Debt Meme Pattern

An attempt to describe the debt meme within a PatternLanguage. Since the author if this page also wrote the original MemesShmemes, he hopes the memeticists on wiki will pile on and improve the following. Naturally, he's still looking for a constructive and predictive distinction for a meme. And, no, hasn't found one yet. But he lives in hope ... for which see HopeMemePattern? ...

Context:

Participants grok QuidProQuo. Participants grok TimeAsContinuum?. Participants grok WorkAsResource?. Participants grok SocialContract.

Forces:

Solution:

Represent future work as a resource called debt. Represent time as interest. Create a business called "bank" that barters debt resources and maintains associated interest processes.

Consequences:

Debt propagates rapidly through the social space. Counterfeit debts called "taxes" are created by bankers calling themselves "government". Banks begin to trade debt between each other, creating a derivative market for interest.

Due to their flexibility, participants come to prefer tokens of debt to actual material resources. Unrepresented qualities of material resources - usually their moral, aesthetic, and sustainability implications - are undervalued, resulting in abuses on a massive scale. Observing this, some participants suggest debt is an AntiPattern and TurnOnTuneInDropOut.


Failing to observe debt often lands one in the constant unwanted company of a CollectionAgency.

Yes. See also ViolenceMemePattern? and HumorMemePattern?.


Whatever axe you have to grind about debt, all of the above appears to have to do with individuals.

AdHominemMemePattern??

To a (well-run) corporation, debt is just another tool, of no more and no less interest than is run time cost of an algorithm to a programmer (that is, not something to be particularly concerned about as long as it doesn't get out of hand).

Do corporations have memes, or are they something only an individual can have? As to what a corporation "thinks" of debt, you do realize that corporations don't have thoughts, right? Perhaps you're calling for a CorporationMemePattern??

Modern money is all based on abstract derivatives, and is largely unrelated to the thing called "money" (coins and other scarce tokens) as originally invented to replace barter, in the same way that a 747 is largely unrelated to the original plane the Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk - and just as hard (or harder) to understand.

So what?

The Baroque Cycle trilogy by Neal Stephenson (volume 2, Confusion, was just released) has quite a bit of background concerning a turning point in this evolution.

Damn, now I'll have to finish QuickSilver.


See also: MemesAsPatterns

CategoryMemes


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