Why Money Rules

Why Money Rules

 

 

Everybody’s an atheist about their neighbor’s god;
everybody’s an anarchist about their neighbor’s state;
yet nobody’s an aplutist about their neighbor’s money!

          Your neighbor’s gods are imaginary, their government is crooked, but their money is real. And that’s why money, though fictitious, rules the world.

 

          For consider this; imagine yourself parachuted to a random spot on the globe, bearing a Bible, a letter of introduction from the President of the United States, and a $20 bill. You approach a local, and you do one of these three things:

          Show them the Bible and say, “God says feed me.”

          Show them the letter and say, “The President of the United States says feed me.”

          Show them the $20 bill and say, “This $20 bill says feed me.”

          Which will get you fed?

 

Once I was caught in traffic in Chinatown. Over the road hung a banner, full of ideograms which I couldn’t read, and a phone number and a date, which I could. From this I grokked that positional numeration has already conquered the world. How come? Because it counts money, of course. Hindu mystics and Arab traders agreed about the number zero, and have agreed on nothing else since.