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 threadConormcelvaney

@liamvhogan this is so true, I sometimes think that the reason it works is because of this.

I can spend hours thinking about it and it all makes sense in my head, but at soon as I write it down.... Gone

Jan 1, 2023 at 11:50pmWeb