This is a work in progress. Pasting it in here in case I don't get round to it. So beware, it's raw and poorly formatted.
Money is not wealth. So it cannot be a commodity either
Metal, paper, Bitcoin, are not the money itself. They are a commodity, acting as a token proxy for a unit of data - that is, the trust inherent in every financial exchange. These commodities come into use by natural forces as the thing we call money because these particular commodities are among the most exchanged of all commodities. Thus a common measure of value is established, once, that particular commodity has started to be used as a token instead of a commodity.
The mistake everyone then makes is that both a commodity and the money can exist simultaneously. Thereby allowing the psyche to imagine that money is wealth(commodity capital value)
Even money is a form of data. In the credit(etymology: trust) placed in it by both counterparties during an exchange. Money is an immaterial transaction transferring trust. That is also data. The information is the trust, the credit.
Money, and Bitcoin are not commodities though. The tokenised infrastructure that makes it all happen, is.
The cheapest form of money, is the best form of money. That is Bitcoin
If the commodities used as money are costly to deliver from source to use, that is a strong signal of a poorly advanced economy. Money is a metaphysical image. It does not exist in the material world of economic wealth - things people want to buy. If it does not exist and is costly to produce, that is pathological for the nation which uses it. Ideally the commodity used should be as cheap to produce as possible, preferably tending toward zero. And this zero capital quality is why digital assets are so innovative. Bitcoin has made money, or data exchange, infinitesimally cheap materially, so is the ideal firm of money.
Money has always been an exchange of data, signalling the trust necessary in a financial exchange
Money is not really anything special in the course of everyday exchange. It is an item of data, presently in analogue form, with the digital form possibly approaching, as digital assets. All money exchange has always been an exchange of data, identical in kind but different in form to all other data exchanges, analogue or digital. The data exchange particular to money is signalling trust or a promise to pay, in a 'half-exchange'. All Bitcoin adds to this is a digital form of the same kind of exchange. Which is not at all insignificant. Being ultra low cost to produce per transaction it's the cheapest form of money so far in history. So is potentially the best form of money so far. Not only that, being digital in form, superseding the historic analogue form, Bitcoin delivers enormous new labour and capital saving opportunity in security, crime busting, government purifying, liquidity and efficiency applications.
Bitcoin, cannot simultaneously be money and commodity
The problem remains for Bitcoin is no one has really placed this invention of political economy under serious scientific scrutiny yet. Not even it's inventor. He still believers that something can be both a commodity and money, simultaneously, which is obviously absurd.
Money has always been a transaction of data. The data content being a signal of trust between two counterparties. It has always been so. And this exchange is only a 'half-exchange' because half of it is still a promise to pay in capital wealth at some point in the future, maybe a second, maybe a year.
Using money in an exchange, is only half of a complete exchange of wealth, for other wealth
Ultimately we do not really exchange goods and services for money. We exchange them for other goods and services. It is not the money we want, but the things that money can buy. This is not to say the full exchange is like barter. It is to say that we take money for wealth hapilly because we know later on it will buy the form of wealth we want.
When money is the purest and cheapest form of data, as Bitcoin delivers, it is the best kind of money. Because it has a minimal quantity of wealth in it. Money does not exist materially. So to make a proxy of it out of something expensive is feckless economically.
When I give some item if economic wealth in exchange for money, that is just one half of a complete exchange. In the final analysis I want to exchange one item of wealth for another item of wealth Because it is not the imaginary money I want which is worthless, but the other things I can buy with the money. That is not to say money has no value. It is to say it is Not wealth, it is not 'worthy'. So this first half exchange I make happily because by taking the money I know in the second half of the exchange I can get what I really want, another item of economic wealth. Some people would call this identical to barter - swapping wealth, for wealth directly. That is true except that by using money there are huge additional benefits. So long as the social group who trust the money in use, continue to trust it. Such as giving me the ability to makes swaps for different things of differing value over the course of varying lengths of time, without needing any other economically costly tools to do so.
These two half exchanges in the Bitcoin world are identical to transaction inputs and outputs(UTXO's) in tech speak. With identical purpose and meaning and with enormous utility. It's just that with Bitcoin technology, a great leap has been made from traditional money, which in itself was a great leap when it started to be used so long ago. Bitcoin is a historic technology which has the opportunity to transform society as all labour saving devices have always done.
Money does not exist as a thing in the material world. It's a metaphysical image of utility. It is not the commodity itself
Money in itself, does not exist as a material world thing. It's a convenient image of wealth delivery great utility to the world. But it is not wealth, in itself. You cannot give me any money directly, that is not in your power, you are not telekinetic. You can only give me items of wealth, which when commoditised in the right way, act as a proxy for money. And the cheaper commodity is economically, the better it is as a proxy for the money.
The danger of believing that money is the same thing as wealth
When people believe money is wealth(or a commodity), in the economic sense, they are thinking about the world with a lower level of understanding. And it is because the thinking is such poor quality that all the problems start emerging n the use of money. An ancient repeating problem yet to be resolved. Can Bitcoin narrative adapt itself to resolve it this time though? Because we believe money is something which it is not, huge errors emerge socially without us being aware of it. We are not thinking about it correctly by using a higher level understanding of the world. If we were we would confess that money is a useful metaphysical image.
A higher level understanding of money as a metaphysical symbol of great utility
If we live in a personal world where we chose a lower level of understanding, this higher level of understanding about the world is a knowledge which is not comprehendible, even to the most intellectual person, if, they chose to limit their understanding to a lower level.
The money is not the material tokens we can touch and feel. In the end, the money is the trust that takes place during an exchange between the two counter parties. The exchange may happen immediately as cash or after a time like a promissory note. But the terms cash and note themselves both identical, differ only by time. You cannot touch and feel that stuff we call money. Because it's an image which thought created and that is all. But really, this image we call money is rather a lot, if, your person can start to look at things with a higher level of understanding of the world. It has enormous utility within any social organisation, so long as we use it with wisdom and understanding it's higher nature in the whole of the world. It could equally be the root of all evil if we only view it at a lower level of understanding.
Of course, the intellectual, who has spent years reading books and passing exams will reject this out of hand and laugh at you. The intellectual exists at a lower level of understanding which only accounts for what the senses can see and feel. Its not possible to speak to someone who has not sought out a higher level of understanding of the whole of the world. Not because they are corrupt, stupid or biased. But because it simply cannot be known about to them yet. A limited world view. Leave them to it. You cannot be a teacher here. All you can do is love them. This does not make intellectuals inferior to non intellectuals. All it means is the intellect will be blinding them due to the intellects vested interest and ego.
This is largely why money is said to be the root of all evil. It's blamed for the ignorance of the people using it who have a limited understanding of the whole of the world. You could be forgiven for showing them sympathy. They simply will not be able to see the harm they are causing.
The misunderstanding of money as simultaneously wealth or a commodity
On the things we imagine are money, these proxies, must be commodities, items of wealth of a specific size or weight, for money to work with them. Else social actors cannot trust it as a proxy for the money. But, the commodities we use as a proxy for it are not the money itself. As just said, they are a proxy for it. A token gesture of the trust or credit involved in an exchange within social organisation. Money is an inevitable social construct. It is neither good nor evil in and of itself. It is certainly what our society makes of it, on the whole. Democracy is of the same nature, neither good nor bad for us. It is what we make of it.
Does money actually exist then? Of course. But not as a material world thing. It's metaphysical - beyond the material world. It's existence is still absolutely a fact. When I have a thought, that thought absolutely happened, just not in the material world. Thought creates images of the world, as a very useful way to understand it. It is the identical activity that creates money as an image, as a proxy, for economic wealth in a actuality. This image which thought created as a proxy for actual wealth has huge utility even though it only exists metaphysically. Wealth in the economic sense can only be created by applying labour and capital, on land somewhere usually the higher value land the more wealth can be created, in the activity of creating something else, which other people want. If people do not want that thing of wealth, either at the point of creation, years in the future, of anywhere in between, it is not wealth, no matter what the intellectual says. Nobody wants it, so nothing will be given in exchange for it.
When people say boldly that financial transactions are not the only purpose of Bitcoin, and that data exchange is really the purpose of Bitcoin, this mindset still resides at a lower level of understanding about what money really is. Money has always been the exchange of information, in the form of credit or trust that the counter party will pay up later. That might not seem like much. But it is everything. And has enormous utility materially.
The Bitcoin world is another victim of this misunderstanding or ignorance at a lower level of understanding. Like all before it imagines that an immaterial thing can be wealth. Without recognising that thought unconsciously has made the commodity the money, in itself, and forgotten about that error, forever.
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