Poemander

Shall we make it clear to ourselves, explain at least, what is value and why anything is valuable? I'll jump forward and say that the simple answer is time; pilosophical answer is human; complicated answer is continuity.

For anything to be quantifiably valuable it must have some lifespan or have a foreseeable duration. The better clarity about duration, the more adequate and rational is the quantification. The perishable food stuff is valuable because it can be consumed within a certain period of time. The chunk of iron is valuable because it can be made into a useful tool that will too have a lifespan. The banknote is valuable because it has a claim on some debt that too has a duration or a maturity (at least in principle).

Until this point it is rather simple. Now, why is the land valuable or why is gold valuable which is eternal in theory? Starting with gold we can say again that it can be made into something useful, like any other material, into a tool or a jewelry and thus have a theoretical lifespan of 'usefulness'. But this is only half-true; firstly gold jewelry (just like other non-corrosive pieces) has an effectively infinite lifespan, secondly gold's value is mainly representative (like other monetary metals, banknotes or any forms of money). What does it mean? It means that we came close to our complicated answer: continuity.

Gold's value is derived from its claim on cosmological continuity in essence; however, it's more direct claim is on human fertility, being the form of a debt representation of 'up-keeping' cost to female fertility in particular, as was discussed elsewhere in this text. Human fertility is in turn a direct claim on continuity or a cyclical infinity of time. This brings us back to understanding of values as duration of time, only this time an infinite duration or more precisely a continuity. Same with the land, it's value is derived from continuity of human race: place of habitat, provision of resources, fertility of livestock and crops. We have all heard (and agreed) that human is the measure of all things, that is our philosophical answer. We didn't have to go far to get to it, yet make no mistake, there is no value outside of human mind: existence is diminutive, but value requires time, which is only a product of mind.

By saying that existence is diminutive, we also mean that it is infinite, both are the same. Knowing this we shall proceed with our quest, which by the way is always inside the mind.

Equipped with some understanding let's look again and perishable food. We said that it's quantifiable value is derived from its lifespan or shelf-life. This is true, but also it has another dimension; food's essential value relates to an 'up-keeping' cost of continuity, sustaining human life and reproductivity. This explains why a bag of rice might cost a dollar in the shop, but in the times of famine most people will pay almost anything for the same bag. In the first instance it was only the value of shelf-life, in the second instance it took a straight value of human life.

At this junction it should not be a far stretch to conclude that value is two-dimensional: the shallower dimension relates to the timespan of usefulness and is, at least in theory, economically quantifiable; the deeper dimension is always a claim on continuity (continuity of human life, bloodline, race, freedom), it is deeply emotional and unquantifiable in economical terms since the aim is at infinite. Such proposition may in fact explain the background mechanics of often unprecedented risk taking in times of crisis, war and an extreme opportunism, where the deeper dimension overwhelmingly disables the everyday functioning of a shallower, economically calculable value dimension. Thus we observe in the markets the so called irrational exuberance or the decoupling of prices from the rationality of the underlining economies. So be it the acts of violence, a threat to existentialism or an insatiable risk appetite, there must be some formidable catalyst that wipes out the superstructures of economical values and drills down to the very core of humanitarian precepts.

I should be duly apologizing at this stage because what I am going to say is so obvious that writing about it is a waste o paper and the screen space if you would, for the said catalyst is nothing but trust, or lack thereof. 'In God we trust' is written on the dollar bill, and the words 'we trust' are the key. Efficient market (or any functional market to a degree) and fair exchange have to be highly impersonal, for if they are not, the deeper dimension of values quickly reestablishes it's dominance throwing every trading into the territory of mortal combat or an altruism, depending which side the pendulum swings. Needles to say that price discovery is nonexistent in such situation. Who can negotiate prices with a knife to their throat?

On deeper dimension every aspect of exchange is highly personal, it is often 'all or nothing', we can even say that exchange per se is nonexistent in such a situation. Therefore, the only way markets or any sort of fair exchange may exist is through the means of trust, a trust in functionality of any kind of arbitrating authority to ensure the impersonality of an exchange. All governments, in theory, exist solely for this purpose: uphold the trust in fair exchange. And it doesn't matter, whether the ultimate function of arbitrage falls on community, the monarch, the judge (designated by community or the royal charter) or even God (thus 'in God we trust'). What matters is the preservation of trust in the arbitrary power of whoever.

The decentralization is the logical step in direction of support towards the indisputable trust in the functionality of any exchange, to the point that it even appears as 'trustless', whereas in reality it is as close to pure definition of trust as it can be: the trust is the reliability that doesn't need to be thought of.

Without such trust the tenuous systems of quantifiable values immediately retreat and do not show their heads above the ocean of universal values aka continuity.

You may wonder how could these terrifying waters of unquantifiable values be also our very nature and the origin? They always are and they always remain the sole reality of beingness. The markets, exchange, trade, governance are merely the superstructures on the raft of civilization. We have navigated this raft for too long, smitten and sobered up by the occasional wave. How else will you call the empathy and outright selflessness in the face of horrible crisis and war crimes? They are the sobering effects of reality nothing less.

We are seeking a way home, home of ultimate and unquantifiable values, yet hardly anyone is willing to abandon the raft yet. People need to re-learn how to swim, hence is the need for simulation: the markets. The exchange is our learning mechanism. If we are to succeed in this learning, we'll need to quantify everything, derive the costs of friendship, the costs of love and beauty. We'll need to be able to break them down into fractions and trade them on the open market. We'll need to saturate the information asymmetries and reach the complete efficiency of the market. The instantaneous settlement and impersonality of the exchange shall exponentially increase the velocity of money and remove the reliance on any sort of debt instruments. At some point all trade and exchange will completely disconnect from decision-making leaving our tokenized personifications in the realm of an algorithm. Quantification will return back into the continuity dissolving the price tags into a single quality of universal love, that's what is re-learning to swim is in our scenario.