https://aeon.co/essays/has-the-time-come...-economics
EXCERPT: . . . Indeed, in recent years there have been many calls for economics to reinvent itself [...] But progress has been slow [...] One problem is that, while there have been many demands for a revolution, the exact nature of the revolution is less clear. Critics agree that the foundations of economics are rotten, but there are different views on what should be built in its place. [...] But what if the problems with economics run even deeper? What if the traditional approach has hit a wall, and the field needs to be completely reinvented? What if, as with 19th-century physics, the problem comes down to ontology – our entire way of thinking and talking about the economy? And what if the metaphorical piece of lead piping that mugged both physics and economics was in each case exactly the same thing – namely, quantum reality?
[...] To sum up, the key tenets of mainstream or neoclassical economics – including such things as ‘utility’ or ‘demand curves’ or ‘rational economic man’ – are just made-up inventions, no more real than the crystalline spheres that Medieval astronomers thought suspended the planets. But real things like money are to a remarkable extent ignored.
In physics, the quantum revolution was born when physicists found that at the subatomic level energy was always exchanged in terms of discrete parcels, which they called quanta, from the Latin for ‘how much’. Perhaps we need to follow the quantum lead, and look at transactions between people. In economics, the equivalent would be exchanges of money – like when you go into a shop, point at something, and ask: How much? Or, if you’re in Italy, Quanto?, which makes the connection a little clearer.
Of course, the money objects we use in exchange, such as coins, might not seem to resemble subatomic objects. But look a little harder, and the fields of economics and quantum physics have much in common.
The most basic insight of quantum physics was that matter or energy does not move continuously, but is transmitted in discrete, sudden jumps. Money, of course, is the same – there isn’t a little needle showing the money draining out of your account when you make a payment, it just goes in a single step. And as a Bank of England paper noted in 2015, one reason the money-creation process is hard to accommodate in traditional models is that it works ‘instantaneously and discontinuously’ (their emphasis) rather like the creation of quantum particles out of the void.
In quantum physics, attributes such as position or momentum are fundamentally indeterminate until measured, and according to the uncertainty principle cannot be known beyond a certain precision. Similarly, money’s use in transactions is a way of attaching a number (the price) to the fuzzy and indeterminate notion of value, and therefore acts as a kind of quantum measurement process. When you sell your house, you don’t know exactly how much it is worth or what it will fetch; the price is revealed only at the time of transaction.
One of the more mysterious aspects of quantum physics is that particles can become entangled so that they become a unified system, and a measurement on one affects the other instantaneously. In economics, the information encoded in money is a kind of entanglement device, because its creation always has two sides, debt and credit (for example modern fiat money represents government debt). And its use entangles people with each other and with the system as a whole, as anyone with a loan will know. If you go bankrupt, that immediately affects the state of your creditors, even if they don’t find out straight away.
According to quantum physics, matter is fundamentally dualistic in the sense that it is composed, not of independent, billiard ball-like atoms, but of entities that behave in some ways as ‘virtual’ waves, and in other ways as ‘real’ particles. Neither the particle nor the wave description is complete by itself. This sounds confusing – but the same can be said of money, which is also real and virtual at the same time. For example, a coin is made by pressing a stamp into a metal slug. The stamp specifies the numeric value of the coin, while the metal represents its value as an object that can be owned or exchanged. It therefore lives partly in the virtual world of numbers and mathematics, and partly in the physical world of things and people and value, which is one reason for its perplexing effects on the human psyche....
MORE: https://aeon.co/essays/has-the-time-come...-economics
EXCERPT: . . . Indeed, in recent years there have been many calls for economics to reinvent itself [...] But progress has been slow [...] One problem is that, while there have been many demands for a revolution, the exact nature of the revolution is less clear. Critics agree that the foundations of economics are rotten, but there are different views on what should be built in its place. [...] But what if the problems with economics run even deeper? What if the traditional approach has hit a wall, and the field needs to be completely reinvented? What if, as with 19th-century physics, the problem comes down to ontology – our entire way of thinking and talking about the economy? And what if the metaphorical piece of lead piping that mugged both physics and economics was in each case exactly the same thing – namely, quantum reality?
[...] To sum up, the key tenets of mainstream or neoclassical economics – including such things as ‘utility’ or ‘demand curves’ or ‘rational economic man’ – are just made-up inventions, no more real than the crystalline spheres that Medieval astronomers thought suspended the planets. But real things like money are to a remarkable extent ignored.
In physics, the quantum revolution was born when physicists found that at the subatomic level energy was always exchanged in terms of discrete parcels, which they called quanta, from the Latin for ‘how much’. Perhaps we need to follow the quantum lead, and look at transactions between people. In economics, the equivalent would be exchanges of money – like when you go into a shop, point at something, and ask: How much? Or, if you’re in Italy, Quanto?, which makes the connection a little clearer.
Of course, the money objects we use in exchange, such as coins, might not seem to resemble subatomic objects. But look a little harder, and the fields of economics and quantum physics have much in common.
The most basic insight of quantum physics was that matter or energy does not move continuously, but is transmitted in discrete, sudden jumps. Money, of course, is the same – there isn’t a little needle showing the money draining out of your account when you make a payment, it just goes in a single step. And as a Bank of England paper noted in 2015, one reason the money-creation process is hard to accommodate in traditional models is that it works ‘instantaneously and discontinuously’ (their emphasis) rather like the creation of quantum particles out of the void.
In quantum physics, attributes such as position or momentum are fundamentally indeterminate until measured, and according to the uncertainty principle cannot be known beyond a certain precision. Similarly, money’s use in transactions is a way of attaching a number (the price) to the fuzzy and indeterminate notion of value, and therefore acts as a kind of quantum measurement process. When you sell your house, you don’t know exactly how much it is worth or what it will fetch; the price is revealed only at the time of transaction.
One of the more mysterious aspects of quantum physics is that particles can become entangled so that they become a unified system, and a measurement on one affects the other instantaneously. In economics, the information encoded in money is a kind of entanglement device, because its creation always has two sides, debt and credit (for example modern fiat money represents government debt). And its use entangles people with each other and with the system as a whole, as anyone with a loan will know. If you go bankrupt, that immediately affects the state of your creditors, even if they don’t find out straight away.
According to quantum physics, matter is fundamentally dualistic in the sense that it is composed, not of independent, billiard ball-like atoms, but of entities that behave in some ways as ‘virtual’ waves, and in other ways as ‘real’ particles. Neither the particle nor the wave description is complete by itself. This sounds confusing – but the same can be said of money, which is also real and virtual at the same time. For example, a coin is made by pressing a stamp into a metal slug. The stamp specifies the numeric value of the coin, while the metal represents its value as an object that can be owned or exchanged. It therefore lives partly in the virtual world of numbers and mathematics, and partly in the physical world of things and people and value, which is one reason for its perplexing effects on the human psyche....
MORE: https://aeon.co/essays/has-the-time-come...-economics