Money: the cornerstone of our Western capitalist society, and the source of so many of our social ills. As Douglas Adams once wrote:
This planet has – or rather had – a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
But what would happen if we lived in a system that didn't distinguish between the rich man and the pauper? Take one open network, a culture of freedom and the ability to copy and distribute at will, and surely we can predict a powerful effect our perceptions of financial worth?
Yet human beings insist on enforcing existing social structures, even on such systems. Virtual financial models typically regress to traditional economic patterns, based on rarity. Even in this context where scarcity is irrelevant, we still ascribe value, but at the same time we demand new (and increasingly free) economic transactions. And, it it still a problem.
So, has the Web transformed our relationship with cash?
Send your thoughts, experiences and money to me @aleks or email me at aleks.krotoski.freelance@guardian.co.uk.
I accept PayPal.
