Communication is underpinned by value exchange. Value is determined relativistically through a local analysis of supply and demand. To make the assessment process more seamless value is ascribed to a singular common denominator: currency. Currency plays a fundamental role in any socioeconomic structure. In fact, the very word pecuniary meaning relating to or consisting of money comes from the Latin pecūnia, derived from pecū (“cattle”). ie. money is food At its core, money serves as a medium of exchange, allowing us to trade goods and services without the complications and rigidness of horsetrading. It also acts as a unit of account, giving us a way to measure and compare relative value and a medium of a common denominator between goods.
Equally important, money functions as a store of value, allowing people to save and accumulate wealth over time. Ideally, good money holds its worth (reference the countless works on the immorality of a fiat currency on civilization due to inflation), so you can stash it away and use it later without worrying that its value will erode. This feature ties into money’s role as a standard of deferred payment a fancy way of saying it’s useful for paying off debts or making installment payments. Whether it's a mortgage or a monthly subscription, money's reliability makes future transactions smooth.
For practical purposes, money also needs to be durable and portable. Whether it’s a crinkled dollar bill or a digital balance on your phone, it has to last and be easily transferred. Additionally, divisibility is crucial; you need to be able to break it into smaller units for everything from a multi-million-dollar deal to buying gum. Lastly, there's fungibility, which simply means that one unit of money is identical to another of the same value no one cares which specific dollar you use to pay for something, as long as it’s legit.
These basic principles of money make it an essential part of our daily lives and economic systems, keeping things running smoothly across all levels of trade.
Fungibility, the property of money that allows each unit to be interchangeable with another of the same denomination, is often seen as one of its greatest strengths. However, this very characteristic also contributes to a fundamental moral dilemma within systems based on exchange. Since money acquired through moral, legal means is indistinguishable from money obtained through immoral or illegal actions, fungibility effectively erases the distinction between these two sources. This creates a systemic tension between moral actors those who operate within the boundaries of the law and those who, despite engaging in unethical practices, can still freely spend and trade their money within the same system.
Because of fungibility, ill-gotten gains are absorbed into the economy without any real barrier, blending seamlessly with legitimate earnings. For example, someone who earns money through hard work and someone who profits from corruption or criminal activity both use the same type of currency. This erasure of origin leads to a moral asymmetry: while one group follows ethical and legal standards, the other circumvents these constraints yet enjoys the same purchasing power and social legitimacy. The system, as it stands, doesn’t differentiate between “good” and “bad” money both function equally well, further entrenching inequality in moral effort versus outcome.
This mirrors Gresham's Law, which famously states that "bad money drives out good money." In economies where debased or counterfeit currency circulates alongside sound currency, people tend to hoard the good money (the valuable, undebased currency) and spend the bad. Over time, bad money dominates circulation. Similarly, in a system where moral and immoral actors operate, "bad money" money earned through unethical means often flows freely, corrupting the system as a whole. Those who earn money immorally are less burdened by ethical constraints, enabling them to use their funds more aggressively or recklessly in the marketplace, while moral actors may hesitate to engage in the same manner, not wanting to compromise their ethical standards.
In this way, immoral actors, by spending their "bad" money, can distort markets and society at large. The system doesn’t filter out or penalize this money; rather, it allows it to mix with the good, weakening the moral foundation of the economy over time. As in Gresham’s Law, where people try to retain good money in private, moral actors may eventually disengage from or lose faith in the system entirely, realizing that their ethical efforts offer little competitive advantage in a marketplace where the origins of wealth are irrelevant. This creates a corrosive effect, where the moral degradation of currency through fungibility undermines the integrity of the broader exchange system.
Each time the Open Society seems to address this issue of fungibility, it runs up against the same tradeoff: market efficiency for market morality. As usual, in causally constructed systems there seem to be no solution only concessions.
