Susan Crawford: Payment Systems
on Wednesday, April 18, 2012Susan Crawford Money Quotation is imagining new options of transactions like cell phones, making the idea of our existing system of payments seem like a daydream. Susan Crawford said:
“There is nothing more imaginary than a monetary system. The idea that we solemnly hand around printed slips of paper in exchange for food and water shows just how trusting and fond of patterned behavior we human beings are” — Susan Crawford
The quote “There is nothing more imaginary than a monetary system. The idea that we solemnly hand around printed slips of paper in exchange for food and water shows just how trusting and fond of patterned behavior we human beings are” by Susan Crawford is pointing out how money and economic systems are social constructs that only have value because societies have agreed and organized themselves around those constructs.
While money may seem like a concrete thing, Crawford argues that paper bills and coins have no intrinsic worth – they are merely representations we use for transactions based on shared trust and norms. Our willingness to work, trade labor and resources in exchange for these symbolic tokens demonstrates humans’ natural tendencies towards cooperation, consensus-building, and engaging in predictable social behaviors.
According to Crawford, the fact that paper currency can be used to acquire basic necessities shows how powerful and deeply ingrained the concept of money has become through collective agreement, even though it has no tangible backing on its own.