A question that made me anxious when I was a teenager is \u201cwhere does money come from really?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most people tend to be satisfied with something like, \u201cwell you get a job, and jobs pay money\u201d – but I\u2019m still anxious. Where do jobs get money? Mostly (but not only!) customers. Where do customers get money? Mostly (but not only!) jobs<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A Paul Graham essay about wealth relieved a substantial amount of anxiety. Without referring to it, my recollection is: money is a proxy (imperfect) for what people want. Get good at making or doing what people want, and you\u2019ll be OK<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s good enough to function, but still\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pause. Let\u2019s switch up to an interesting fact. Some of the biggest sources of money in the world are \u201cinvestment funds\u201d. Saudi Arabia\u2019s investment fund, which I assume is made primarily of oil money, invests billions in proxies that invest in tech, construction\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These hallowed portals of money are so massive and opaque, I\u2019m not sure it\u2019s possible for outsiders like me to develop an accurate model of them or how they work over the course of an entire lifetime. They\u2019re almost like gods, or the high priests of the church of the $$$ god<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nPause. Switch back to jobs. A job is a role in an organization. My favorite fun example of an organization is a bank heist – the getaway driver gets paid even though he isn\u2019t \u201cdirectly\u201d involved (depends on how you see it). When the heist is simple, every job clearly \u201cmatters\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The scary thing to me as a teenager m was the prospect of working a bullshit job in a bullshit organization, cranking widgets that nobody actually cares about, nobody actually wants outside of the bizzaro context of the organization itself<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s interesting to reflect on this now – why was I so averse to this? Seriously, I was constantly nauseous in junior college because I felt like everyone around me was hallucinating and I was given a placebo or something. Everyone marching in lockstep to a beat I couldn\u2019t hear<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some time, space, reading & reflection has made it clear: school isn\u2019t about education, school is part of an economic-industrial complex mass-producing interchangeable widgets for the capitalist meat grinder of humanity. Annoying wokebros whining about this doesn\u2019t make it untrue<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Parents and teachers and peers all unwittingly conspire to create this mass hallucination where people collectively mutilate, cauterize and brand their minds in service of The Economy – and not The Economy itself, but their imperfect, vague and detached conceptualization of it<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The prospect of it always seemed hideously bleak to me. The prize for doing well in school, it seemed, was that you get to win one of the higher paying jobs in one of the more prestigious organisations, meaning you get to crank high-prestige widgets instead of low-status widgets<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s interesting to reflect now how kids of different socioeconomic status would\u2019ve interpreted the received wisdom differently. \ud83e\udd14 kids from wealthy families surely know certain things about the nature of wealth that kids from poorer families don\u2019t, and perhaps never will<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A thing that must\u2019ve shaped my worldview, that I never really thought about: my dad ran his own business for the entirety of my childhood. It was an industrial waste disposal business – blue-collar work. Mr. Veerasamy was literally the founder-CEO of a garbage company<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I had to navigate this weird space:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
– we were better off than a lot of families in SG; we lived on landed property rather than a HDB flat<\/p>\n\n\n\n
– my parents were not-very-smart about how they managed their money. They were always *stressed* about money while we lived in a big house<\/p>\n\n\n\n
– I had many friends who were significantly \u201cpoorer\u201d but clearly happier and better adjusted, and even more… classy? My dad drove us around in a rickety pickup truck with garbage in the back \ud83d\ude02<\/p>\n\n\n\n
– I went to school with kids who were *incredibly* wealthy, top 1%<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I have always had this really feral attitude towards money. And towards everything, really \ud83d\ude02 I was volunteering with prisoners, hanging out with migrant garbagemen, playing in a band, organising gigs, working at a hotel, speaking at rallies and talking with Ministers<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was interesting, I guess, to know that my uneducated dad was making more money hauling trash than several of my friends\u2019 parents who had degrees and so on. I suppose it meant I never quite bought into certain assumptions people have about status<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That said, I think my parents had all sorts of personal demons & bugbears about status & wealth that I wasn\u2019t entirely conscious of. My mum still asks me when I\u2019m going to university \ud83d\ude02 when I see it in them now, I find it a little sad. It\u2019s child-like, like worrying about prom<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I was 17, I was trying to save up money to record my band\u2019s music – and so I worked part-time banquet staff at Shangri-La hotel. It was one of the most interesting experiences of my life (lol at potato quality 2007 camera phones)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My dad always told me, \u201cI want you to study hard so you don\u2019t have to struggle and suffer like me\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But working hard manual labor at SL was *incredibly* satisfying to me. It was the opposite of school. Everything I did *mattered*. I felt real kinship with everyone I worked with<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I get that I was working only for a month or so, and it\u2019s a sort of \u201cblue collar tourism\u201d – life is different for people who have no choice. I know. I spoke with them, worked with them, ate with them, smoked with them. It was the realest experience of my life until then<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So like… maybe what my dad was trying to say with \u201cI don\u2019t want you to struggle like me\u201d is, \u201cI don\u2019t want you to feel low-status like me\u201d, in which case I have already succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. But I don\u2019t think he sees it \ud83d\ude02 yet, anyway. Asian parents need proof<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I think what I\u2019m circling around to is… my experiences with lots of different people have taught me that there\u2019s something unjust about the way money is distributed. (Just observing my own feelings; I\u2019m not advocating for redistribution or anything. Just trying to understand)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And I think maybe the secret is buried in the phrase \u201cmoney is debt\u201d, which is an idea I\u2019ve encountered several times but I\u2019ve never quite properly investigated \ud83e\udd14<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before I get down to reading the Graeber book I think it\u2019s interesting to just reflect and riff on the idea. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Money is debt. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Money is a promise. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Money is a piece of paper representing the promises people have made each other<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We pay each other with other people\u2019s promises.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
____<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“One can divide political twitter into people who think wealth is created and people who think poverty is created.” \u2013 Ben Evans<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n I find myself thinking about some interesting things that happened with Paul Graham…<\/p>\n\n\n\n