This article is a reminder to all of us programmers that there is a belief that is common among non-programmer intellectuals (especially the above-average-intelligence-but-not-genius types) but completely non-existent among skilled software engineers:
Abstraction is inherently dishonest.
If you're a good software engineer, you quickly build an understanding that abstractions are vital for detailed understanding of complex systems, but can leak or even fail entirely. Less quickly, software engineers build very good instincts at how to tell when an abstraction is leaking/failing (that's what debugging is, after all).
Outside software engineering, this is not a skill that is consistently practiced. As a result, you end up getting takes like this one, in which the authors figure out that "money" is an abstraction over "all productive work and assets" and that this abstraction sometimes leaks.
But because the authors aren't used to dealing with abstractions, they assume that the fact that the abstraction "money" leaks sometimes means that it's worthless and should be removed. In fact, the opposite is true: the abstraction "money" does leak (which can cause real serious problems), but in the cases it doesn't, it's essential to human flourishing in any economy more complex than "exchange bread for pelts"
I found a newer blog post based on a speech the author gave with some ideas from their book. It's very long because he's talking about multiple related ideas, but I excerpted some quotes here:
> We can find this same principle down through the history of the corporation. When in the beginning of the 20th century we see the generalization of the corporate form, it’s not a process where large-scale investment required raising more funds. The problem that the corporation is solving is that you have large-scale enterprises with long-lived specialized fixed assets, on the one hand, and wealth owners, on the other hand, with claims on those enterprises — often the owners of smaller enterprises that merge into one larger one, or the heirs of the founder — who don’t want an interest in this particular company. They want money. And so the function of the corporate form is to allow the conversion of ownership rights into money — to enable payments that will satisfy these claimants, so that their authority over the production process can be pooled, their smaller interests can be assembled into a larger whole.
> This is not a system for raising funds for investment. It’s a system for consolidating authority. It’s a system for reconciling the need for large-scale, long-lived organizational production, on the one hand, with the desire of the wealthy to hold their wealth in a more money-like form, on the other. As William Lazonick says, the corporation is not a vehicle for raising funds for investment, it’s a vehicle for distributing money to the wealthy. The origin of the corporation as we know it is as a vehicle for moving funds out of productive enterprises to asset-owners.
I would put it differently: sometimes it's about raising funds, but the more important part (he claims) is being able to cash out.
A friend of mine uses the term “coin sickness“ to describe somebody who would rather have money than material wealth. Someone who sees the brand of clothing but couldn’t identify quality fabrics or stitching.
I use Chrome for iOS. On human-hostile sites like that, I take the human out of the loop. I press the “hey Gemini, what is this page about?” button and read a clean version in an overlay window.
This article is a reminder to all of us programmers that there is a belief that is common among non-programmer intellectuals (especially the above-average-intelligence-but-not-genius types) but completely non-existent among skilled software engineers:
Abstraction is inherently dishonest.
If you're a good software engineer, you quickly build an understanding that abstractions are vital for detailed understanding of complex systems, but can leak or even fail entirely. Less quickly, software engineers build very good instincts at how to tell when an abstraction is leaking/failing (that's what debugging is, after all).
Outside software engineering, this is not a skill that is consistently practiced. As a result, you end up getting takes like this one, in which the authors figure out that "money" is an abstraction over "all productive work and assets" and that this abstraction sometimes leaks.
But because the authors aren't used to dealing with abstractions, they assume that the fact that the abstraction "money" leaks sometimes means that it's worthless and should be removed. In fact, the opposite is true: the abstraction "money" does leak (which can cause real serious problems), but in the cases it doesn't, it's essential to human flourishing in any economy more complex than "exchange bread for pelts"
This is a book excerpt. I didn’t find any in-depth reviews, but one of the authors posted a summary of the book here:
https://jwmason.org/slackwire/against-money/
I found a newer blog post based on a speech the author gave with some ideas from their book. It's very long because he's talking about multiple related ideas, but I excerpted some quotes here:
https://skybrian-links.exe.xyz/post/765
Here's one quote:
> We can find this same principle down through the history of the corporation. When in the beginning of the 20th century we see the generalization of the corporate form, it’s not a process where large-scale investment required raising more funds. The problem that the corporation is solving is that you have large-scale enterprises with long-lived specialized fixed assets, on the one hand, and wealth owners, on the other hand, with claims on those enterprises — often the owners of smaller enterprises that merge into one larger one, or the heirs of the founder — who don’t want an interest in this particular company. They want money. And so the function of the corporate form is to allow the conversion of ownership rights into money — to enable payments that will satisfy these claimants, so that their authority over the production process can be pooled, their smaller interests can be assembled into a larger whole.
> This is not a system for raising funds for investment. It’s a system for consolidating authority. It’s a system for reconciling the need for large-scale, long-lived organizational production, on the one hand, with the desire of the wealthy to hold their wealth in a more money-like form, on the other. As William Lazonick says, the corporation is not a vehicle for raising funds for investment, it’s a vehicle for distributing money to the wealthy. The origin of the corporation as we know it is as a vehicle for moving funds out of productive enterprises to asset-owners.
I would put it differently: sometimes it's about raising funds, but the more important part (he claims) is being able to cash out.
A friend of mine uses the term “coin sickness“ to describe somebody who would rather have money than material wealth. Someone who sees the brand of clothing but couldn’t identify quality fabrics or stitching.
While financialized society is still standing, I'd much rather have money than material wealth.
Security and freedom, time, and well-being. Worth much more than another luxury t-shirt.
Why do people write like this? So much preamble. Unnecessary metaphors. Just make your point and be done with it.
Because "money and physical things are conflated in our thinking" is simple enough to sound trite.
Why do people even write, just so us pictures am I right ?
Haha agreed, but remember, it's posted on lit[erature]hub, not tech[nical]hub.
So many popups.
I love reading articles in Firefox. uBlock Origin takes care of most annoyances, immediately using Reader View on load makes it them look the same.
Didn’t see any in mobile Safari with ad blocker.
That popups has an annoying article. I think.
My mobile browser gave up it was so bad. Shame, it seemed like it could have been an interesting read.
It looks good on Firefox For Android with the uBlock Origin add-on.
Works fine on Lynx (on Termux).
Only if you run javascript
i turned off adguard on ios safari to see what you're talking about... oh wow! You really didn't overstate it.
In other news, my appreciation of the block lists i have configured in adguard just notched up a few more points!
lol 11 comments on this article and all but 1 are about the popups
I use Chrome for iOS. On human-hostile sites like that, I take the human out of the loop. I press the “hey Gemini, what is this page about?” button and read a clean version in an overlay window.