(03-30-2024, 04:02 PM)Lucky2Last Wrote: The case for the U.S. dollar being imaginary doesn't ignore its functional reality; people need and use dollars every day, and it holds purchasing power both domestically and internationally. However, its detachment from tangible assets and reliance on governmental authority and public faith reveal its "fakeness" in a philosophical and structural sense.

The fiat system grants central banks, like the Federal Reserve, immense power to manipulate the money supply—printing more money or withdrawing it from circulation—to influence economic conditions. This ability to "create" money out of thin air further underscores the notion of fiat currency as "fake." Unlike commodities or assets that require effort to mine, grow, or produce, fiat money's value is decoupled from physical reality, hinging instead on policy decisions and economic indicators. It's an artificial construct, a necessary one perhaps, but artificial nonetheless, sustained by the very belief in its validity and the systems in place to enforce that belief. If selfish actors capture the institutions of power, then those people exclusively operate from a special place of privilege.

The public private partnership that is at the heart of the new global movement offers a distinct advantage to any elite willing to come on board and play ball. Us peons will feel the weight of the system that protects the assets for the elites, but they will never feel it, because they own it. It's fake to them, for all intents and purposes.

I'm reminded of a scene from The Aviator in which Leonardo DiCaprio portrays Howard Hughes. In the scene, Hughes is at the family home of Katharine Hepburn, who he was banging at the time. Hepburn's family was wealthy. When Hughes brought up the subject of finances at the dinner table, the Hepburn matriarch clutches her pearls and says something along the lines of 'We don't discuss money in this house, Mr. Hughes, we're socialists!' To which Hughes responds, 'You don't discuss it because you have it.'

Currently, I'm reading (off and on) American Prometheus, a biography about Robert Oppenheimer and the basis for that most disappointing recent movie. Oppenheimer came from wealth and enjoyed a very privileged upbringing. He turned down a fellowship at Harvard because 'he didn't need the money'. Later in the same chapter, Oppenheimer complains about fraternizing with a certain group because he found them "bourgeois".  

The rich really do think differently than the rest of us. They see financial struggle and the middle class as abstract concepts.

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