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[9] Dragonfly: The use-value of money Hans, I am confused by your statement that money has no
use-value. It would seem to me that many people consider money to be
worthwhile outside of it's value-based considerations. As a working
definition of the value of money I submit the face value denomination
of any given currency. The value of a hundred dollar bill is $100. The
use-value of that dollar bill would then correspond to the idea of
what that dollar bill represents, the that it feels to hold that
hundred dollar bill, memories of childhood that involve being
impressed by a hundred dollar bill, and how important it made you feel
when your parent let you handle that hundred dollar. Granted these
impressions have been desensitized as money has passed through your
hands over the years, but the thought-streams remain related.Many
people have more money than they can spend. It would seem they view
money as an end in it's self, i.e. it has a use-value. Granted the
money can be collapsed into an exchange of commodities, but large sums
of money represent potential commodities, which you seemed to reject
as value-based in your response to Peaches. To use Barthes' analysis
of steak or wine, from “Mythologies”, the value of these items is a
direct result of cultural held mythologies about what it means to eat
steak, what kind of people eat steak, and one's perceptions of how one
appears to the others surrounding one's self while eating steak. Thus
the values of commodities are determined by culturally held
use-values. While use-value will certainly vary for individual to
individual, some varying more widely than another, there may be said
to be certain generalities about the way a culture identifies the
use-values of commodities. While this agreement may not be complete,
it may at least be referred to as a standard. This is not to say that
value is determined by use-value, but that they are interdependent. I
think I have failed to see the mutual autonomy of value and
use-value. Set me straight, Hans! |
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