and military = development and became the dominant planetary culture.

The development of new forms of money – instruments known as stocks, bonds, and other securities – accelerated, and that fed back into accelerated technological growth.

However, our observers also noted a distressing tendency toward instability. Every few years this society was wracked by periods of volatility and dysfunctionality that seemed to originate in the “monetary system” itself.

One such period, referred to locally as the “Great Depression,” almost resulted in an end to the money-based culture. In the end, it was able to right itself and enact certain measures to counteract the instability of money.

After that near brush with disaster, the development of both money and the money-based society began to accelerate again.

Technological development became extremely rapid, occurring at a pace almost unmatched in any of the indigenous or experimental cultures we have observed elsewhere in the galaxy.

The general welfare of the species also advanced rapidly, at least in the money-dominated culture and its client states.

For a short time, it looked as if the experiment had provided a compelling demonstration of the usefulness of money.

Some committee members believed success had been achieved. They advocated the end of the experiment, in the form of the withdrawal of planetary observation posts and cessation of further cultural intervention, and a tentative implementation of money in some pilot projects on our own planet.

Others were not satisfied the experiment was complete. They pointed to the increasing inequality of the distribution of goods that the money system seemed to generate, and an obvious erosion of other cultural values that had offset the influence of money, and the recurring disruptive volatility in monetary systems themselves. By a slim majority, it was decided to continue the experiment.

Shortly afterward, the intrinsic instability of money revealed itself in a rapid implosion of some of the key “financial” institutions, organizations charged with distributing the money supply, in the dominant money-based culture.

Political authorities were able to intervene and contain the crisis, although the methods they used were only temporary stopgaps. The potential for collapse remained.

At the same time, another more serious negative associated with money became increasingly apparent. The tendency in question had been noted before by our observers, but the crisis it was inducing only became really apparent to the native species in the last few decades.

The problem was this: money is inherently quantitative, and as social activity became increasingly oriented toward money, progress became more and more narrowly defined as the creation and accumulation of more money.

Without any values or considerations to offset the single-minded focus on a continuing quantitative increase in “wealth,” the species were largely oblivious to the damage their continually expanding “economies” were inflicting on the planetary environment.

Most importantly, their reliance on carbon-based fossil fuels to power their economies and subsequent pollution of the atmosphere with heat-retaining carbon began to upset the planetary ecology, creating a process they referred to as “climate change” or “global warming.”

Their scientists identified the problem and urged a shift to less disruptive technologies, but the obsession with increasing the amount of money in the world – indicated in statistical measures such as “Gross Domestic Product” - resulted in both key policymakers and populations failing to heed their warnings.

In the last few revolutions of the planet around its sun, a consciousness of the catastrophes that will inevitably result from their one-dimensional, quantitative way conceptualizing the world has begun to take root.

But with environmental disturbances accelerating, it may be too late for them to prevent the destruction of their species – and many others as well.

Nor is it apparent that they will be able to summon the collective determination needed to confront the issue. Their leadership systems have evolved in a needlessly complex ways that militate against effective policymaking, and some influential factions both inside and outside governments refuse to relinquish their fixation on money and the most recent socio-economic system that has developed in its wake, a system referred to as “capitalism.” 

This latest development is an important one, as it reveals the fundamental flaws in the concept of money. It creates cultures which are exclusively focused on narrow, quantitative measures of progress which fail to consider the complex and sensitive dynamics of the environment of this – or any other – planet.

The present situation on experimental planet MFP1124 is delicate. Most observers believe the species will be incapable of preventing complete societal collapse as the environmental distortions continue.

And, ironically, the species needs to abandon the concept of money and the associated idea of capitalism as the key drivers of their societies and economies.

 This species has already demonstrated an unusual propensity for societal collapse. This new crisis will likely be the worst it has endured, and perhaps the worst recorded anywhere by our interstellar sociologists.

That prospect has generated a fierce debate among members of the committee. Some advocate the first-ever intervention in a planetary experiment to head off the crisis, dismantle the money culture and initiate a more stable system.

Others believe the shock to the species would be devastating, and that the result would be a permanently hobbled culture that would become dependent on support from us.

They argue the best course of action would be to leave the planet’s denizens to themselves to recover from money by themselves – or not.

They would allow the species’ own natural development to take over and allow them to recover from the concept of money, which is, after all, an alien virus we infected them with.

These sociologists believe the suffering incurred by such a course of action would be justified by the ultimate development of a more robust and planetary culture once they have purged themselves of money.

Still others argue the experiment should be terminated through the annihilation of the species. Notably aggressive even before the experiment began, this species has become even more so since the introduction of money and could be a threat to surrounding planetary cultures is they ever reach a high enough stage of technological development.

They have in the last few decades developed technology sufficiently powerful to detect some of our monitoring instruments, although they have no idea about their true nature. While their technologies for extraplanetary exploration are still primitive, as previously noted, this species is capable of extremely rapid technological innovation.

This report has been prepared in part to solicit opinions about how to handle this dilemma. If you would like to contribute to the discussion, please contact one of the committee members.

In conclusion, experimental planetary culture MFP1124 has demonstrated that “money” is a highly unstable and unsatisfactory tool for allocating resources.

While it does stimulate rapid development under the right conditions, its inherent instability and destructive impact on the planetary environment makes it highly dangerous, and the sociologists and other scientists associated with the project have concluded that its weaknesses completely outweigh its merits.

For those who have any lingering doubts, we once again recommend a careful reading of the full version of the report.

End