Exchange
What is economics really? (Day 5)
The first day of the meta view
Today is day 5 in my writing experiment if we think linearly.
Today is day 1 if we think thematically … because this day last week was the first day I started thinking in terms of meta themes.
From the Book of Hours
Was it inevitable that I went meta?
Probably yes. As I continue to write these newsletters and engage in a rewriting, I engage in reflection and the more I reflect the more I am looking for patterns between days between weeks. Theoretically if I was rewriting I would be compressing. I got this from John Vervaeke’s 13th episode of the meaning crises.
One way to rewrite is to compress, is to reduce the signal to noise, to remove the extraneous bits, to polish a mineral and turn it into a gem.
I am rewriting like a virus, adding junk DNA into the chromosomes.
What is economics?
We can think of economics as the logic of interaction, interaction between agents (human and non human). Does this mean that quantum physics is economics? When two molecules exchange electrons is this economics? What changes if we think about this as economics versus physics?
The market does not regulate the exchange of quantum electrons unless we imagine that quantum physics is a market. What is the market? It is a place where you go if you want to exchange something, or if you want to learn how to exchange something. The market like quantum physics is affected by the observer. I do not know where the market is unless I try to buy something. That is why there are all the algorithmic bots making super fast, super small bids and asks on stocks. They are trying to see where the market is. Only by interacting with the market can we learn about the agents in the market. This is participatory epistemology.
Do all economies have to have markets? Are markets inherently bad or unequal. Equations prioritize equality. We need to make both sides of the equal side … equal. Liberal society prioritizes freedom all the variables are free to act as they want, but then it becomes difficult to make the two parts of the equation equal. The market is where we can go to act freely, not the equation. But how can we combine the two?
If we sit with this binary and this tension and third possibility will arise perhaps. Right now there is a tension that overlays all human interaction in capitalist society. The consumer and the producer. Even within organizations bosses are considered producers and subordinates, consumers. Some may call this capital and labor but this is wrong. These people are in part of the same social class. This is a distinction between those who want something and those who have something and with no ability to account for equality, there is fear on all sides that something inequitable is taking place.
But the work place is not the market. The small business owner on the street is not the market. Even the Greek Agora is not the New York Stock Exchange with faceless bots making fake offers on products.
I am still reading Karen Barad’s Meeting the Universe Half - which is probably where this all comes from. I am also reading The Anthropic Cosmological Principle also is perhaps contributing to these hazy notions
XO
Meredith