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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • That’s actually the valuing (wealth) definition of money. But money doesn’t have to be that way. There are economic theories that propose decoupling value from debt by having two different mechanisms for each function. Part of the inequality reproduction problem is that both debt and wealth are coupled in our current fiat money systems without any real underlying value equivalence.

    First forms of money made sense when money was made of valuable metals. The value was intrinsic to the physical object. Debt was managed by paper accounting. Or paper money like in China. Then paper debt was based on gold, like the early xix century money. Finally, modern fiat money stopped being backed up by gold and today it is purely debt, though it is still used as value. Which has accelerated the negative effects of capitalist labor extraction.

    Like, Jeff Bezos doesn’t do $55k per minute of labor. But, amazon does extract and steal that amount of labor and funnels it towards his pockets (actually steals much more). While the workers receive an infinitesimal fraction of their own labor. They can do that because there’s no friction from having to transform said labor into an actually valuable medium, like silver or gold.

    This is why the other response to OP’s question is that fiat money is actually infinite. The us treasury snaps their fingers and billions come into existence. It’s pure abstract value.















  • Must be a cultural thing. Where I’m from, if a doctor doesnt call you by name it is a red flag. It means they didn’t read the patient’s file. Teachers would flag student doctors negatively for it. You treat people, not loosely grouped collections of symptoms. Nurses are also strictly trained to call people by name (perhaps by Mr/ms surname, but that’s part of a holdover from reinforcing hierarchies), you know why? Because our hospitals have wards of anything between 12 and 30 beds and up. Calling “Sir please return to your bed” means nothing with 40 men in the same room, you have to be specific.

    On the other hand, if you work a position of power, most people will call you doctor. It’s lawyers fault, really, as they historically used to hold all the political positions. They insisted so aggressively to be called doctors that now anyone in a position of authority or hierarchy, however slight it might be, is called doctor, even if they aren’t. Including in the medical field. Tons of people who aren’t doctors in medicine are called doctors, students of medicine are called doctors from day one, administration staff in medical settings will be called doctor, etc.

    It also reinforces the first part. Lowly patients must call everyone inside a hospital doctor, but doctors don’t owe any title to anyone below them. Sure, it might arise from general ignorance about how the education system works, but it also illustrates how titles are always about separating people into hierarchies. It’s just an academic dick measuring contest.