“Money Is A Confidence Game, A Mass Delusion That Only Works Because We’ve All Been Had Together”

From Farhad Manjoo’s new article about the decline of money–or at least the physical manifestation of it–in Slate:

“It sounds like a prank, right? Money is a confidence game, a mass delusion that only works because we’ve all been had together. That’s why it’s best not to think too much about it. As when Wile E. Coyote runs off a cliff, the moment we realize what’s really going on with money is usually the moment the whole system comes crashing down.

The psychic gymnastics necessary to accommodate money are the central theme of journalist David Wolman’s provocative new book, The End of Money: Counterfeiters, Preachers, Techies, Dreamers—and the Coming Cashless Society. Even Wolman’s title contains a trick—note how it conflates money and cash, two concepts that, to economists, are very different things. Money is any tradable store of value; it can exist in your pocket or on a bank statement, in dollars or Euros or, if you’re in prison, in cigarettes. Cash is only the physical instantiation of money, and, as Wolman points out and as everyone in the Western world knows, it is on its way out. Thanks to technology, trustworthy banking (well, mostly), and our insatiable appetite for convenience, we’re all carrying less and less cash, and soon we’ll probably quit it altogether.”

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