Those sad devices called trade and money

Let me start by warning you that today you are in for a hard ride. The odds that you landed here by sheer chance are very slim being that I mostly advertise these pages to people who already know me, but just in case you did, please make sure that you have had a proper meal because the counter-cultural rant that follows might fall bad on an empty stomach.

These are ideas that I have been ruminating for some time already, but only now I have found the need to put them in written. This all started earlier this week while I was chatting with Sandra, a friend from the office, about vacation past and planned. She mentioned that her pre-teen son had started to cultivate an interest in watching live sports events, but it was proving impossible to procure tickets to his favorite team, considering that they went for four or five times the price they had paid for other teams. Then I remembered that one of my aunts (my uncle's wife) was a life-long support of that team so I decided to ask her about the situation. Four text message later, it turned out that she and her three brothers have held year tickets since time immemorial and that they will be willing to help. Sandra was flabbergasted by the news but also a bit surprised that I had put so much effort into solving her problem. To me, on the other hand, it is just natural to try to help a friend, particularly when it is just a matter of exchanging a few text messages. And from that difference in philosophy comes this text.

Photo: Nic McPhee

It is ironic that, for more than three hundred years since the time of Adam Smith, political and economic theory has been adamantly blind to the emotional nature of humanity. All the Enlighted theoreticians insisted that human behavior shall be driven by reason, which is a very peculiar position for a scientist: in the natural sciences, one observes a phenomenon like a falling object, tries to measure it and then make predictions about how other instances of the phenomenon might happen. However, if physics were anything like the economic "science" we would be trying to define how fast object should fall... A complete nonsense. Fortunately, in the last twenty years the paradigm has shifted, mainly after Israeli psychologist Daniel Kahnemann was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for his empirical demonstration of the shortcomings of the classical "homo economicus" theory.

However, one only has to open their eyes to see in everyday life this aspect that has eluded the economists for so long. I have mentioned this before, but already as a young adult (more than twenty years ago) my father already told me (or should I say "warned me") that becoming a father was tantamount to signing a blank cheque, because one never ceases to be parent: when your children are small all the waking hours (and some of the sleeping one as well) are devoted to either the preservation of their lives or the procurement for their needs; then they grow up and become somewhat more autonomous, but there is still a non-zero chance that they will show up asking for help or advice. It is possible that the burden of being a parent was once justified when children were able to assist with smaller tasks in farms or some industrial settings, but in modern life there is no "rational" explanation for why we keep having children. And yet, we do.

It is also remarkable that the parents dedication is not an exception: many associations are based in the "free" contributions of the individuals. In the big majority of instances, when someone organizes a group, be it a book club, a trek into the mountains or a visit to the museum, they are contributing their work for free. Of course they expect the activity to happen, but so do all the other members who "allow themselves to be organized" instead of doing the actual work. The same applies to many families where, as the children become more and more capable of performing chores they start take some of the burden off their parents; and most of the times it does not even require keeping track of how many times someone did something, because the important point is that the group works as a whole. Even in the work environment, it is not uncommon that, if one of the members of the team is out, the remaining members tend to take over to close the gap, as Belbin points out.

The problem is that the introduction of accounting frequently end up breaking this free exchange. On the one hand, it is understandable that nobody in a group wants to toil endlessly while others do nothing. On the other hand, it is also not great that one can claim to have done enough and sit out while the rest continue to work. Where do we draw the line? The question is difficult to answer but my position is that, in domains that are domestic enough (e.g. with family, close friends, work colleagues) setting and environment where everyone works as much as necessary without keeping accounts is much healthier than the contrary. At the end of the day, these are people that you will meet day in and day out, and if you slack repeatedly they are eventually going to come back to you and ask what is wrong with you, a bit in the guise imagined in Becky Chamber's book A Prayer for the Crown-Shy, where villages keep track of the work the provide to and receive from others, not so much to demand payback as to diagnose imbalances in the needs of the village.

Because, if you think seriously about it, we rarely trade with our loved ones. Instead, we provide what they need under the implicit assumption that they will provide for us when the situation is inverted. And to some extent it is a blessing and a matter of pride to be able to help more than you need. It is only when trust does not exist, that we need to trade. If you trust me, you do not need any more proof than my word to believe that I will help you in the future. But if you do not, you will ask for something in return that is useful in the present, so that we do not have to extend our relationship into the future. In some sense, trade is just an indicator of mistrust, which is why I tagged it as "sad" in the title.

Even more insidious is the concept of money, because it is the materialization of the fact that one of the parties does not have anything of immediate use to the other. When the recipient of goods and services does not have anything useful to offer to the provides, they can balance out the transaction with a promise (because that is what money is, a promise that you will provide value in the future to the barer of the said token, whoever the barer might be). Do you not find it sad that the provider not only needs an immediate compensation for their goods and services, but there is also nothing that they can use and would take a promise instead?

The final level of sadness comes from the concept of fairness that money introduces. The fact that goods and services have a price that is considered fair also means that needs will consistently be stay uncovered unless there is sufficient money to make the transaction fair. So there we are with someone in need and someone else that can help, but the problem cannot be solved because without the right amount of pre-existing "promises" it would be considered unfair. That is just one more chance where "care" is hampered by fairness.

In my case, with my family, with my friends, with my colleagues, I will always choose to care over fair. It is for me a matter of personal satisfaction to be able to help even when I get nothing out of the deal. And that includes you, Sandra. Have a nice weekend.