Examining our imaginaries through the lens of finance is a fun undertaking, but perhaps not quite an obvious to do. While a Phd student, one of us had to face this idea « homo oeconomicus » which basically states that all humans beings have stable preferences over time. And those are supposed to be easily understandable. This approach has been continuously questioned and many other alternatives have been offered (eg. behavioral or anthropological economics). Nevertheless, it still has an influence because of its obviousness and simplicity of modeling. Representations of futur finance in pop culture should help us to continue to fight this classic assumption.
Indeed, the nice thing with imaginaries is that they allow us to do thought experiments (Gedankenexperiments) and free us from the academic setting of classic economics models. Amongst these imaginaries, science fiction allows for radical experiments : it is highly probable that the alien you are going to encounter does not have the same set of preferences as humans do (if any such thing as shared preferences does exist…). So let’s imagine a first case where aliens have inverted preferences regarding the future. Meaning that we will prefer to invest on the long term than on the short term. How would an encounter with such a race impact our relationship with nature and ecology? Or, what happens if they have their own sets of smart contracts that says they will be rewarded for each human they touch? Unfortunately, while touching humans, they would be sharing with us their worst diseases. How do we negotiate with them when the preferences are so widely at odds ?
Keeping preferences aside, it is pretty obvious that the money aliens would use (if they use any) might be fairly different from what we have. What if kindness what a means of exchange, or what if the aliens were made of gold and would excrete it ? This would lead to interesting issues and new ways of looking at money.
Each « canon » of litterature is a good start to challenge classic models and think differently about value theory. For exampe, it can be assumed that space travelers will have their own sets of rules : what will happen with my money when I arrive at my destination after twenty years of travel? Is the value fixed? Is there a parity between the two universes ?
The purpose of this part of the blog is to look at finance and how our imaginaires invent new economic systems, means of payment, new set of preferences etc.
They also allow to explore how the imaginary help to broaden the reflection on very “pragmatic” subjects.
Looking at our imaginaries through the lens of finance is a fun undertaking. During his Phd, one of the author had to deal with that « homo oeconomicus » thing which basically states that all humans have preferences that can are stable over time and are easily understandable. This approach has been continuously questioned and many other alternatives have been offered (behavioral or anthropological economics for example). Nevertheless, it still has some influence due its obviousness and simp
Now, the nice thing with our imaginaries is that they allow us to do thought experiments (Gedankenexperiments) and free us from the academic setting of economics and finance. Amongst these imaginaries, science fiction is a nice field of study because it allows for radical experiments : it is highly probable that the alien you are going to encounter does not have the same set of preferences as humans do (if any such thing as shared preferences does exist…). So let’s imagine a first case where aliens have inverted preferences regarding the future. Meaning that we will prefer to invest on the long term than on the short term. How would an encounter with such a race impact our relationship with nature and ecology? Or, what happens if they have their own sets of smart contract that says they will be rewarder for each human they touch? Unfortunately, while touching humans, they would be sharing with us their worst disease. How do we negotiate with them when the preferences are so widely at odds ?
Keeping preferences aside, it is pretty obvious that they money aliens would use (if they use any) might be fairly different from what we have. What if kindness what a means of exchange, or what if the aliens were made of gold and would excrete it ? This would lead to interesting issues and new ways of looking at money.
Also, at this stage of the research, we can guess that space travel will have its own sets of rules : what happens with my money when I arrive at destination after twenty years of travel? Is the value fixed? Is there a parity between the two planets ?
The purpose of this part of the blog is to look into finance and how our imaginaires invent new economic systems, means of payment, new set of preferences etc.