{"id":518,"date":"2011-02-08T19:56:11","date_gmt":"2011-02-09T00:56:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/?p=518"},"modified":"2022-08-01T07:43:24","modified_gmt":"2022-08-01T11:43:24","slug":"things-we-agree-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/2011\/02\/things-we-agree-on\/","title":{"rendered":"Things We Agree On"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As I was working on some photos the other day, I was listening to an archive edition of &#8220;This American Life&#8221; called &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.thisamericanlife.org\/radio-archives\/episode\/423\/the-invention-of-money\">The Invention of Money<\/a>&#8220;.\u00a0 The theme of the show was &#8220;money is fiction&#8221; &#8212; money is only as valuable as we agree it is.\u00a0 When we fail to trust it or recognize its value, the system we have constructed around it falls apart.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.themanitoban.com\/articles\/41930\">events in Egypt<\/a> remind me that civilization is like money, an abstraction, not a thing, an agreement among us, not an edifice.\u00a0 Even in the cradle of civilization, the system falls apart when people stop trusting or accepting it.<\/p>\n<p>Contemplating this can make one feel insecure.\u00a0 Maybe that is why the price of gold has risen from about $250 to $1350 per ounce in the last ten years.\u00a0 Some insecure people think gold is the thing we all agree on, forever and ever, and bid up the price accordingly.\u00a0 Good luck to them.<\/p>\n<p>My bet is on the people who want civilization, not chaos.\u00a0 History favors them, slightly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As I was working on some photos the other day, I was listening to an archive edition of &#8220;This American Life&#8221; called &#8220;The Invention of Money&#8220;.\u00a0 The theme of the show was &#8220;money is fiction&#8221; &#8212; money is only as &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/2011\/02\/things-we-agree-on\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28404,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518\/revisions\/28404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}