The predominant currency of your value system

[jacob]

The "predominant currency" is the lucre by which one justifies one's status within a given value system, if not to oneself then to others. While each system might have more than one (or insist it has none), this is not about which one is best but which one is intersubjectively (LL) considered to be the important one. It's also clear that some occupy more than one value system in a liminal space and simultaneously deny a system while also following it. For example, in the US, the idea of social class is anathema yet easily detectable.

Here's what I have so far in terms of "currency units":
Purple: Family
Red: Victories
Blue: [Social] Class
Orange: Money
Green: Popularity
Yellow: Interesting Ideas

These are basically "what gets you invited" to join "the cool kids". Or perhaps more precisely what people strive for or look up to. What someone will use a personal measure to see if "they've arrived" or an intersubjective measure for whether other people think you've arrived and consequently stop giving you grief about it. A recognition of whether someone has "standing" and is "one of us". The sorting mechanism or pecking order of society whether it's official (Hi Blue) or denied (Hi Green).

[Slevin]

I've never thought of the "postmodern" class (you're using the SD Green here) to be people worried more about popularity than any other class.

Looking at the class as sort of a bisection of the yoga-wellness pomo caricature and the dark analytical pomo caricature*, I would argue that for the light pomos the currency is almost "happiness" or "spiritual enlightenment" sort of ideal, which due to both being soft measurements leads to a whole lot of issues with cults and people claiming they are more "enlightened / happy" than they are, and a whole mess because of the fact that we can't just analytically tell who's being truthful and who is bullshitting / exploiting the class for their own personal gains. Then the dark pomo meme are people who are much more analytical and driven and are writing and talking about deconstruction of < SD blue ideas (mostly orange, since green is a reactionary response to orange). So they are probably talking about the limitations of science and the limitations of businesses and AI and problems modernity is pulling up and how everyone is pretending to be objective when everyone is clearly subjective. So they might in fact, rate people by who has the best "roast" or "deconstruction" of modernity. This tends to its own issues, as nobody likes everything being torn down / apart with no ideas of how to replace it with a better version.

Also I think it might be a bit reductionist in the terms of assigning a single value to wide spanning classes / SD colors (?) and I'm not sure how useful a model these ideas will create if the ideas are not encompassing of the nuance that belongs inside the value measurements of the classes. Maybe start making sets for each of these? SD blue / Postfaustian might value "religiousness" just as high as social class. Since the defining of the Postfaustian value system is abstraction of everything all the way up to the "singular god" i.e. ultimate abstraction. Thus I would guess the highest value currency would be how close you are to the "ultimate abstraction", which is sort of close to your "social class" but I think distinct.

*caricatures pulled from Hanzi

[daylen]

In some ways, a sharp contraction can influence a wide expansion. Projecting complexity into a caricature can more easily allow for a branching of complicated routes through which an anti-thesis can be generated to enable an environment in which synthetic solutions arise unexpectedly. This would tend to require follow through to avoid simplistic routes that may potentially fall off the edge into chaos.

[C40]

What are the colors? (how are they linked/related?)

[daylen]

@C40 These threads offer some pointers. Another way to see the progression of civilizations over the long run is that at some point tribal collections of humans made a Faustian bargain to sell their souls so that coherence at an extended group level could be achieved in a constrained space. This coincided with the advent of religion leading up to the axial age in which natural philosophy was kick-started to later transition into the scientific and industrial revolutions that then spawned a counter-culture and internet amplification of peripheral meme complexes.

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[7Wannabe5]

@jacob:

The problem with this analysis is that “the predominant currency with which you obtain status” is an obviously Orange construct or lens. It assumes “trading” as primary verb.

Let’s say the primary verbs describing the codes are something like:

Beige:Being/Surviving
Purple: Belonging
Red: Becoming/Expansive Boundarying
Blue: Building/Believing
Orange: Trading/Getting Paid
Green: Deconstruction (unbuilding)/Sharing (unpaying.)
Yellow: Co-operation/Co-ordination/Creative re-purpose-ing inclusive of prior primary verbs.

Then, for instance, a human operating Beige code if air-dropped into realms where other codes were predominant would likely view differences through lens such as “How do these humans get food/shelter?”

I would argue that sharing is the primary verb for Green, because it works for all sorts of Green associated activities from sharing your feelings to sharing the power to sharing the same stanky compost toilet at the protest/concert.

Yellow isn’t just about interesting ideas. It is dependent on the value creation system of the “hackers, hippies, and hipsters” coming out of Green for its existence. To bring it back round to primary terms of Orange, if you are Getting Paid for your independent work/contribution at Yellow, it’s going to be in some weird mix of farmer’s market tokens, recently released crypto, and a link to video of performative art.

[jacob]

The problem with this analysis is that “the predominant currency with which you obtain status” is an obviously Orange construct or lens. It assumes “trading” as primary verb.

Ha! I knew I would get in trouble for that word. However, I think the other valuesystems are allowed to do economics as well, so I think it's still useful as long as we remember that it comes with different units and that it can't necessarily be traded. Think of "currency" more as an "End of Discussion"-argument.

For example, in Orange we have rankings based on networth. We "admire" the richest people. Being a millionaire is a significant arrow in your quiver: Orange will argue that maybe your ideas are boring or at family doesn't matter or that you can claim you're perfectly happy, but $1M can't be denied as "irrelevant".

In Blue, people were born into classes or castes. You might be poor and unhappy but at least you're the Third Dukeling of Upper Pomerania.

Yellow seems to "trade" on ideas. You might not have a title or money or family, but you'll get invited if you're a "highly interesting person". Think Jon Stewart and Boho intellectuals.

In conclusion: I mean the "thing" that people admire and want for themselves; the "thing" that makes people want to listen to others to hear their secrets.

I've never thought of the "postmodern" class (you're using the SD Green here) to be people worried more about popularity than any other class.

Looking at the class as sort of a bisection of the yoga-wellness pomo caricature and the dark analytical pomo caricature*, I would argue that for the light pomos the currency is almost "happiness" or "spiritual enlightenment" sort of ideal, which due to both being soft measurements leads to a whole lot of issues with cults and people claiming they are more "enlightened / happy" than they are, and a whole mess because of the fact that we can't just analytically tell who's being truthful and who is bullshitting / exploiting the class for their own personal gains.

I had "happiness" as on my short list (based on Denmark, 70% green/30% orange-ish.) People are definitely talking about happiness, but it's more in the sense of "Do what you want as long as you're happy". However, people don't get admired or invited as "a person of interest" because they're supremely happy. This is why "popular" won. In an egalitarian society that doesn't officially believe in hierarchy, popularity is the "currency" that establishes the hidden hierarchy. Another reason is that all the cold color currencies require a social construct to define them. You can have money on your own, but you can't have a family on your own. You can have happiness on your own but you can't have popularity. I thought it is important to reflect this. As a side-note, the third candidate was "welfare", but that is more a societal entity that shall not be questioned (analog to "free markets" in the US).

Also I think it might be a bit reductionist in the terms of assigning a single value to wide spanning classes / SD colors (?) and I'm not sure how useful a model these ideas will create if the ideas are not encompassing of the nuance that belongs inside the value measurements of the classes. Maybe start making sets for each of these? SD blue / Postfaustian might value "religiousness" just as high as social class. Since the defining of the Postfaustian value system is abstraction of everything all the way up to the "singular god" i.e. ultimate abstraction. Thus I would guess the highest value currency would be how close you are to the "ultimate abstraction", which is sort of close to your "social class" but I think distinct.

Ahh, but reductionism is a feature rather than a bug. Certainly sets can and have been made. I'm interested in the most important value though. Another way to ask is which proverbial altar will people sacrifice themselves on? (This is not just a blue or purple thing). In that regard, Danish teenagers in particular are sacrificing themselves (stress, etc.) trying to be popular by conforming to the "right look", "right grades", ... In the US people will sacrifice their health to make more money. I'm somewhat sacrificing my life(-energy) for an "interesting idea" (called ERE)---I could be spending my life hanging out on a beach.

PS: I'm aware of the cross-over problems and that people don't occupy a single vmeme.

[7Wannabe5]

Yellow seems to "trade" on ideas. You might not have a title or money or family, but you'll get invited if you're a "highly interesting person". Think Jon Stewart and Boho intellectuals.

Yes, I actually immediately thought of Jon Stewart as epitomizing cusp of "popular" and "interesting." But, doesn't this kind of render Yellow as more like Upper Caste Green, with both of these codes core "trading" in cultural capital rather than money, but with Yellow being more likely to be actually creating the cultural memes rather than simply copying or collecting them? I suppose dead give-away of my Yellow-wannabe code would be the fact that I associated with my Reddish-Orange friend with net worth over $100,000,000, because I thought he was an interesting, eccentric character, NOT because I hoped to follow in his footsteps Hanging out with him made me somewhat less "popular" with the more uptight Greenish members of my social circle, and my defense for my behavior was along the lines of "because interesting." Since anyone Green is likely to be heading towards Yellow, this defense would generally serve.

Unfortunately, there is no amount of money that will help a Green/Yellow motivated human make a solar-powered garden robot out of the contents of 6 random dumpsters

[jacob]

Yes, I actually immediately thought of Jon Stewart as epitomizing cusp of "popular" and "interesting."

A separate set of currencies (<- I insist ) could be developed for the cusps:
purple/red: ?
red/blue: ?
blue/orange: ? (As epitomized by the US, sorting class by income, ala Fussell )
orange/green: ? (The Nordics, also quantifying followers and likes on social media)
green/yellow: ? (Jon Stewart)

[jacob]

Unfortunately, there is no amount of money that will help a Green/Yellow motivated human make a solar-powered garden robot out of the contents of 6 random dumpsters

Appropriate Technology ala Schumacher (yellow) seems to be exactly such an idea. Money is flowing into makerspaces, but yellow is not exactly the optimal way to get monetarily rich nor to pay for solutions. In more general terms, the ability to trade one currency for another is weak but it does exist. Money might give you Victories. Victories might give you Family. Family might make you Popular. And so on.

Living in ORANGE/blue US and providing yellow ideas results in people sometimes giving me money. However, it is not guaranteed. For me FI (an Orange construct) followed because I largely do not spend the money I make. Were I living on a pacific island, I might be drowning in seashells.

However, money (and I think also the other currencies) ARE useful because they can indirectly be exchanged for the master resource triad: access, control, and optionality. As such it is possible to work from one form of lucre and into another. Perhaps the currency should be thought of as more of a lever... or a way to remove obstacles ... than a way to gain entrance.

[Slevin]

I had "happiness" as on my short list (based on Denmark, 70% green/30% orange-ish.) People are definitely talking about happiness, but it's more in the sense of "Do what you want as long as you're happy". However, people don't get admired or invited as "a person of interest" because they're supremely happy. This is why "popular" won. In an egalitarian society that doesn't officially believe in hierarchy, popularity is the "currency" that establishes the hidden hierarchy. Another reason is that all the cold color currencies require a social construct to define them. You can have money on your own, but you can't have a family on your own. You can have happiness on your own but you can't have popularity. I thought it is important to reflect this. As a side-note, the third candidate was "welfare", but that is more a societal entity that shall not be questioned (analog to "free markets" in the US).

I would also wonder if ERE1.0 could even exist in a more green system (Denmark, Sweden, Netherlands) where pervasive sentiment is "Do what you want as long as you are happy" which is backed by the welfare state. Here the ERE hook "freedom to" in the FIRE sense wouldn't necessarily be a driver, so it would be more subjected to the negative "freedom from" people who want freedom from work. The hook might be more of a hook like @J_ took, which as I understand tends to be more evocative of environmental and holistic life / health system building concerns (Please correct me @J_ if I am misunderstanding it).

I think the triad "popularity", "welfare state", and "happiness" are here massively interrelated in that the welfare state gives the "freedom to" to the individuals which allows them to pursue basically any task (work) "as long as it makes them happy". Then, because the individuals have grown up in the state system "welfare state", popularity exists somewhat as a control mechanism to steer things back into the zone "things that are good for the welfare state".

Another interesting question might exist along the same lines as the currency question and reads something like "what are the predominant state methods of control for the dividual", as the dividual / citizen exists somewhat to serve the larger state, while at the same time the state mechanism exists to somewhat serve the dividual. Thus the best system outcome (yellow) is looking for win wins for both the state and dividual (as this isn't necessarily a zero sum game) in each system type but in the way that accommodates the messiness and intricacies of real life. This may lose some of the direct "personally actionable" value of ERE1.0, but I think it may open up unseen lines of action, as acting in the "dividual" state you influence upon the state while the state influences upon you. See tiny houses (and van life) being put up as a form of shakeup that is actionable from the dividual level and at the same time causing the state to move and react to be accepting (or reactionarily rejective) of the new methods of cheap housing that some people under 30 can actually afford.

[jacob]

I would also wonder if ERE1.0 could even exist in a more green system (Denmark, Sweden, Netherlands) where pervasive sentiment is "Do what you want as long as you are happy" which is backed by the welfare state.

First, I'm increasingly incompetent on commenting on the Nordics since I haven't lived there for over two decades. Society has changed. Also, I'm biased from growing up there and never really fitting in https://earlyretirementextreme.com/the- ... earth.html Also, I have changed since I wrote that.

With that in mind, social control in a communitarian societies like the Nordics is or maybe was governed by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante This lawbook goes back to when the area was still Blue but communitarian echoes remain!

The law of Jante is essentially a leveling mechanism to ensure that individuals don't stand out. The same mechanism exists in "circling" and "sociocracy" to their respective detriments---some things are harder to accomplish within those constraints. The strict denial of hierarchy just means it moves underground. The explicit becomes implicit. Think Animal Farm. Everybody is equal, but some people are more equal than others.

WRT ERE1.0 or the simple cousin of FIRE, it penetrated 0.5% of the Danish population within a couple of short years after FIRE became mainstream at the end of the 2010s. Same level as US but done in 2-3 years instead of 10 years. One interpretation was that the generally oppressed Orange element took to it like catnip. A driving FIRE concern in the Nordics is that the politicians might "close the door" on individuals trying to escape. There's literally already an exit tax on capital gains in place that applies to pretty much everybody. IOW, it exists, but mostly defined in terms of negative freedom. Incidentally, this surprised me greatly. Previously I figured that FIRE would never "take".

Growing up in the Green Nordics [in my GenX generation], there was a sentiment of "do what you want to make you happy as long as you stay out of trouble/don't get arrested". You have positive-freedom, but within strict limits (as long as you stay within the one-sigma average). There was no "strive-drive". This is quite different from the "American Dream" in that there was no drive to achieve "gross symbols" like the Mercedes or the McMansion. Rather, "spend as much time as you want finding yourself as long as you don't get arrested and don't abuse the welfare state in order to do so".

[Stahlmann]

...

[sky]

As an immigrant, you can move outside the societal norms and perhaps meet others like you. In some ways it is an advantage to not have to follow standard behavior rules that the natives feel compelled to be bound with.

[jacob]

As an immigrant, you can move outside the societal norms and perhaps meet others like you. In some ways it is an advantage to not have to follow standard behavior rules that the natives feel compelled to be bound with.

It's hard to understate the significance of this. At least as far as I know, a significant number of FIRE OGs in the US are immigrants or immigrant couples. This is potentially people arriving from a value system different from MONEY and consequentially not caring about it: Basically "getting paid" but "not knowing how to spend it".

I remember the same effect from blue/red refugees moving into green, essentially getting supported like the natives but being much more efficient with their spending [quality of living = skill * cost of living] and consequentially quickly ending up with a higher standard of living; with negative political side-effects.

Stanley and Danko's Millionaire Next Door also discussed the importance of this selection effect. It's sadly lost in the second generation. Indeed, not only do the second generation lose the hard skills, they may also carry stigma against their soft skills. It's double edged.

[Toska2]

I use currency to trade with others. My intrinsic value to myself is based a different set of values. What I use and what I value can be two different sets; its merely a facet of myself and a segment of society that I choose to be in in.

Example: Being lucid in the moment, knowing, both what is being stated and unsaid, while achieving homeotelic (sp?) goals is hard to trade but valued by the actor and the rest othe cast.

[zbigi]

There was no "strive-drive". This is quite different from the "American Dream" in that there was no drive to achieve "gross symbols" like the Mercedes or the McMansion.

Is Sweden different in this regard? The amount of premium cars I saw on the streets of Malmo made me really doubt the "egalitarian society" narrative.

[Jean]

Édit: an answer to this question would break thé politic ban.

[jacob]

Is Sweden different in this regard? The amount of premium cars I saw on the streets of Malmo made me really doubt the "egalitarian society" narrative.

I doubt Sweden is different from Denmark or Finland. Norway may be different on account of having more oil money. Overall, though, the Nordics tend to be rather rich (some of the richest) on a global scale, while the range is small. As such there are more expensive cars, but the range is smaller than e.g the US, thus very very few rust buckets but also very very few Lambos.

This will give you a good idea: https://cepos.dk/abcepos-artikler/0130- ... din-alder/

For example, for my age (46), the net worth distribution is as follows:

• Bottom 10%: $10,500
• Bottom 25%: $55,250
• Median 50%: $132,500
• Top 25: $246,000
• Top 10%: $402,000
• Top 5%: $747,000
• Top 1%: $1,098,000

Note that the span between the top10% and the bottom10% is only about 400k. Half the population is compressed within a band of 190k(*). Also, even people "living in poverty" as defined by "half of the median", usually in terms of income, but if NW might substitute, this means that "relatively poor people" can still raise 132.5/2=66.25k.

(*) This corresponds to about 6 years of saving the after-tax median income. IOW, the majority gets to choose exactly how wealthy they wish to be relative to the rest of society. If anyone thinks that living in the 25% percentile sucks, they can get to the 75% percentile in 5-10 years if they so desire.

The cost of a slightly used Tesla3 in local prices (+tax) is about $50,000. This means that 75% of the population and even "nominally 'poor' people" of my age could convert their NW into a fancy car if they wanted to. Some want to. Overall, these countries exist in a state where most people "can buy anything they want within reason". Therefore, the value system (@Toska2: I agree, "value" is better than "currency") has changed. Once one can buy everything one could "reasonably" want, the focus (value-system) changes.

[zbigi]

I realise that a lot of people could afford all the new Audis and BMWs I saw there, but I was thinking they perceive driving them as rather gauche - Law of Jante and all that. That's the image of Sweden that Polish mainstream media has been imprinting on Polish people for a long time - that it's some kind of egalitarian utopia, where people don't want to stick out, because it could make others feel bad (mainstream media in Poland have a leftist twist to them, so they're trying to impring these values on Poles via these examples).