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| ▲ | banannaise 20 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Having a number doesn't make the number a good measure. If all I have is a yardstick, and I'm trying to measure weight, then I would probably be much better served using a qualitative method than by trying to use the yardstick. |
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| ▲ | NateEag 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Money is subjective. Like countries, it exists only in people's minds. Its value comes from agreement by a large number of humans that it is valuable. A stack of Benjamins would be nigh-valueless to people from 9th-century China. |
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| ▲ | nradov 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Not at all. The actual value of money comes from violence. This is objective, not subjective. If you have a certain amount of taxable income in the USA (or subject to US legal jurisdiction) then you're required to pay tax in US dollars: the IRS won't accept Euros or gold or anything else. If you fail to pay then eventually IRS employees will seize dollars from your financial accounts, or seize other assets and sell them for dollars. And if you try to physically stop them then they'll arrest you, or even shoot you. And to be clear, I don't think this is a bad thing. It's necessary to keep civilization working. | | |
| ▲ | NateEag a day ago | parent [-] | | A good point. Thank you. The violence, once enacted, is an objective fact. The threat of violence is still there only due to the collective subjective agreement that countries exist. The IRS would have no functional power if Washington, D.C. and other major US cities were destroyed in a nuclear exchange. I could imagine many citizens still choosing to pay taxes of some sort and/or respect the value of physical dollars in such a scenario, but it would likely not be due to fear of the federal government. Possibly fear of local police, though. |
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| ▲ | red-iron-pine 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| the only objective sign that it provides is that you objectively have a lot of money. if I inherit $44 million dollars because I happened to fall out of the right vagina the only thing it symbolizes is that I got lucky -- I could be a fat, degenerate bastard underserving of anything. ditto for lottery winners. |
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| ▲ | bluGill a day ago | parent [-] | | there is always luck. For most we are not talking about such luck and can just say money is a result of hard work. So if/how you choose to spend it matters. |
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