na.devine wrote:
>Is this perhaps a point about power and capital: that capital is after
>all only money - you can't eat it - or book entries which are even less
>useful - in fact: it is because people believe in these things, the
>significance of money or book entries, that others are continually able
>to exercise the 'power' i.e. the control over people that these signs
>give them. so in the end, even capital is the accumulation of power
>exercised by all those people who concur in the great myth. Over
>generations, over centuries, or as with film stars, over 10 minutes.
>Absurd as it seems, if people stopped rendering homage to coinage, it
>would cease to be a medium of exchange: we might get back to the baked
>bean standard I suppose, or the cabbage or shell millionaire.
Reminds me of an anecdote Donald Barthelme told. He was being audited by
the IRS, and took his auditor to lunch. He started talking about discourse,
how everything was just a discourse really, and she responded, "Yes, but my
discourse has subpoena power." Whether he believed in it or not, of course.
Doug
>Is this perhaps a point about power and capital: that capital is after
>all only money - you can't eat it - or book entries which are even less
>useful - in fact: it is because people believe in these things, the
>significance of money or book entries, that others are continually able
>to exercise the 'power' i.e. the control over people that these signs
>give them. so in the end, even capital is the accumulation of power
>exercised by all those people who concur in the great myth. Over
>generations, over centuries, or as with film stars, over 10 minutes.
>Absurd as it seems, if people stopped rendering homage to coinage, it
>would cease to be a medium of exchange: we might get back to the baked
>bean standard I suppose, or the cabbage or shell millionaire.
Reminds me of an anecdote Donald Barthelme told. He was being audited by
the IRS, and took his auditor to lunch. He started talking about discourse,
how everything was just a discourse really, and she responded, "Yes, but my
discourse has subpoena power." Whether he believed in it or not, of course.
Doug