Hey Brett, I loved this piece to the extent that I have shared it both selectively and widely, including adding it to the explanatory links on my own site - thanks!
Fyi, there were just two sentences that I found myself stumbling over and re-reading several times to try to understand, which might accordingly be worth a clarifying polish, if you're so inclined:
"This does not mean you constantly interact with every single person in that battery, but it does mean that everyone experiences a permanent requirement – on average – to fire up latent connections to the battery, even if the people who make it up appear to you as strangers."
"It is only when you ignore this fantasy of autonomy, however, that you will see that it is everyone who you are pushing past that is creating much of the pull that will lock-in monetary systems like a vacuum."
Ha ha, you perfectly honed in on the two sentences that need the most further exploration and explanation. This is something I will work on developing over time, so stay tuned my friend :)
I totally agree with you that the vacuum metaphor needs some polishing. In my eyes it is too abstract. I understand it as: "Necessity to interact with others on the very large scale makes the monetary systems unescapable." But I am not even sure, it is correct understanding.
Anyway, it was great read and it is really illuminating that so small thing like the starting point in the cyclic overlapping systems plays such a great role in the narratives we can construct about them.
I got some intuitive understanding of that, when Tarzan suite I used years ago stopped being functional in explaining of many problems. And now I have finally tool and very usefull metaphor for much better understanding. Thank you!
This is fantastic, Brett. It feels like you are putting into words what I know intuitively and explaining why I utterly failed to get interested in economics when I attempted to study it as part of my university degree. It was so boring - because it was dead not alive...
Do you have any suggestions for how to rewire our thinking more permanently, so we don't keep defaulting to the Tarzan suite?
Really glad you like it Helen. I don't quite know how to permanently rewire our thinking, partly because our position in an economy keeps on trying to 'reinstall' the Tarzan suite, even as we deprogram ourselves from it. I guess seeing through it just takes practice.
I will in future develop more pieces around this, but if you want to explore other pieces that are in the same line, check out
3) I also put out a big recent piece called 5D Money that expands on the Tarzan/Mowgli suite and synthesises it with other parts of my work https://brettscott.substack.com/p/5d-money-part-1, but most of that is only available to paying subscribers
Thanks Brett! I will check out those posts. I've bought your book and am really loving it, and when I've finished it will most likely become a paying subscriber. It feels so important to see behind the curtains of this synthetic money world that dominates and controls our lives - thank you for playing your part in that.
As an economics teacher with a humanities background, and someone much more sympathetic to anthropological accounts of the economy than that given by typical economists, this gives me a really helpful set of analogies. Thank you!
Excellent read! The Tarzan vs Mowgli approach is a neat way to capture some of the more complex points regarding the origins of money and the role it plays within our system. Regarding Bitcoin, I'd argue (and I'm sure you would agree) that choosing their Suite was an intentional design choice. In creating a psuedo-commodity system optimized for the Tarzan Suite there was an inherent hope that this would spur an abandonment from the Mowgli Suite simply by presenting a (theoretically) technically superior monetary system.
Moving beyond Bitcoin, I wonder how other cryptosystems or crypto inspired distributed ledger systems, adapted to the Mowgli Suite present an opportunity for change. There are plenty of ideas in crypto that offer compelling ideas, such as direct ownership, peer-to-peer exchange, dynamic assets and contracts, digitally streamlined services etc.
Great article, good motivation for further thinking.
Thanks for the comment Khan, and really glad you enjoyed the piece! I agree with you on your point about Bitcoin, and for sure, there's a lot of scope to explore Mowgli-inspired crypto systems
Brett, very thought provoking. Does running the Mowgli suite of drivers entail certain policy changes, in your view? I was expecting some proposed changes to current monetary and fiscal policy, since most institutions are running variations of Tarzan. Or were you simply positing a new conceptual framework?
Hi MT, glad you found it interesting. There's no single answer to your question. Reorientating to the Mowgli suite initially just gives a clearer view on any particular monetary system, but thinking like this also expands the imagination around money. Much conservative monetary policy, for example, relies upon creating a commodity metaphor for money in order to shut down the imagination. Calls for austerity, for example, depends on people believing that money is a limited commodity that has 'run out'. The act of describing an economy as a series of solo individuals with commodities, and the government as just being like one big solo individual, has a lot of political consequences.
By contrast, when you start describing the economy as an interdependent mesh held together by systems of credit, and the government being one major player in the issuance of credit, the political imagination shifts. An interesting example of these dynamics is the MMT community, which uses a sub-branch of credit money thinking to destabilise traditional thinking around public finances: on the one hand, MMT is *descriptive*, just providing a new conceptual framework for the same phenomena that economists have described with commodity thinking for a long time. On the other hand, it has a *prescriptive* implication, in that it opens the imagination. A government minister doesn't need to know anything about MMT in order to be able to issue new money - that's a structural reality of the monetary system - but understanding MMT would certainly makes it easier for them to understand what they're doing.
It's a bit like people in the past, who used to believe that the sun circulated around a static earth: you can still survive on the planet your entire life while believing this, and you can use that framework to describe everything, but once you see that it's actually the earth that goes around the sun, you imagination, and perhaps capacities, are expanded
Insightful read! I have always been quite skeptic of cryptomaniacs. Never saw cryptocurrency as a bubble waiting to get burst but never saw it replacing the current monetary system as well. This particular piece of writing actually provided ammunition to the ongoing debates happening all over the world on the infallibility and inevitability of crypto. Happy to get hold of the X-Ray vision- thanks!
Hi Brett, my name es Luis Salas Rodríguez. I am from Venezuela. Excuse my not so good English. But I have read and followed you and I would like to exchange with you about the Venezuelan experience with the bolivar, the petro (the public cryptocurrency), the hyperinflation, dollarization and the disappearance of cash with the recent conversion to the digital bolivar. My mail is salasrluis@gmail.com
Really enjoyed this one! Also, might be interesting to note that from my reading of "the master and his emissary" by Iain McGilchrist - the Tarzan view maps almost perfectly to a left hemispheric take on the world vs the Mowgli view which maps to a right hemispheric take.
Its a really good (but dense) read which tries to weave together an overview of the current literature on hemispheric differences, the philosophy of (mainly) Heidegger and the wide sweep of western history highlighting the slow triumph (and tyranny) of the left hemisphere's view of the world over the right.
Thanks for the tip David. I've been aware of Ian's work for some time, and actually know some of the people from Perspectiva who are publishing his new book. I haven't actually read the Master and Emissary but would really like to
Thanks so much for this. Very clear writing. I really enjoyed it and it really helped me to begin to unthink things that I have taken for granted for many years.
In particular this below is exactly how I remember the experience. My line was something like “I thought having no money would make me think on my feet, instead it made me lie on the floor”
“Indeed, if do find yourself temporarily as an independent atom – like an unemployed person with no money does – you will experience an immense existential dread, and an immensely strong magnetic pull to return to a molecular form (especially in the absence being able to live off the land).”
I agree with those that picked out some unclear lines. I did become a bit lost toward the end partly I think because I was expecting a more clear political conclusion. But also this line
“It is being used to fire up latent connections between de facto interdependent people, a commodity form running on credit rails, as it were.”
I guess I’m thinking the implications of the credit view of money could be fleshed out
Much food for thought, look forward to reading more!
Hey Brett, I loved this piece to the extent that I have shared it both selectively and widely, including adding it to the explanatory links on my own site - thanks!
Fyi, there were just two sentences that I found myself stumbling over and re-reading several times to try to understand, which might accordingly be worth a clarifying polish, if you're so inclined:
"This does not mean you constantly interact with every single person in that battery, but it does mean that everyone experiences a permanent requirement – on average – to fire up latent connections to the battery, even if the people who make it up appear to you as strangers."
"It is only when you ignore this fantasy of autonomy, however, that you will see that it is everyone who you are pushing past that is creating much of the pull that will lock-in monetary systems like a vacuum."
Ha ha, you perfectly honed in on the two sentences that need the most further exploration and explanation. This is something I will work on developing over time, so stay tuned my friend :)
I totally agree with you that the vacuum metaphor needs some polishing. In my eyes it is too abstract. I understand it as: "Necessity to interact with others on the very large scale makes the monetary systems unescapable." But I am not even sure, it is correct understanding.
Anyway, it was great read and it is really illuminating that so small thing like the starting point in the cyclic overlapping systems plays such a great role in the narratives we can construct about them.
I got some intuitive understanding of that, when Tarzan suite I used years ago stopped being functional in explaining of many problems. And now I have finally tool and very usefull metaphor for much better understanding. Thank you!
Glad you liked it Ondřej! Yes, the metaphor definitely needs work, so consider it a work in progress
This is fantastic, Brett. It feels like you are putting into words what I know intuitively and explaining why I utterly failed to get interested in economics when I attempted to study it as part of my university degree. It was so boring - because it was dead not alive...
Do you have any suggestions for how to rewire our thinking more permanently, so we don't keep defaulting to the Tarzan suite?
Really glad you like it Helen. I don't quite know how to permanently rewire our thinking, partly because our position in an economy keeps on trying to 'reinstall' the Tarzan suite, even as we deprogram ourselves from it. I guess seeing through it just takes practice.
I will in future develop more pieces around this, but if you want to explore other pieces that are in the same line, check out
1) https://brettscott.substack.com/p/drawing-money-for-aliens This is kinda a follow-up piece
2) This is an earlier piece https://brettscott.substack.com/p/structure-vs-functions-of-money
3) I also put out a big recent piece called 5D Money that expands on the Tarzan/Mowgli suite and synthesises it with other parts of my work https://brettscott.substack.com/p/5d-money-part-1, but most of that is only available to paying subscribers
Thanks Brett! I will check out those posts. I've bought your book and am really loving it, and when I've finished it will most likely become a paying subscriber. It feels so important to see behind the curtains of this synthetic money world that dominates and controls our lives - thank you for playing your part in that.
As an economics teacher with a humanities background, and someone much more sympathetic to anthropological accounts of the economy than that given by typical economists, this gives me a really helpful set of analogies. Thank you!
Really happy to hear that Ives. You might also be interested in 1) https://brettscott.substack.com/p/drawing-money-for-aliens 2) https://brettscott.substack.com/p/5d-money-part-1 and 3) https://brettscott.substack.com/p/the-anthropologist-in-an-economist, which are related to this piece
Excellent read! The Tarzan vs Mowgli approach is a neat way to capture some of the more complex points regarding the origins of money and the role it plays within our system. Regarding Bitcoin, I'd argue (and I'm sure you would agree) that choosing their Suite was an intentional design choice. In creating a psuedo-commodity system optimized for the Tarzan Suite there was an inherent hope that this would spur an abandonment from the Mowgli Suite simply by presenting a (theoretically) technically superior monetary system.
Moving beyond Bitcoin, I wonder how other cryptosystems or crypto inspired distributed ledger systems, adapted to the Mowgli Suite present an opportunity for change. There are plenty of ideas in crypto that offer compelling ideas, such as direct ownership, peer-to-peer exchange, dynamic assets and contracts, digitally streamlined services etc.
Great article, good motivation for further thinking.
Thanks for the comment Khan, and really glad you enjoyed the piece! I agree with you on your point about Bitcoin, and for sure, there's a lot of scope to explore Mowgli-inspired crypto systems
Brett, very thought provoking. Does running the Mowgli suite of drivers entail certain policy changes, in your view? I was expecting some proposed changes to current monetary and fiscal policy, since most institutions are running variations of Tarzan. Or were you simply positing a new conceptual framework?
Hi MT, glad you found it interesting. There's no single answer to your question. Reorientating to the Mowgli suite initially just gives a clearer view on any particular monetary system, but thinking like this also expands the imagination around money. Much conservative monetary policy, for example, relies upon creating a commodity metaphor for money in order to shut down the imagination. Calls for austerity, for example, depends on people believing that money is a limited commodity that has 'run out'. The act of describing an economy as a series of solo individuals with commodities, and the government as just being like one big solo individual, has a lot of political consequences.
By contrast, when you start describing the economy as an interdependent mesh held together by systems of credit, and the government being one major player in the issuance of credit, the political imagination shifts. An interesting example of these dynamics is the MMT community, which uses a sub-branch of credit money thinking to destabilise traditional thinking around public finances: on the one hand, MMT is *descriptive*, just providing a new conceptual framework for the same phenomena that economists have described with commodity thinking for a long time. On the other hand, it has a *prescriptive* implication, in that it opens the imagination. A government minister doesn't need to know anything about MMT in order to be able to issue new money - that's a structural reality of the monetary system - but understanding MMT would certainly makes it easier for them to understand what they're doing.
It's a bit like people in the past, who used to believe that the sun circulated around a static earth: you can still survive on the planet your entire life while believing this, and you can use that framework to describe everything, but once you see that it's actually the earth that goes around the sun, you imagination, and perhaps capacities, are expanded
I still share this article on a fairly regular basis... it really is a gift that keeps giving. Thanks Brett!
Insightful read! I have always been quite skeptic of cryptomaniacs. Never saw cryptocurrency as a bubble waiting to get burst but never saw it replacing the current monetary system as well. This particular piece of writing actually provided ammunition to the ongoing debates happening all over the world on the infallibility and inevitability of crypto. Happy to get hold of the X-Ray vision- thanks!
Hi Brett, my name es Luis Salas Rodríguez. I am from Venezuela. Excuse my not so good English. But I have read and followed you and I would like to exchange with you about the Venezuelan experience with the bolivar, the petro (the public cryptocurrency), the hyperinflation, dollarization and the disappearance of cash with the recent conversion to the digital bolivar. My mail is salasrluis@gmail.com
Thanks Luis. Happy to chat, but on holiday right now, so I'll try get to you in January if that's ok. Cheers!
Really enjoyed this one! Also, might be interesting to note that from my reading of "the master and his emissary" by Iain McGilchrist - the Tarzan view maps almost perfectly to a left hemispheric take on the world vs the Mowgli view which maps to a right hemispheric take.
Its a really good (but dense) read which tries to weave together an overview of the current literature on hemispheric differences, the philosophy of (mainly) Heidegger and the wide sweep of western history highlighting the slow triumph (and tyranny) of the left hemisphere's view of the world over the right.
Thanks for the tip David. I've been aware of Ian's work for some time, and actually know some of the people from Perspectiva who are publishing his new book. I haven't actually read the Master and Emissary but would really like to
This was fantastic!
Thanks Mike!
Interesting and thought-provoking as always!
Thanks!
Thanks so much for this. Very clear writing. I really enjoyed it and it really helped me to begin to unthink things that I have taken for granted for many years.
In particular this below is exactly how I remember the experience. My line was something like “I thought having no money would make me think on my feet, instead it made me lie on the floor”
“Indeed, if do find yourself temporarily as an independent atom – like an unemployed person with no money does – you will experience an immense existential dread, and an immensely strong magnetic pull to return to a molecular form (especially in the absence being able to live off the land).”
I agree with those that picked out some unclear lines. I did become a bit lost toward the end partly I think because I was expecting a more clear political conclusion. But also this line
“It is being used to fire up latent connections between de facto interdependent people, a commodity form running on credit rails, as it were.”
I guess I’m thinking the implications of the credit view of money could be fleshed out
Much food for thought, look forward to reading more!