Everything is an emergent phenomenon. Money requires societal abstractions. Empires provided this. Money doesn’t need the modern nation state but it requires this kind of abstraction provided by widespread homologizing power.
Discussion
Nonsense. Empires didn’t scale and then decide what money was. They were able to scale because of money, which existed before and without their existence.
Please indicate where I stated empires „decided what money was.“
Fair point. Allow me to clarify my responses.
“Money requires societal abstractions.”
Agreed.
“Empires provided this.”
Humans engage in “societal abstractions” without the need for Empires providing the environment for those abstractions to exist.
“Money doesn’t need the modern nation state”
Agreed.
“but it requires this kind of abstraction provided by widespread homologizing power.”
Humans engage in societal abstractions for the idea of nation states and money to exist, sure, but not entirely sure how you define “widespread homologizing power.”
With widespread homologizing power I mean a power structure across cultures assimilating these to something new, unified. Typically empires.
I think the only thing we don’t agree on is our interpretation on how societal abstractions arise. You seem to champion the bottom up approach. I’m suggesting the bottom up always leads to top down. Both are needed i guess.
If you were right there would have been barter societies that made the rise of money necessary. But there was no such thing. No barter societies to be found.
Money was almost always a thing of empires because that’s what empires do: abstracting, standardizing, co-integrating and scaling the cultural patterns they find.
Great convo.
I’d probably frame societal abstractions more along the lines of centralization vs decentralization, but we could quibble in a long tangential thread regarding that framework.
I don’t believe that barter alone lead to the emergence of money, as credit existed along side barter and is IMO older than barter.
I’m fully willing to concede the notion of the growth of civilization from small groups to the nation state as an accelerant or amplifier of shared abstractions, but draw the line in the notion that scaling those conditions are requisite for that phenomenon to exist.
