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The Ontology of Money

What is money?

Most days we treat it like a physical object, but we know it is not: the bank can take my bill out of circulation, but I will still have that dollar in my account. Still, the money retains a lot of its object like properties: it can be measured, has an approximate location, it can be divided and put back together.

Sometimes we treat it like a promise: the bank has promised to give me a bill back, although not the same bill I gave them. I trust that merchants will exchange the bill for goods. But money isn't simply a promise, because of all the object-like properties above.

Sometimes money is like a unit of measure, a rather crushing one. Everything can be given a dollar value. As a unit of measure, though, it is weird, because the objective measurement is dependent solely on collective judgment, with no input from physical measuring rods. We don't sit around and debate whether the end of the ruler lines up with the end of the object, or whether we have been putting the thermometer the same distance from a building in each location. We just sit around and shout numbers at each other.

Ok, there is one thing I think I know about money, but I'm not sure I know. My question is simply whether it is true.

Money has no fixed identity over time. For instance, suppose your government decided to open some personal retirement accounts in your name. At the same time, they were busy doing all sorts of government things, including paying current retirees, financing wars, etc. While they were doing these things and opening accounts in your name, they taxes about a third of your paycheck and borrowed a gazillion dollars by issuing bonds to Asian central banks. Am I right to say that there is no real way to say whether your tax dollar went into your account or to a current retiree? (The alternative hypothesis would be that you can say, but only if you adopt the right bookkeeping conventions.)

The stock ticker again

Ok, so even if there are untold masses out there who need hourly updates of stock values, are any of them SLU students? Why does the TV set in the student center display stock prices? Are students day trading? If IBM plummets, will they have to withdraw from school?