I just was trying to figure out “what the value of a dollar” is, because I didn’t want to be one of those people who didn’t know the value of a dollar! lol.

It never occurred to me people would try to figure out how much 1 dollar is “supposed” to be worth. I have never been terribly interested in economics, aka I never read about economics and try to avoid it in most cases, but I might just have to investigate the whole money system more.

About all I know about the value of the dollar is that some group call “The Fed” tries to keep it somewhat stable by changing interest rates. It’s sort of hard not to know that considering how much it is in the news.

Anyways, thanks for a mind expanding post! And thanks for the kinda comments on my animation, I appreciate it!

Your first theory–”a certain amount of work converted into an abstract numeral value”–is essentially Karl Marx’s Labor Theory of Value. It turned out to be wrong, but it took a lot of economists a lot of time to figure that out.

Your friend then elaborated with, in effect, the “medium of exchange” and “unit of account” explanations, which is 2 out of 3 correct.

Hats off!

Also, great animation!

“The Economist’s Big Mac index [...] is arguably the world’s most accurate financial indicator to be based on a fast-food item.”

But, a friend of mine expressed this quandary in a more practical term. How do you know whether or not something is worth the money or not? Her answer is to compare it to the amount one would have to spend on a dinner. That bicycle is equal to twenty steak dinners, it’s far too expensive. So in a very practical sense, money to her is a number ascribed to how much food costs. 5 = sandwich. cd = 2 sandwiches? GM = one billion eighty million sandwiches?

In the end it is surprising to me how stable money is. I know there are large powers at work to keep it stable, but even so, for something so abstract and fluid, it’s hard to believe basically the entire human race agrees to play along.

That, in effect, gives away my zipcode (which I’ll only be having for another couple of days).

In my next neighborhood, the tree is likely to crush a Prius and one or two pool boys. That gives that one away as well.

I have never lived in a neighborhood where any pickup truck would have been endangered, and I have once or twice lived in neighborhoods where other trees, thought not of the maple variety, were most at risk.

Mostly, I regret to say, I’ve lived in neighborhoods where there was no maple or other tree to fall in the first place.

Interesting demographic litmus test.

I live in a ‘hip and liberal town.’ This is the sort of place where groups of children wearing soccer jerseys will stone you if you recycle (rather than compost) your napkin. Anyhoo, no one was hurt today (or stoned, literally). But, without the slightest nod to irony, our local p.o.s. Newspaper reported today that a seventy five year old maple tree fell and crushed two Priuses.

Art.

If a maple tree falls in your neighborhood is it more likely to crush (a) a smaller maple tree (b) a pickup truck on blocks (c) the pool boy (d) two Priuses (e) none of the above?

Jag: Because I happen to know the English root (the German root is different), I’ve always had trouble calling women virtuous. (Do you know of an equivalent word, from the root for ‘woman’?)

Betty Friedan: Very clever observation.

> sleep is an intriguing evolutionary puzzle – why on earth does it make sense to be unconscious for so long when there are predators around?

> re knowledge and virtue – we have lost knowledge of some of virtue’s original meaning, in translations through languages and time. It originally also connoted the ideal of being a man of action as well as morally good (same root as man – vir, virile etc)

> Re naming what isn’t understood – there is a great counter example of changing a zeitgeist by calling attention to something that was very common but had no name – Betty Freidan – starting the US feminist movement by describing the plight of women in the 50s/60s as suffering from the “Problem That Has No Name”

Cheers

But then, what is food?

Regarding thought: The Platonic Socrates would say that virtue is knowledge, but knowledge can’t be defined. Where does this leave us, Andreas?