Money expands economic circles and individualizes participants simultaneously

Evidence

The general acceptance of money, its ease of transport, its eventual sublimation into cashless transactions in bank drafts and bills of exchange—all these allow the effects of money to extend into unboundable distances, and ultimately to engender from the whole civilized world a single economic circle with interpenetrating interests, complementary sectors of productivity, and similar practices. In the other line of development, money causes an enormous individualization of the participant in the economy. The form of cash wages makes the worker infinitely more independent than does any kind of payment in the primitive economy. The possession of money gives a man previously unheard of freedom of movement. The liberal norms that are regularly associated with the cash economy set each individual in a free competitive struggle with every other. And finally, no less than the dilation of the economic circle, this competition compels a specialization of function that would not otherwise come into question, one whose extremes of compartmentalization are made possible only by accommodations in the framework of a very large circle. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 664

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Money economy reduces persons to quantitative exchange value — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 750; Richer individuals need wider choice circles to satisfy their specific needs — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 646; The cash economy correlates social expansion with individual differentiation — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 663 (+11 more)

Related

• The cash economy correlates social expansion with individual differentiation (similarity 0.92)
• Money economy reduces persons to quantitative exchange value (similarity 0.90)
• Simmel saw money as both cause and expression of social acceleration. (similarity 0.88)
• The money economy makes social action approach pure objectivity (similarity 0.87)
• Richer individuals need wider choice circles to satisfy their specific needs (similarity 0.84)
• Money is transferable freedom deferring choices of when, with whom, and for what. (similarity 0.83)
• Economic value emerges through the distance exchange creates between self and object (similarity 0.80)
• Money functions as an equivalent-certainty that reduces the need for information (similarity 0.80)
• Money erases qualitative distinctions by reducing everything to quantity (similarity 0.80)
• Intellectual mentality and money economy mutually reinforce each other (similarity 0.80)
• Money makes desire instantly operative, dissolving the technical distance to objects (similarity 0.79)
• Money is an impersonal standard that negates the content of goods (similarity 0.79)
• Economics simplifies and disembeds market participants to become applicable. (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• The cash economy correlates social expansion with individual differentiation #corroborates (0.85) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 663
• Individuality increases as the social circle expands #corroborates (0.80) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 591
• The money economy makes social action approach pure objectivity #expands (0.65) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 180
• Individualization loosens ties with the near to enable ties with the distant #corroborates (0.55) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 603
• Each person holds a constant ratio of individual to social factors #responds-to (0.45) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 608