Money is transferable freedom deferring choices of when, with whom, and for what.

Evidence

Then test it,’ said the beggar. ‘Give me your bag of gold.’ Amused, the rich man did. The beggar held it a moment — then handed it back. ‘There. I have given away a fortune and feel no loss, for my heart was full before and is full now. Could you give it away so lightly? If not, then you do not own the gold — the gold owns you. And that, friend, is your real answer.’ — , A Year of World Stories, 12081 (#complicates, via linked claim)

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 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Money functions as an equivalent-certainty that reduces the need for information; Money expands economic circles and individualizes participants simultaneously — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 664; Ownership of wealth is real only when one can part with it freely — , A Year of World Stories, 12081 (+3 more)

Related

• Money expands economic circles and individualizes participants simultaneously (similarity 0.83)
• Money is an impersonal standard that negates the content of goods (similarity 0.83)
• Money lets people do things their individual powers cannot (similarity 0.82)
• Money functions as an equivalent-certainty that reduces the need for information (similarity 0.82)
• Money erases qualitative distinctions by reducing everything to quantity (similarity 0.79)
• Money makes desire instantly operative, dissolving the technical distance to objects (similarity 0.79)
• Ownership of wealth is real only when one can part with it freely (similarity 0.78)
• Money yields unlimited mastery because it resists the resistance of concrete objects (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Money functions as an equivalent-certainty that reduces the need for information #corroborates (0.60)
• Ownership of wealth is real only when one can part with it freely #complicates (0.55) — , A Year of World Stories, 12081
• Money expands economic circles and individualizes participants simultaneously #expands (0.50) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 664
• Money is an impersonal standard that negates the content of goods #expands (0.40) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 65
• Money economy reduces persons to quantitative exchange value #complicates (0.35) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 750