Liam Jan 1, 2023

The thing about the concept of a very rich man ‘losing’ $200bn is that if this sum can be ‘lost’ rather than spent, transferred, or stolen, it really calls into question its existence in the first place, and from there you start to wonder about the reality of large sums of money at all.

That is one of the qualities of money, that small amounts are extremely tangible (that $20 in your wallet, those coins in the tray with your keys), but the larger the quantity the more intangible and subject to weird philosophical ideas it is

Show threadLiam Jan 1, 2023

All the economists insist that yes, the ‘household budget’ metaphor for national economies is wrong. Countries don’t have to save for the future in the same way you or I do because they can print money, and ‘savings’ are for countries are really also opportunities lost.

But what the ‘household’ metaphor reveals is that most people struggle to conceptualise money in the large scale, because it really is less and less real the more of it you try to think about

Show threadLiam 

Public transport illustrates the difference.

When you or I catch the train we pay a fare, say a couple of dollars. That sum is absolute, policed by special guards, and if I don’t have it, the gate squawks red and I can’t get to work. But systems as wholes rarely depend on fare box takings, the best ones least of all.

Instead the relationship for the public transport network is to the State and city as an organic economy; maybe it depends on a subsidy, or a share of future development near stations, or special taxes levied on specific firms (or a mix!). Whatever, the sums are very very large, and are negotiated politically, and it’s far more important that everyone have confidence the network will exist in the future

Jan 1, 2023 at 11:45pmWeb
Show threadLiam Jan 1, 2023
So there’s another paradox: for these small sums like a train fare, the value is set and the argument for paying is moral—why should I fare evade when everyone else has to pay?—while for the big sums on which the whole system depends, the rights and wrongs are negotiable and the sums, as any rail contractor knows, are fictive
Show threadLiam Jan 2, 2023
AND it isn’t a coincidence, I think, that the basis of people’s confidence in cryptocurrency either lies in slippery ethics (the bad faith of convincing the next sucker of the absolute value of a coin) or in the obscurantism of extremely large numbers (the good faith of trusting very large sums, or hashes, or computing times, or some other number with a power factor).
Show threadMark Deasy 🍉Jan 2, 2023

@liamvhogan here's the best explainer on money I have found so far. A pity our own RBA lacks the empathy to explain in plain, accessible English how the system works.

Only 14 pages ... :-)

https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-bulletin/2014/money-creation-in-the-modern-economy.pdf

Show threadnevJan 2, 2023

@liamvhogan > systems as wholes rarely depend on fare box takings

*laughs in #TTC *

Show threadLiam Jan 2, 2023
@nev yeah look North America as a continent provides a lot of lessons in how not to fund public transport systems
Show threadLiam Jan 2, 2023
@nev mind you! Toronto’s system also provided the Spadina Bus Song so who’s to say if it’s good or bad etc.
Show threadla_paniqueJan 2, 2023
@liamvhogan @nev Imagine how upset I was to move here and find out it was a streetcar!
Show threadYes, *that* dawn personJan 2, 2023

@liamvhogan @nev The last day of service for the Spadina Bus 77B was July 26, 1997. https://transittoronto.ca/bus/routes/77-spadina-1948.shtml

I too enjoyed shuffling with the demons.

77 Spadina (1948-1997) - Transit Toronto - Surface Route Histories

Show threadJustified Ancient of MoominJan 2, 2023
@nev @liamvhogan Hong Kong’s MTR makes money from a combination of real estate holdings and farebox revenue. TfL until the pandemic did quite well with a very high farebox recovery ratio. But those are outliers and notably, depend on a combination of wealthy users and high density cities to achieve that, and still need lots of government funding to handle capital projects
Show threadI'm RimeJan 2, 2023

@liamvhogan

From my perspective small amounts are most tangible because that is where the heaviest and strictest enforcement lies - fundamentally fares act to justify making decisions about who can and can't use the service, children and the penniless are the intended target here.

With NSW's Opal cards, they can track you through it better than tickets anyway, so I don't see why we should pay fare while we are still tracked.

Show threadI'm RimeJan 2, 2023

@liamvhogan

consider the same for well, rent, and food.