Money Unhinged : Should We Care?
I talk a lot about money here -- particularly its subjective meanings -- because a large part of my job is to help people rationalize the payment, or receipt, of money, to satisfy their justice needs.
This is a particularly tricky job because justice is one of those items thought to be incommensurable, i.e., a thing or experience that has no price and cannot be bought or sold. See e.g. The cost of a thing is the amount of life which is required to be exchanged for it: the subjective experience of money in the settlement of a wrongful burial practices case (2007) 1 LaTrobe Univ. Conflict Resolution e-Journal 60.
Thanks to Concurring Opinions' recent post How Much is that Simulacrum in the Window? we're directed to a far abler treatment of money's meaning and history than I was able to gin up for my LL.M. at Pepperdine -- Money as Simulacrum by John J. Chung, Associate Professor of Law at Roger Williams U SOL.
Whatever the political, historic and legal consequences of money's reduction to a pure symbol, it's good to be reminded again that there is both every and no relationship between money and value.
As a mediator, I experience this paradox on the daily basis. When two defendants are defending the same law suit, for example, one defendant almost invariably refuses to pay more than the other no matter what the absolute number at issue might be. Defendants who are willing to pay, say, $250,000 to settle a case, will often refuse to pay anything unless their co-defendant matches or exceeds their offer.
If you're interested in the ways in which money developed meaing, and the historic path the greenback has taken through American history, you couldn't do better than picking up Professor Chung's article.
