Money as a Reflection of Political Values, Virtues, and Human Order

Introduction

Given money’s vital role in the lives of people and in society, as well as the power of money and what it could achieve, questions about the nature, design, and functions of money should be explored. How should money be perceived and used? What form of monetary order would be just? Can money and the use of money be virtuous? The contentious issue faced by exploring those questions is that there are different camps with different values and priorities as to what justice is and what values should be upheld, and hence different perspectives on how money should be perceived and what money essentially serves. This translates into different views as to what a just and virtuous money should look like. From my perspective, society is made up of individuals that collaborate with each other, and so a just society has the common good as its ultimate motive. A collective, value-based approach to decision making is thus essential for achieving the common good, and a corruption of virtues and values, or a co-option of the values of a community by one dominant group only undermines the common good and harms the “good life” for both individuals and the community. This applies to how money is used and perceived, especially given the growing debate around money and new forms of monetary assets emerging such as bitcoin.     

From a virtue ethics and Aristotelian perspective, the pursuit of money for money’s sake undermines human flourishing. Aristotle highlights that humans are social and political animals (Sison & Ferraro, 2017). It is the coming together of humans as individuals that constitutes communities. What allows for human flourishing is the collaboration of individuals and households in a way that builds communities and polities which ultimately sustains a good life. Since the community is built as a sum of the parts, the individual building blocks of the community must be virtuous and must uphold values that contribute to the good life. The virtues and values held by participants in a community are thus essential from an Aristotelian perspective. By individuals upholding the virtues and values that are deemed “good”, the good life and common good can be achieved. From this perspective, justice is rooted in the common good, which is essential for human flourishing. A just society would prioritize actions that promote the common good, though it recognizes that in some situations, individual interests and the common good might conflict. Actions that harm the common good are generally considered unjust, but this assessment can be nuanced by considering the broader implications for human flourishing. Money, being a tool or institution in a community, must then reflect the values and virtues upheld by the community to serve the common good. It must be highlighted that the “good” or the virtues and values considered important within a community are not necessarily imposed by an authoritative figure, but rather, the norms and values upheld might have emerged from a spontaneous order of collective human relations and are thus not set in stone.

In line with the virtue and Aristotelian approach, money can be perceived as a public good, and thus, money should be designed and discretionarily governed by a governance system that serves the public and has the common good in mind. In this camp, money must be rooted in political decision making to uphold the values and virtuous of the community. Money can’t be “neutral” and separate from public affairs since there needs to be a governing system or body, albeit centralized or decentralized, that manages money in a way that benefits the public. Discretionary decision making includes policies around money supply, interest rates, the distribution and allocation of money, etc…. On justice and virtuous grounds then, money as a public good should be designed to serve the common good and must be discretionarily governed with a goal of serving the public’s priorities.

From a right-wing libertarian perspective, however, money is a good rooted in market dynamics and is a means to serve individual ends. Individual freedom is the ultimate goal for libertarians. Humans are born with the right to freedom and to pursue what they deem valuable as long as they do not harm others or stop others from pursuing their own freedoms. In this perspective, political bodies or figures that impose rules and restrictions on individuals is unjust and undermines liberty and freedom. Furthermore, by individuals pursuing their own self-interest, a spillover effect occurs which ultimately serves the common good. Focusing on serving the common good, however, will only cause harm and come in the way of individual freedom. This camp advocates for a “neutral money” or “sound money” (hereafter “neutral money”). While there are different sub-groups within the “neutral” money group, the focus of this paper will be on the most prominent and disruptive camp as of late that calls for a “neutral” money. This group advocates for a money that has a fixed supply, like the gold standard, but that is also apolitical, privatized, and, to a certain extent, decentralized (McIntosh, 2024). The idea here is that money should be fixed in supply to maintain scarcity, which is key to money’s value, and isolated from the state or any central authority because politicians and central figures tend to meddle with money for their own ends at the detriment of individuals and households. To clarify, the term apolitical here is used to detach money from continuous political interference in order to achieve specific political values that are upheld by right-wing libertarians such as freedom, liberty, and sovereignty. It is the detachment of money from politics that would serve those political ends of privatization and to diminish or annihilate government’s power to manipulate money. So, while the term used is “apolitical” money, this money is promoted for political reasons, but if successful, will ultimately remove money from the political sphere and can be then perceived as a “neutral” good in the market in the long term. On justice and virtuous grounds then, a “neutral” money empowers individual liberty, sovereignty, and privacy.

With money reentering the sphere of political debate, the genesis of bitcoin appealed to the “neutral” money group. It is worth noting that by no means was bitcoin the first attempt at a cryptographic currency. While bitcoin at first attracted a niche group of cypherpunks and anarcho-libertarians, its monetary design and thesis resonated with more and more people as it grew in dollar value. As the debate around a just money continues (Eich, 2019), bitcoin’s disruptive force has become the posterchild for a “neutral money” and is now a central topic for policy makers, financial institutions, and governments.

Given the central role and the pressing debate around monetary design, it is crucial to grasp how political values are reflected in the monetary system of choice. This essay series will portray how a “neutral” money may corrupt and distort the values held by individuals in a community and may thus undermine the common good. With that context, I propose that on justice and virtuous grounds, money enables human flourishing by its collective design and by its value being rooted in the ends it accomplishes as opposed to being an end in and of itself. Bitcoin violates this principle by being disguised as a democratic monetary system for the people, while having a narrow vision of freedom and achieves its primary popularity in being regarded as an end in and of itself.

This is the introduction of a multi-part essay series that will be published over the coming weeks. In Part I, we’ll delve into the interplay between politics, values, and money – Part I - Politics, Values, and Money

References

• Ferrero & Sison, Aristotle and MacIntyre on Virtues in Finance
• McIntosh, W. (2024). FA Hayek, Libertarianism, and the Denationalization of Money. Modern American History, 1-20.
• Eich, Stefan, ‘Old Utopias, New Tax Havens: The Politics of Bitcoin in Historical Perspective’, in Philipp Hacker, and others (eds), Regulating Blockchain: Techno-Social and Legal Challenges (Oxford, 2019; online edn, Oxford Academic, 22 Aug. 2019)