Assignment 2
•Can you detect any recurring themes in monetary history?
Develop your own theory on the main factor influencing monetary history, and turn this into a “law” enabling you to make predictions relevant to our current situation.
Provide examples from monetary history, using examples from this lesson, other sources if required, and Glyn Davies book: https://archive.org/details/HistoryOfMoney.
When you have formulated your law, and justified it from examples, write it up in no more than 500 words and post it in the forum, then comment on and vote up and down the laws of the other students
ANSWER:
I do not intend to develop a theory, because that is impossible without hypotheses and experimentation! Only fools develop theories in solitariness.
I am so fortunate to be without any knowledge of finance and economics, so I am free to think.
However, I have a hypothesis on the recent history of production and exchange of value:
Traditionally, I believe, economic statistics has been confined to the two domains of goods/comodities and services.
Goods are based on atoms from natural resources, processed by the means of energy and workmanship (skills/ "knowledge"); matter+energy
Services are time-based delivery of workmanship (e.g. haircutting, portrait painting); time+knowledge
A third category does exist, but has never entered the economist's statistics: Configurations; these are entirely mental constructions like stories, musical compositions, theatrical plays, essays and novels (configured by letters forming words, forming sentences, forming paragraphs, forming sections, chapters,...); Imagination+ampleness
Configurations were traditionally provided by performance (playing, telling, ...).
With the invention of the printing press (ca. 1450) configurations could be coded in symbols, printed and sold.
Computer Software and all kinds of information is in this category; digital configurations. They are, however, often disguised in packaging to make them look like goods.
Nowadays, all configurations are becoming digital, hence they can be copied and distributed at no cost!
My humble hypothesis is that digital configurations will, besides natural resources, be the dominant factor in all human production and endeavour. And they will be free to use for anyone who can take benefit for themself and others. The need for money will disappear.
Computer Software is a particular kind of the universal concept of digital configurations.
There is no need for money to download and use free software like the Mozilla Firefox Web Browser or LibreOffice for the old-fashioned tasks of past centuries.