Scanlon — “Money is a tool, but it’s also a…”

Source: In This Economy?: How Money & Markets Really Work — Kyla Scanlon

Book page: scanlon-in-this-economy-part-1

From: In This Economy?

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Money is a tool, but it’s also a symbol. It’s sort of like the luxury wine sector, which is a trillion-dollar-a-year industry even though many people can’t taste the difference between low- and high-quality, cheap and expensive, red and white wines. As Samuel Hammond, a senior economist at the Foundation for American Innovation, tweeted, “Wine seems to just be a well-studied microcosm of how human beliefs and desires work more generally. Namely, that they’re socially mediated, easily falsified, unconsciously influenced by cues of status and distinction, and relatively impervious to rational self-reflection.