Sociology of Money - Sample writing

Sociology and Money (Reading Sample)

“Good morning ladies and gentlemen” the speaker started to say. “Today I’ll give you one more lecture which will be mostly of theoretical nature; it is necessary to introduce our studies on the solution to the actual crisis, which will be the Quantum Economy. A question and answers session will follow, as usual, at the end of the lesson; so take note of your questions while I am speaking.
You will have heard all the economists and the politicians of this world saying that the actual crisis would be resolved if everyone trusts the system. The “system” in turn acted all the possible ways to cheat the people by stealing money out of everybody pocket. So why people should suddenly trust the “system”? Actually, the statement of the world leaders is not an invocation or invitation of any type; it is the target they are aiming to. To reach that target, they are increasing public debt to pump money into the financial system, hoping that it will “restart”. It is a complicate strategy which the type of result depends not only on the action but also on their exact timing. When the military have to deploy an Army to the other side of the Earth, they cannot pack troops and equipment and ship them to destination. They have to build supply lines for transports, make transports to fill the supply stations, transport the troops and the foods for the duration of the transport and the fight and so on. It requires an incredible organization for the logistics, a lot of money and determination. The timings are essentials as the management of the unforeseen circumstances. The rescue plan for the world economy has to work at the same manner, and in my opinion there isn’t yet enough world coordination especially on timings. We stand here and see how it goes…
…in the meantime, we try to understand if the selected solution is valid, and we try to invent an alternative should this one go bad.
Today world leaders are trying to use the money to fix a problem created from mismanagement of money. We need to ask ourselves: Is this true and correct?” “It is sufficient to make the ball rolling, by the assumption that it, once rolling again, will keep going that way?”
Professor Greenback stopped talking and, in turn, watched right in the eyes each of the student, like if he was looking for an answer. In reality, he is like he was talking with eyes at that moment…
“There are too many things our leaders give for granted, especially regarding what I said in my last analogy… that capitalism is like a ball on a slope.
Our math calculations indicate that capitalism is not shaped like a ball, and the economy is not like a slope.
I said in my last lesson that people with money try to use their money to make more money. Lately, the “how” has changed, and has changed for bad.
The human mind is simple in principle. If you can reach a target in a easy way, you don’t bother to find a more complicated way to get to it. As long as it is possible to make money by investing in manufacturing, services, and other activities with positive impact on society, capitalism lives happy.
When your only choice to raise money is to play with money without any involvement in the society, the system is dead. It is the zero sum solution, but it is the one which, in a sort of gigantic world illusion, people have pursued in the last years, effectively depriving the money of its own nature, which is a representation of human efforts and availability. Our financial “traders” have sold bets on their ability to keep stripping money out of the financial system forever, and the system become dysfunctional, and ultimately failed.
Now, let’s proceed with our analysis. As politicians says, people needs to trust the system again for it to work, but I already said that this is the target - not the mean to get to it. How many ways you can think of, so the financial system can restart? I tell you. Any solution to the financial crises is of social nature, and if it has to be reached by use of money, has to be a use of money which is respectful of people needs.
We could also think of a pure social solution, but the world is unable of changing fast its actual methodology of governance, with effectively separate structures for politics and economy. Sic stantibus rebus, the solution will have to come from the use of money.
Why people has been cheated with toxic assets? Partially, they wanted to keep an illusion: when global economies has kicked in, nobody thought to synchronize the world efforts in manufacturing and distribution of services; the old fashioned capitalism, involuntarily or not, kept everybody in the economy loop. The world “top brasses” already knew the lesson: on the onset of industrial age, repetitive labour was delegated to machines, and that caused a heavy loss of jobs. At that time, only training was required to recreate jobs.
When different economies has come in touch in the global world market, financial managers delocalized manufacture and servicing, as capitalism naturally dictates. This should have lasted from ten to twenty years, until the global levelling of wages. What happened then?
To answer this question, I need to specify something first. What is the world wealth, which we can represent with money? It is represented from the human mental and physical efforts plus the energy we can produce - and the way we utilize it. The use of computers and the technology maximize the use of available energy in terms of benefits to the society. This is a simple equation to solve…
Well, the total world wealth is a finite quantity. It can shift from east to west, from north to south, but is a finite quantity, and finite is the amount of money tied to it. When the West shifted the manufacturing and servicing somewhere else, if everybody would have been happy with the fact of having less wealth in exchange of less effort, there would have been no crises.
Everybody lived on an illusion, like if we could have continued to benefit from cheap manufacturing and servicing, without actually working hard as before.
This created debts behind possibility of recovery. Or, to be more correct, people tried to make debts to keep the same social status and benefits as before, and this time we had the means to do it: the name of the evil is “Nested Stochastic Modelling”. This mathematical model has been used to produce the actual toxic assets with an appearance of legitimacy. As your will learn, our new doctrine refuse any unproven nested cycle.
Our Quantum Economy calculates the world wealth and allow profits to investments which improves it. In our new doctrine, a scam like the mass selling of toxic assets is simply impossible, and its baking from banks and rating agencies simply unthinkable.
Hope I’ve been clear so far. I think all of us now deserves a good cup of coffee. See all of you here in forty-five minutes.


Professor Greenback entered from the side door of the Auditorium and turned the microphone on. “Well come back from the break” he started to say. “There is one important point that I want to stress from the first part of today lesson and, again, it is of social nature. Whoever own a sum of money can go easy when he or she invests money, cheats with money, or use the money. A big problem arise when somebody tries to use the money thinking he or she can change the rules: the economy is ultimately based on people needs, not on market games. The possession of a great quantity of money can create a feeling of omnipotence in a person, and there is when troubles starts. People will try to accomplish your wishes because they need your money, but there are caveats. The rules can be summed up easily: Money represents human efforts and ability to produce, which in turn is tied to the quantity of energy (and computing power, if necessary) available to conduct the job en-masse. Any diversion to this, aimed to produce money without a respective is a steal, and cannot be allowed at the high level of economy. The latest attempt to produce money with derivatives has brought the world economy to the present state. We have developed a new equation that keeps under control the maximum amount of money available by using the same tools that have been used to spread the monetary risk around. This also involves the market directly, where marketing strategies have reached an unbelievable level of dumbness, setting the target to pull money out of the pockets of people - providing no benefit in exchange. Before you ask, I am not saying that the consumerism is wrong; but whatever you sell to people and has no real benefit to them, at the end will kill the market. People can tame their impulse buy, or their need of appearance, so killing a market economy based on such strategies. I don’t want to transform the world economy into a global religion; I’m saying that if you make big money without understanding the impact of your actions, sooner or later you either lose your money at once, or will be considered a thief. From a social point of view, you will have created disappointments, unrests, havoc, or wars: nothing you can be proud of. To conclude this part, if you have a lot of money to invest, think you can do lot of things, but not everything. We are attempting to produce a mechanism that induces this behaviour automatically, since it is unthinkable to introduce social ethics into global finance and economy. Our social rules defines “sin” for the religions, and “felony” for the law. They apply only marginally to finance management, and sometime not at all. We have proven that repairing market and economy by using social rules doesn’t work, because the society needs the money and not vice versa; from a mathematical point of view, we end up to a number of unsolvable equations. Based on this certainty we have developed a new form of economy, as I already introduced in my first lesson yesterday.
Now, I would like to spend the rest of our time today to clear your questions, before starting with the core of the description of our new economy. I prefer that the underlying philosophy is clear to all of you, before proceeding further. Please start asking questions now.”

Professor Greenback stepped out of the podium, after having clipped a portable microphone to his tie. He started walking back and forth, while scanning with the eyes all of us.

A woman from the back of the classroom stood up. “My name is Amanda Anderton. I teach marketing in an University here in England.” Amanda was tall but she worn heels nonetheless. Long brown hair, brown eyes, with a soft pitched voice. She was dressed with a white long skirt, a pink shirt and a short sleeved polo. Her eyes were vivid and her tone well assessed and penetrating; I presumed her age to be just above thirty-eight. “Professor, in this moment I pretend to be Mrs. Nobody who know nothing of economy and finance. I have a job as a supermarket cashier and maybe I will be fired since the shop is going out of business. How the application of the theory you are teaching us will impact myself in this simple role? Thanks…”

“Dear Professor Anderton” he started, “If you look at the problem from down to top is the same if you look at it from top down, as I am teaching it. In the actual economic system, the common people are not considered in any economic recovery plan. This is pure appearance, since the crowd of common people is what drives the world economy. Top financial managers, economy planners and policy makers consider the “crowd” for their needs, their foreseeable behaviour, just like a flock of sheep. And this is the perception, which is rather correct, from your side – when you pretend to be the supermarket cashier with her job at stake. One of the cause of the actual crises has been to attach a statistical behaviour to real people. I can say that the funding provided from governments to broken companies is helping single persons by reducing the negative impact of the crises, while saving the system as it is. We have a lesson tomorrow, given from my friend Professor Andrew Wayward, regarding the death of capitalism when politicians took over the world finance management. Not a bad thing but a milestone in the history of mankind, certainly.
The funding provided from the government are aimed to save the system. The so called bailout funds will never end up in the hands of your cashier. To remain in the domain of pure capitalism, the politicians should have allowed all the financial companies to fail, to take the real economy down, and then they should have flooded the “crowd” with money, allowing the system to be rebuilt from down to top. There is a small detail that makes this way not feasible… in the moment the real economy fails, nobody would really be in control. Since the control is a top priority for all world leaders, the bailout funds have been the only feasible solution. There is a price to pay for this, Andrew will explain it in his lesson tomorrow. To answer your question, our theory about quantum economy, once applied, will allow everybody with a dollar to decide if burn it, use it, or invest it, in a deterministic way, before the action is actually conducted, to include your cashier. For me to explain how it will be possible, I need to provide you some more background information, which is the only intent of this University toward you students. At the end of the courses, each of you will be aware how to implement a new form of economy that we defined as “quantum economy”. Just have some patience for now.”

“Again, thanks Professor Greenback” Amanda said.

“Any other question?” Professor Greenback shouted. Nobody answered. “Ok, this is the end of lesson for today. As I anticipated, tomorrow Andrew will be on the podium with a lesson on the death of capitalism I will be standing with you as a student. See all of you tomorrow.”