Template:M intro systems financialisation: Difference between revisions
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{{d|Financialisation|/faɪˈnænʃᵊlaɪˈzeɪʃᵊn/|n|}} | {{d|Financialisation|/faɪˈnænʃᵊlaɪˈzeɪʃᵊn/|n|}} | ||
{{L1}}''General'': The increasing importance of financial markets, motives, institutions, and elites in the operation of the economy and its governing institutions.<ref>Adapted from ''Financialization, Rentier Interests, and Central Bank Policy'', Epstein, 2001.</ref><li> | {{L1}}''General'': The increasing importance of financial markets, motives, institutions, and elites in the operation of the economy and its governing institutions.<ref>Adapted from ''Financialization, Rentier Interests, and Central Bank Policy'', Epstein, 2001.</ref><li> | ||
''JC’s own meaning'': The [[high-modernist]] goal of reducing ''[[ineffable]]'' things to calculable, and manipulable ''quantities''. So: [[David Graeber]]’s ''social'' indebtedness — the nebulous set of cross pollinating reciprocal favours we do to each other that both define our “community of interest” and bind it together , with a view that ''our debts to each other are never discharged — versus ''monetary'' [[indebtedness]] — specific, delimited obligations that have a defined value, time cost and term, and whose price must be paid in full. (It is if course an irony that the very continued existence of a financial | ''JC’s own meaning'': The [[high-modernist]] goal of reducing ''[[ineffable]]'' things to calculable, and manipulable ''quantities''. So: [[David Graeber]]’s ''social'' indebtedness — the nebulous set of cross pollinating reciprocal favours we do to each other that both define our “community of interest” and bind it together , with a view that ''our debts to each other are never discharged'' — versus ''monetary'' [[indebtedness]] — specific, delimited obligations that have a defined value, time cost and term, and whose price must be paid in full. (It is if course an irony that the very continued existence of a financial indebtedness depends on ongoing “social” indebtedness — exactly the sort of unmeasurable, ineffable trust relationships that financialisation would seek to eradicate with devices like the [[distributed ledger]] and permissionless [[Blockchain]])</ol> | ||
====Machine-legible==== | ====Machine-legible==== | ||
The most manipulable, [[fungible]], calculable, aggregatable articulation of [[value]] known to Western society is [[cash]] — [[degenerate fiat capitalism|''fiat'']] cash, sorry [[cryptobro]]s — and it is the common language in which we describe our interrelationships. Hence “financialisation”. | The most manipulable, [[fungible]], calculable, aggregatable articulation of [[value]] known to Western society is [[cash]] — [[degenerate fiat capitalism|''fiat'']] cash, sorry [[cryptobro]]s — and it is the common language in which we describe our interrelationships. Hence “financialisation”. | ||
But we are talking metaphorically here: | But we are talking metaphorically here: there is “financialisation” in a broader sense that need not involve ''money'' as such: Out-of-five product reviews, [[performance appraisal]]s, [[RAG status]]es, [[net promoter score]]s, QR codes — any numerically measurable criteria that convert the messy, idiosyncratic, intractable ''life experience'' into ordered columns, pivot tables, and scatter plots that can be averaged, extrapolated, enriched, [[Pareto triage]]d, [[standard deviation]] plotted, and put into ranked, tranched ''order''. | ||
====There are no straight lines in nature==== | ====There are no straight lines in nature==== | ||
''[[There is no machine for judging poetry]]''. | ''[[There is no machine for judging poetry]]''. | ||
In which JC reminds us of Robin Williams’ great scene in {{br|Dead | In which JC reminds us of Robin Williams’ great scene in {{br|The Dead Poets Society}} and invites us to, well, take it [[metaphor]]ically. [[Peotry]], right? | ||
''There is no machine for judging commerce either''. | ''There is no machine for judging commerce either''. | ||
Any | Any [[metrics]], balance sheet, [[org chart]], projection or discounted cashflow analysis — ''any'' [[formal]] accounting for the intensely human activity of doing business jettisons much of what is important about it. The [[map]] can never be more than a schematic. It cannot convey the grandeur — or the ''horror'' — of the [[territory]]. The jettisoning is part of the exercise: it is, itself to make a judgment about what is and is not important. It is to extract a [[signal]] from [[hubbub|noise]]. That signal is ad hoc, imaginary, a creative work, and by no means exclusive to the hubbub: there are ''infinite'' array of signals we could take out of the hubbub; the ones we do are determined by our cultural fabric, which is made of all the decisions, signals, and institutions we have already built. This relativity terrifies “right thinking people”, but there is no way around it: it is best just to [[ignorance|ignore]] it. | ||
{{Quote| | |||
Sidebar on [[Ignorance]]: in a world where every communication is tracked, kept, logged, stored and discoverable, where “what you see is all there is” we should not underestimate the perfidious power of ignoring things. The {{poh}} refers: the number of smoking gun emails that went unacknowledged, unresponded to, that left their recipient with the plausible deniability — I did not see it, I did not read it that way, ''I just don’t recall'' — could fill volumes. | |||
The culture of fear in organisations leads to two kinds of ignorance: the canny will not respond on the record at all — any pretext for not doing so (an inappropriate tone, hyperbole, anger, however justifiable) — buttresses that decision. In a perfectly passive aggressive organisation with uneasy peace, the discontented are discouraged, on pain of censure, from even raising objections, whereupon no need for silence as a strategy even arises. | |||
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That much is obvious: it is not the lesson we should be drawing, as we should already know it. It is already imprinted in our cultural fabric, however determined the [[modernist]]s may be to forget it | |||
The lesson is this. If we mistake the map for the territory — if we organise our interests and judge our outcomes exclusively by reference to the map, ''we thereby change the territory''. The territory more closely resembles the map. This is only convenient for cartographers. It is bad for the people in the territory whose interests the cartographers are supposedly trying to represent. It leads to two kinds of bad outcomes. | The lesson is this. If we mistake the map for the territory — if we organise our interests and judge our outcomes exclusively by reference to the map, ''we thereby change the territory''. The territory more closely resembles the map. This is only convenient for cartographers. It is bad for the people in the territory whose interests the cartographers are supposedly trying to represent. It leads to two kinds of bad outcomes. | ||