Help! My society needs more money. Part 1 — Money & the lizard brain [Strange Solutions]
This is part 1 of a 4 part series. Read up on the rest:
Part 1: Money & the lizard brain
Part 2: Scarcity — the solution to & cause of all problems
A single paragraph in a 300-page book kept me up for nights — and I think it will get under your skin too.
I’ve reproduced it below, it’s from the book ‘Future of Money’ by Bernard Lietaer.
Waiting for money, or is it Godot?
What is missing is money. Everyone is waiting for money.
If one stops to think about it, it is a fascinating phenomenon. Imagine a Martian landing in a poor neighbourhood and seeing rundown communities, people sleeping in the streets, children without mentors or going hungry, trees and rivers dying from lack of care, ecological breakdowns and all of the other problems we face. He would also discover that we know exactly what to do about all these things. Finally, he would see that many people willing to work are either unemployed, or use only a part of their skills. He would see that many have jobs but are not doing the work they are passionate about. And that they are all waiting for money. Imagine the Martian asking us to explain what is that strange ‘money’ thing we seem to be waiting for. Could you tell him with a straight face that we are waiting for an ‘agreement within a community to use something — really almost anything — as a medium of exchange’?
And keep waiting?
Our Martian might leave wondering whether there is intelligent life on this planet.
I find this thought-experiment insightful because it shows how intelligent people can become victims of a self-imposed system (monetary in this case).
Our current monetary system is great at what it does (discussed further in the following sections), but that doesn’t mean its perfect for every situation.
The purpose of this article is to explore whether we can come up with an alternative way of doing things in situations where current monetary systems are not ideal. Specifically, this article explores whether doing so is possible through use of complementary currencies?
While this question has been explored in detail before, this article will approach the topic through two novel lenses.
These are : (a) an evolutionary psychological take on our relationship with money, and (b) inclusion of new technology to solve problems that would have been considered impossible a mere 20 years ago.
Money and the lizard brain
Before we get further, let’s quickly recap what money means to us.
For most of us, money in the form of a nation-state issued currency is viewed as an efficient medium of exchange. It is preferable to other mediums of exchange (barter, precious gems etc.) because it is convenient. Viewed over decades & centuries, the ease of doing business that money provides, has been critical in helping accelerate transfer of information and/or technology (through trade of goods) from one part of the world to another. Thereby leading to improved living standards.
But to view money from a purely practical angle of facilitating trade does not do it justice. Over time humans have co-opted the money system to also solve for other psychological needs.
Many of our psychological needs are evolutionarily driven and there seem to be two specific drives that account for a majority of activities of “successful species”. The drive to survive and the drive to thrive (procreation is a combination of surviving and thriving).
Traditional money is treated as a resource that can derisk the future & help you survive (the proverbial saving for a rainy day).
It is also treated as a resource that can enhance your life or give you a leg-up– either from the past or from your competitors — i.e., help you thrive.
These are very important psychological drives & it is unavoidable that they become important in our relationship with most things (not just money).
The problem statement then becomes, not how can you kill these tendencies (why would you even want to), but how can you minimize any negative outcomes of these drives within our current monetary system (a Waiting for Money type of situation arises because of this).
In the next sections we further investigate how this “waiting for money” type of situation even arises & what (if anything) we can do about it.
