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 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>
''JC’s own meaning'': The [[high-modernist]] goal of reducing ''[[ineffable]]'' things to calculable, and manipulable ''quantities''. </ol>
====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”.  
[[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]])
====Helping the machines to read us====
{{drop|T|he 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: 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, implied carbon footprints, gender pay differentials — 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''.
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, implied carbon footprints, gender pay differentials — 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''.
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The lesson is this. If we mistake the map for the territory — if we organise our interests and judge our outcomes only by reference to the map, ''we thereby change the territory''. Gradually, by degrees, the territory converges on the map. This is excellent news, in the short term, for the machines and the class who employ them — cartographers — as it makes life easier. Amongst the rest of us, out there in the territory, it presents 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 only by reference to the map, ''we thereby change the territory''. Gradually, by degrees, the territory converges on the map. This is excellent news, in the short term, for the machines and the class who employ them — cartographers — as it makes life easier. Amongst the rest of us, out there in the territory, it presents two kinds of bad outcomes.


{{L1}} Making life easier for devices that work by “algorithm” and see world in terms of numbers — call these “financialisation machines” — enhances financialisation by eradicating [[ineffability]]. It diminishes the benefit of network nodes that ''can'' handle ineffability — this is good, right, because those nodes — call them [[subject matter expert]]s, or even humans — are expensive, slow and unpredictable.  
{{L1}} Making life easier for devices that work by “algorithm” and see the world in terms of numbers — call these “financialisation machines” — enhances financialisation by eradicating [[ineffability]]. It diminishes the benefit of network nodes that ''can'' handle ineffability — this is good, right, because those nodes — call them [[subject matter expert]]s, or even humans — are expensive, slow and unpredictable.  


Now of course we can assign humans to algorithmic roles — where there is peripheral intractability in a network function, we have no choice — and as the territory redraws itself to the map, we further marginalise that ineffability, and can deploy cheaper, more interchangeable humans, and at the limit, we can replace them altogether.  
Now of course we can assign humans to algorithmic roles — where there is peripheral intractability in a network function, we have no choice — and as the territory redraws itself to the map, we further marginalise that ineffability, and can deploy cheaper, more interchangeable humans, and at the limit, we can replace them altogether.  
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