The application of quantum wave theory to the physics of monetary and socio-economic systems is a methodical novelty; these collected papers do document the research process into the workings of the monetary quantum on economic production.

Suppose that you prefer A to B, B to C, and C to A. Your preferences violate Expected Utility Theory by being cyclic. Money-pump arguments offer a way to show that such violations are irrational. Suppose that you start with A. Then you should be willing to trade A for C and then C for B. But then, once you have B, you are offered a trade back to A for a small cost. Since you prefer A to B, (...) you pay the small sum to trade from B to A. But now you have been turned into a money pump. You are back to the alternative you started with but with less money. This Element shows how each of the axioms of Expected Utility Theory can be defended by money-pump arguments of this kind. The Element also defends money-pump arguments from the standard objections to this kind of approach. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core. (shrink)

The quantization error in a fixed-size Self-Organizing Map (SOM) with unsupervised winner-take-all learning has previously been used successfully to detect, in minimal computation time, highly meaningful changes across images in medical time series and in time series of satellite images. Here, the functional properties of the quantization error in SOM are explored further to show that the metric is capable of reliably discriminating between the finest differences in local contrast intensities and contrast signs. While this capability of the QE is (...) akin to functional characteristics of a specific class of retinal ganglion cells (the so-called Y-cells) in the visual systems of the primate and the cat, the sensitivity of the QE surpasses the capacity limits of human visual detection. Here, the quantization error in the SOM is found to reliably signal changes in contrast or colour when contrast information is removed from or added to the image, but not when the amount and relative weight of contrast information is constant and only the local spatial position of contrast elements in the pattern changes. While the RGB Mean reflects coarser changes in colour or contrast well enough, the SOM-QE is shown to outperform the RGB Mean in the detection of single-pixel changes in images with up to five million pixels. This could have important implications in the context of unsupervised image learning and computational building block approaches to large sets of image data (big data). (shrink)

It can be hard to see where money fits in the world. Money seems both real and imaginary, since it has obvious causal powers, but is also, just as obviously, something humans have just made up. Recent philosophical accounts of money have declared it to be real, but for very different reasons. John Searle and Francesco Guala disagree over whether money is just whatever acts like money, or just whatever people believe to be money. (...) In developing their accounts of institutions as a part of social reality, each uses money as a paradigm institution, but they disagree on how institutions exist. Searle argues that the institution of money belongs to an ontological level separate from the physical world, held up by the collective intentions of a group, while Guala claims that money is a part of the ordinary physical world and is just whatever performs a “money-like function” in a group, regardless of what that group believes about it. Here, we argue that any purely functional account like Guala’s will be unable to capture the distinctive phenomenon of money, since monetary transactions are defined by the attitudes transactors hold toward them. Money will be obscured or misidentified if defined functionally. As we go on to show by examining recent work by Smit et al., belief in money does not require taking on all of Searle’s ontological commitments, but money and mental contents will stand or fall together. (shrink)

This article provides a property analysis of electronic money, showing that the issuance of electronic money cannot involve a trust. The analysis is also applicable to other digital assets that may be said to involve a trust, and as such provides a timely contribution to current discussions on the legal nature and categorisation of digital assets both in the UK and internationally.

Modern money theory is a conjecture concerning fiscal spending and the nature of money. I show that modern money theory provides two interesting insights into distributive justice that have not been addressed in the recent Anglo-American distributive justice literature: (i) that the nature of a sovereign fiat currency allows for some distributive conflicts to be avoided; and (ii) that recent Anglo- American distributive justice theories assume that the economy is at capacity. Based on this, I consider if (...) the policy results of modern money theory can help foster a sense of justice. (shrink)

General perception that money can buy happiness has been refuted in this article.

In this article, we describe what cryptocurrency is, how it works, and how it relates to familiar conceptions of and questions about money. We then show how normative questions about monetary policy find new expression in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. These questions can play a role in addressing not just what money is, but what it should be. A guiding theme in our discussion is that progress here requires a mixed approach that integrates philosophical tools with the purely (...) technical results of disciplines like computer science and economics. Note: this article is the first entry within a two-part sequence on the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics of Cryptocurrency. (shrink)

So-called money pump arguments aim to show that intransitive preferences are irrational because they will lead someone to accept a series of deals that leaves his/her financially worse off and better off in no respect. A common response to these arguments is the foresight response, which counters that the agent in question may see the exploitation coming, and refuse to trade at all. To obviate this response, I offer a “deluxe money pump argument” that applies dominance reasoning to (...) a modified money pump case. (shrink)

In response to cases that involve tiny probabilities of huge payoffs, some argue that we ought to discount small probabilities down to zero. However, this paper shows that doing so violates Independence and Continuity, and as a result of these violations, those who discount small probabilities can be exploited by money pumps. Various possible ways of avoiding exploitation will be discussed. This paper concludes that the money pump for Independence undermines the plausibility of discounting small probabilities. Much of (...) the discussion on Independence generalizes to other views that also violate Independence. (shrink)

In “The Irrelevance of the Diachronic Money-Pump Argument for Acyclicity,” The Journal of Philosophy CX, 8 (August 2013), 460-464, Johan E. Gustafsson contends that if Davidson, McKinsey and Suppes’ diachronic money-pump argument in their "Outlines of a Formal Theory of Value, I," Philosophy of Science 22 (1955), 140-160 is valid, so is the synchronic argument Gustafsson himself offers. He concludes that the latter renders irrelevant diachronic choice considerations in general, and the two best-known diachronic solutions to the (...) class='Hi'>money pump problem in particular. I argue here that this reasoning is incorrect, and that Gustafsson’s synchronic argument is faulty on independent grounds. Specifically, it is based on a false analogy between the derivation of a synchronic ordinal ranking from a transitive series of pairwise comparisons, and the putative derivation of such a ranking from an intransitive series. The latter is not possible under the assumption of revealed preference theory, and is highly improbable even if that assumption is rejected. Moreover, Gustafsson’s argument raises issues of fidelity to the historical texts that must be addressed. I conclude that the money pump, and cyclical choice more generally, are necessarily diachronic; and therefore that the two best-known diachronic solutions to the money pump problem remain relevant. (shrink)

This paper assesses the proposal to transform the monetary system into an Ecology of money, that is, into a system made of a large diversity of complementary currencies. Its central aim is to examine whether this proposal could provide a systemic solution to both the ecological and financial crises, as several authors, most notably Lietaer and Douthwaite, have argued. To this end, it analyses the two main arguments in favour of this proposal. First, it focuses on the claim that (...) an Ecology of money would be more resilient and less prone to crisis than the present monetary system. It shows that this argument suffers from several conceptual flaws and argues that it fails to provide sufficient normative reasons to favour an Ecology of money. Second, this paper analyses the claim that an Ecology of money could help defeat the monetary growth imperative that supposedly plagues our economies. The paper raises serious doubts about the existence of such an imperative and questions the claim that an Ecology of money could contribute to weaken it in a significant way. (shrink)

There are many explanations for the value of money, but they all seem to depend on things like "trust," "shared fiction," "agreement" or even potentially circular logic like that money's value is based on its usefulness as money. But there is a full process by which money, the desire we feel for it, and even how we end up trading it, can emerge naturally from the dynamics of natural selection and human interaction, with a basis in (...) real value, and happening repeatedly and reliably, even if a group of people all agree that money or precious metals are worthless. We discuss this fully in the paper "The Monetary Instinct," but here, for accessibility's sake, the entire concept is described in one-page. (shrink)

Money represents a future commodity ownership. However, the only way of keeping this ownership rightful, hence decentralized, is to price commodities in metarepresented money. Any otherwise priced future ownership will not remain rightfully decentralized. This article explains why, by deriving the concepts, first of generic money, then of privately concrete money, and finally of metarepresented money from direct commodity exchange.

Quantized space creates phenomenological reality but quantized space isn’t comparable with our phenomenological related concepts. To understand quantized space we must change our phenomenological point of view for the all-inclusive point of view. The latter shows that tessellation and concentration are geometrical based mechanism that are responsible for the creation of observable reality in our universe.

The advent of virtual currencies such as bitcoin raises a pressing question for lawmakers, regulators, and judges: should bitcoin and other virtual currencies be classified as money or currency for legal and regulatory purposes? I examine two different approaches to answering this question—a descriptive approach and a normative approach. The descriptive approach says that bitcoin and other virtual currencies should be classified as money or currency just in case they really are money or currency, whereas the normative (...) approach says that this question of classification should be answered on the basis of substantive normative considerations. I argue against the descriptive approach and in favor of the normative approach. (shrink)

Despite the many advantages that mobile money o ers to Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) relative to traditional banking services, the majority of stakeholders of this platform have not yet maximised its use owing to several concerns not limited to trust, awareness, and even cost. To examine the factors justifying the adoption and usage of Mobile Money Services (MMS) among SMEs, the types of Mobile Money Services used by these SMEs, and the interdependences between these variables, this (...) study adopted an exploratory approach. The researchers elected to use a mixed-method approach, which necessitated the usage of a survey questionnaire and structured in-depth interviews. Representatives of 12 SMEs were interviewed during the qualitative phase to corroborate the 285 SMEs surveyed in the quantitative part of the study. Descriptive and inferential statistics were adopted to analyse the quantitative data using the Statistical Packages for Social Sciences version 26 (SPSS version 26). The researchers described the qualitative data according to themes, and the findings were combined after that. While no single factor was accountable, it emerged that accessibility, safety, and convenience were the main factors that entice SMEs in Douala, Cameroon to embrace mobile money services in the effort to receive money from clientele, pay suppliers, and purchase airtime for additional transactions (most preferred mobile money services). Furthermore, it was found that there was a statistically significant association between most of the motivating factors cited and the most preferred mobile money services used by SMEs in Douala. These findings validate the role that mobile money plays in promoting the inclusive finance agenda for SMEs, mainly in the context of emerging economies where the majority of people and businesses do not have access to banking services and therefore may be of interest to policymakers and different stakeholders. Furthermore, an identification of the types of mobile money services businesspersons mostly use in Douala, a business hub, may help to develop businesses by directing the stakeholders to agenda items of interest in the context of Cameroon. (shrink)

Observations are restricted to the mutual relations between observable phenomena. That is why modern physics is founded on phenomenological physics. Nevertheless, the theoretical framework of phenomenological physics – the description of the basic components and the underlying structure like laws, universal constants and principles – is essential to determine the implications of the basic properties and structure of quantized space.

The study of Enrici et al. (2023) in Ecology and Society [1] is one of a few in-depth discussions of the significance of money on how people (including academics, politicians, and residents) understand the impact of humans on the environment. These insights are critical, especially given the urgency of understanding anthropogenic influences on the ecosystem in the face of the unpredictable dangers of climate catastrophe.

As the current COVID-19 pandemic lingers on with its fallout agonizing several economies on the globe, a number of policy instruments have been summoned by governments to cope with the looming recession. Among those instruments is the contentious “helicopter money”, which has received the endorsement of multiple economists while many others consider it a too risky tactic to follow. This paper is going to discuss the suitability of implementing “helicopter money” in the context of Vietnam during economic crises, (...) particularly with a focus on the ongoing novel coronavirus-induced economic downturn. The author also makes an attempt to clarify certain challenges that Vietnamese legislators should better study carefully if “helicopter money” is ever to be deployed, as well as the circumstances and extent of such deployment. (shrink)

A review of Michael's Sandel's book, "What Money Can't Buy" (Allen Lane 2012).

Often financially excluded by the traditional banking system, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in many developing countries have found in mobile money services (MMS) a sustainable alternative. Despite its potential in propelling inclusive growth, the use and adoption of mobile money (MM) by SMEs has generally been low in developing countries, and one of the reasons has been limited data that supported its impact on financial performance. As a result, there was a need to investigate the impact of (...) the mobile money payment and receipt services on the financial performance of the SMEs in Cameroon. This paper implemented a mixed research paradigm with data collected through the administration of a survey questionnaire and from one-on-one in-depth interviews. A sample of 285 SMEs responded to the survey, while 12 owners/managing directors were purposively selected to participate in the personal interviews. Version 25 of the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software was used to analyse the quantitative data, while the qualitative data was analysed along themes. The results were, after that, triangulated for credibility reasons. The concluding findings indicated that the mobile money payment and receipt services contributed of the order of 73% of the total variance in the turnover of the SMEs in Douala after they had begun to use the technology. By confirming the positive relationship between the use of mobile money services and the financial performance of businesses, it is hoped that all the relevant stakeholders will see this as a possible solution to the financial challenges that SMEs face in developing economies. (shrink)

I show, in words of one block of sound, that, while those whose likes form a loop could stop some wealth pumps if they now did what they would like most based on what they thought they would do next, there are wealth pumps they could not stop in that way.

There is a long-standing debate in philosophy about whether it is morally permissible to harm one person in order to prevent a greater harm to others and, if not, what is the moral principle underlying the prohibition. Hypothetical moral dilemmas are used in order to probe moral intuitions. Philosophers use them to achieve a reflective equilibrium between intuitions and principles, psychologists to investigate moral decision-making processes. In the dilemmas, the harms that are traded off are almost always deaths. However, the (...) moral principles and psychological processes are supposed to be broader than this, encompassing harms other than death. Further, if the standard pattern of intuitions is preserved in the domain of economic harm, then that would open up the possibility of studying behavior in trolley problems using the tools of experimental economics. We report the results of two studies designed to test whether the standard patterns of intuitions are preserved when the domain and severity of harm are varied. Our findings show that the difference in moral intuitions between bystander and footbridge scenarios is replicated across different domains and levels of physical and non-physical harm, including economic harms. (shrink)

This article is an attempt to sketch a philosophical view of money as a social phenomenon. I show that the way to understand the substance of money is to analyze its meaning as a medium of exchange in connection with its meaning as a purpose of exchange, thereby providing an investigation of its social value. This approach has been used by many of the great philosophers and economists of the past, but not today. Modern economics is a policy (...) oriented theoretical discipline and concentrates its efforts on solving practical tasks. I hope to contribute a philosophical approach to economic research. (shrink)

In The Construction of Social Reality, John Searle develops a theory of institutional facts and objects, of which money, borders and property are presented as prime examples. These objects are the result of us collectively intending certain natural objects to have a certain status, i.e. to ‘count as’ being certain social objects. This view renders such objects irreducible to natural objects. In this paper we propose a radically different approach that is more compatible with standard economic theory. We claim (...) that such institutional objects can be fully understood in terms of actions and incentives, and hence the Searlean apparatus solves a non-existent problem. (shrink)

The current economic and societal production system gives money a magnified importance, overlooking other essential flows necessary for human survival and existence. It focuses on monetary indicators like profits, dividends, and GDPs to evaluate organizational production, while often disregarding outputs that harm the biosphere. Money is treated as the constitutive being (ousia) and attributed undemonstrated explanatory properties. Intangible flow theory helps eliminate this metaphysical status of money by recognizing that monetary flows are just one of many necessary (...) flows for human survival and existence. Organizations deliver product-flows that require input-flows from and send output-flows back to the encompassing biosphere, whether they explicitly engage in environmentally friendly activities or not. Therefore, every organization is an ecological entity because it has a relationship with the biosphere, which participates in the manner through which humans integrate into their surrounding environment and relate to other living beings. Eliminating the metaphysical status of money integrates every organization in the biosphere, making organizations accountable for environmental harm caused by their activities. This can be achieved by deconstructing the metaphysical status of money in business models. (shrink)

This essay investigates triadic patterns of argument in the thought of Moses Hess. Three kinds of triadic thinking are distinguished: the triadic pattern of three succeeding ages of mankind; the triadic pattern of original unity, fallen or alienated existence, and return to unity on a higher level; and the triad of head, heart and stomach, a symbolism which recurs in the writings of the Young Hegelians. Distinguishing these patterns throws an interesting light on the similarities and differences between the views (...) of Hess and Marx on the role of the proletariat in history. A translation by the author of Hess's "On the Essence of Money" is appended to the essay. (shrink)

What does being money consist in? We argue that something is money if, and only if, it is typically acquired in order to realise the reduction in transaction costs that accrues in virtue of agents coordinating on acquiring the same thing when deciding what thing to acquire in order to exchange. What kinds of things can be money? We argue against the common view that a variety of things (notes, coins, gold, cigarettes, etc.) can be money. (...) All monetary systems are best interpreted as implementing the same basic protocol. Money, i.e. the thing that we coordinate on acquiring in order to lower our transaction costs, is, in all cases, a set of positions on an abstract mathematical object, namely a relative ratio scale. The things that we ordinarily call ‘money’ are merely records of positions on such a scale. (shrink)

E-money systems have revolutionized global business transactions through digital payment methods. This quantitative correlational study aimed to assess the awareness and acceptance of e-money among individuals in Balayan, Batangas. Employing quota and purposive sampling, 100 participants aged 21 to 70 completed a survey questionnaire. Statistical analysis revealed that consumers were aware of e-money but lacked comprehensive knowledge. They acknowledged the convenience of e-money for online shopping and expense tracking. Age significantly influenced acceptance, while gender did not (...) exhibit a similar effect. Significant differences were observed in awareness and acceptance levels. Recommendations for improving acceptance include administrator-led campaigns, business incentives, consumer education, financial institution partnerships, and integration into student curricula. The study underscores the need for targeted strategies to translate e-money knowledge into practical use. Future research should explore adoption trends over time, barriers, and the impact of regulations on e-money utilization. (shrink)

The notion of “worth” and “value” throughout human history was only partly dependent on economic reasons. Arrangements about what is considered an equivalent value/measure of wealth are the result of complex interdependencies of economic, social and cultural factors. For thousands of years people have used precious metals as universal equivalent and main measure of wealth; full-value metal money was, in fact, only reinforced by the authority of state (ruler) evidence of presence certain amount of precious metal. The rejection of (...) valuable coins and the provision of banknotes with precious metals (that is, the rejection of the gold and the silver standard) led to the fact that the circulating money signs in the society ceased to denote a concrete value, becoming an abstraction, putting the population in dependence on state’s monetary policy and financial stability of national economy. Bitcoin and its numerous alternatives arose as a response to the challenge of informatization, globalization and individualization of economic activity. This is an attempt to escape from control of state structures that are inclined to abuse their right to issue banknotes and to voluntaristic methods of managing the economy. To some extent, the cryptocurrencies reflect the nostalgia of market participants on the gold standard, which is surprisingly transformed into a complete denial of the materiality (including the metal substance) of money. This situation stimulates the search for new models for designation the equivalent value in the information society. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to point the way to the money tree. Currently, almost all investment professionals think that outperformance requires an “edge,” that is, the ability to predict the future to some degree. In this paper, I suggest that money can be made in a 0, or even slightly negative, expected value environment by carefully choosing investment/bet sizes. Philosophical considerations are found mainly in Section 4.

Physical phenomena emerge from the quantum fields everywhere in space. However, not only the phenomena emerge from the quantum fields, the law of the conservation of energy must have its origin from the same spatial structure. This paper describes the relations between the main law of physics, the universal constants and the mathematical structure of the “aggregated” quantum fields.

Throughout 2012 and the first quarter of 2013, Vietnamese households and businesspeople lived in uncertainty and fears about the nation’s falling economic performance.

The evaluation of labour markets and of particular jobs ought to be sensitive to a plurality of benefits and burdens of work. We use the term 'the goods of work' to refer to those benefits of work that cannot be obtained in exchange for money and that can be enjoyed mostly or exclusively in the context of work. Drawing on empirical research and various philosophical traditions of thinking about work we identify four goods of work: 1) attaining various types (...) of excellence; 2) making a social contribution; 3) experiencing community; and 4) gaining social recognition. Our account of the goods of work can be read as unpacking the ways in which work can be meaningful. The distribution of the goods of work is a concern of justice for two conjoint reasons: First, they are part of the conception of the good of a large number of individuals. Second, in societies without an unconditional income and in which most people are not independently wealthy, paid work is non-optional and workers have few, if any, occasions to realize these goods outside their job. Taking into account the plurality of the goods of work and their importance for justice challenges the theoretical and political status quo, which focuses mostly on justice with regard to the distribution of income. We defend this account against the libertarian challenge that a free labour market gives individuals sufficient options to realise the goods of work important to them, and discuss the challenge from state neutrality. In the conclusion, we hint towards possible implications for today’s labour markets. (shrink)

Thomas Hobbes wrote in his Leviathan that money exchanging hands, monetary policies, activities, and transactions are the blood of the “Leviathan” - the eponymous subject of the book. Hobbes writes that this Leviathan's “blood” includes the “collectors, receivers, and treasurers; of the second are the treasurers again, and the officers appointed for payment of several public or private ministers.” Hobbes, follows this with an analogy of a living man, stating that this “artificial man maintains his resemblance with the natural (...) [man]; whose veins, receiving the blood from the several parts of the body, carry it to the heart; where, being made vital, the heart by the arteries sends it out again, to enliven and enable for motion all the members of the same.” Hobbes maintains a parallel between the natural man and what he calls the “artificial man”, the state throughout his Leviathan. -/- Ultimately, the mechanisms of finance in the United States are the accumulation of historical precedents - both legal and non-legal (such as economic, but also social). These precedents have led to the current system, on a continuing and settled basis. The legal and economic systems merging for the best system of an international monetary order can represent a balance of legal realism and legal formalism. -/- “Money” is printed by the U.S. government, designated as an official note. Value is correlated with how many of those printed pieces of paper exist. This is the basic concept of inflation. This concept of value and inflation is said to be connected to a commodity - such as how much gold or silver existed in the Federal Reserve's physical locations or Fort Knox. Such systems have been in place since at least Mesopotamia, where clay tablets were used to represent credit, or comparable contracts that seem to resemble modern forms of fiat currency. (shrink)

The economics and cybernetic circuit of the energetics of money is explained via formal and logical statements.

This article is a theoretical treatment of the ways in which local worldviews on wealth acquisition give rise to contemporary manifestations of spirituality in cyberspace. It unpacks spiritual (occult) economies and wealth generation through a historical perspective. The article ‘devil advocates’ the ‘sainthood’ of claimed law-abiding citizens, by highlighting that the line dividing them and the Nigerian cybercriminals (Yahoo-Boys) is blurred with regards to the use of magical means for material ends. By doing so, the article also illustrates that the (...) intersectionality of the spirit world and the acquisition of wealth (crime or otherwise) is connected with local epistemologies and worldviews, and its contemporaneity has social security benefits. Therefore, the view that the contemporary manifestations of spirituality in cyberspace signify a ‘new-danger’ and an ever-increasing outrage in the Nigerian society is misplaced. I conclude that if people believe all aspects of life are reflective of the spiritual world and determined by it, the spiritual realm, by implication, is the base of society, upon which sits the superstructure comprised of all aspects of life, especially wealth. Inferentially, this conceptual position that the spirit world is the base of society is an inversion of Orthodox Marxist’s theory of economic determinism. (shrink)

An examination of Emmanuel Levinas’ writings on money reveals his distance from—and indebtedness to—a philosophical predecessor, Georg Simmel. Levinas and Simmel share a phenomenological approach to analyses of the proximity of the stranger, the importance of the face, and the interruption of the dyadic relationship by the third. Money is closely linked to the conception of totality because money is the medium that compares heterogeneous values. Levinas goes beyond Simmel in positing an ethical relation to money (...) permitting transcendence. (shrink)

I advocate that money has two fundamental meanings: 1) pursuing perceived freedom and 2) enhancing perceived impact. To support my points, I developed a framework regarding an individual’s subjective spheres of influence based on the Mindsponge mechanism to illustrate how individuals perceive what they can influence and what can influence them.

People have said for generations that money is based on "trust," or "shared fiction." But that doesn't explain why cultures all eventually come to value the same metals or items as money. Others have said that the value of money depends on the way it facilitates trade, but even that doesn't explain where the value emerges before people agree to use money to trade. In actuality, there's a real value to gold, silver, and other forms of (...) money that makes them reliably gain worth to people, and will emerge eventually even if everyone in a society does not like or believe in those precious metals or possessions. This is because possessing scarce objects has real reputational value among people, since having those objects indicates that we can go outside the known territory, and we instinctively collect and want things that have known scarcity. When that scarcity combines with other traits like transferability, durability and so on, we can see that money naturally emerges in society. We can use this idea to also see the real value and desire that people have for new forms of money like cryptocurrencies, and to know what will or won't emerge and last as a form of money in the future. (shrink)

This paper raises a worry that it is difficult to reconcile Adam Smith’s claims about the relationship of specialization to talent and character with his account of the origins of money. Specialization makes one stupid outside of one’s specialism yet money arises by specialists also providing what everyone wants.

In this paper, I show that Polleit and Mariano (2011) are right in concluding that Credit Default Swaps (CDS) are per se unobjectionable from Rothbard’s libertarian perspective on property rights and contract theory, but that they fail to derive this conclusion properly. I therefore outline the proper explanation. In addition, though Polleit and Mariano are correct in pointing out that speculation with CDS can conceivably hurt the borrowers’ interests, they fail to grasp that this can be the case only in (...) some peculiar circumstances that I identify. In other words, they miss the bigger picture, the one outside special circumstances, in which CDS trading has the opposite effect. That is, CDS facilitate debt accumulation, including government debt accumulation. Finally, I point out how this can precipitate the collapse of fiat money regimes. An incidental goal of the analysis is to provide a better account than Polleit and Mariano of recent government interventions in and around CDS markets. (shrink)

John Searle has proposed one of the most influential contemporary accounts of social ontology. According to Searle, institutional facts are created by the collective assignment of a specific kind of function —status-function— to pre-existing objects. Thus, a piece of paper counts as money in a certain context because people collectively recognize it as money, and impose a status upon it, which in turn enables that piece of paper to deliver certain functions (means of payment, etc.). The first part (...) of this essay presents Searle’s theory of social ontology and summarizes his views on money. The second part centers on criticisms of his views and compares his theory with its main competitors, including the theories of Tuomela, Guala and Hindriks, and Smit, Buekens and Duplessis. The conclusion attempts to see what may remain of Searle’s theory after careful examination. (shrink)

Abstract: The study investigated the impact of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) on performance of deposit money banks in Abia State. The study adopted a random sampling technique which made it possible for all the workers to have equal opportunity to being selected as the representative sample based on the total population of the two hundred and ten (210), a normal confidence level of 95% and error tolerance of 5% was used. ANOVA showed a large F-statistics of 509.23 coupled with (...) a significant value of less than 0.005 which indicated that there was a 95% confidence interval that the difference was accepted. The regression gave the value 0.564. The value using 2-tailed analysis was flagged as being significant with a 0.001 sig. value. Equally implied that there was a more than 95% confidence interval. More so, Since the p-value 0.154 was greater than 0.059 that was (real 0.154 > rtab 0,059). Therefore, the researcher found that there was relationship between CRM practice and customer satisfaction of First bank and GT Bank Plc. in Abia state. Also that there was an influence of CRM practice on profitability in First Bank and GT Bank Plc. in Abia state. Finally that there was an influence of CRM practice on the market share of First bank and GT bank plc in Abia state. (shrink)

It’s never too late to start getting smart about money. -/- Maybe you’ve made it this far with few problems … you’ve done pretty well all alone just by winging it. Good for you. -/- But retirement planning isn’t about the past 30 years of your life — it’s about the next 30. And that’s harder. There are decisions you can’t undo, and mistakes are tougher to recover from when you don’t have a paycheck to back you up.

Source: Author: Marwan Kadhim Mohammed, Wan Roselezam Wan Yahya Martin Amis's manipulation of the patriarchal concept of power is a notable indication of his transgressive attitudes that raise remarkable questions about the human identity. Transgressing power investigates the violation of the normal and familiar trends of literature in order to circulate a new discourse by which a new identity is reframed. Hence, the study of power in Martin Amis's novels, as an important technique of identity re-definition, is not taken into (...) consideration in the light of Foucault's theory of power. The objective of this study is to examine the role applied by transgression as a technique of subverting the common discourse of power in the field of identity re-formation. The study investigates the concept of power manipulated in Amis's Money to define the identity of the 'New Man'. Accordingly, the Foucauldian theory of power is taken as a framework of this study. The study reveals a conclusion in which the transgressive aspects of power are effectively utilized by Amis to re-define the identity of his protagonist in the novel. Although John Self-has finally lost his name and fortune, which are necessary demands to define one's self-in the patriarchal society, he finds his own new identity away from the materialistic norms of the common discourse. ]]>. (shrink)

An objection to shifty epistemologies such as subject-sensitive invariantism is that it predicts that agents are susceptible to guaranteed losses. Bob Beddor (Analysis, 81, 193–198, 2021) argues that these guaranteed losses are not a symptom of irrationality, on the grounds that forgetful agents are susceptible to guaranteed losses without being irrational. I agree that forgetful agents are susceptible to guaranteed losses without being irrational– but when we investigate why, the analogy with shifty epistemology breaks down. I argue that agents with (...) shifty epistemologies are susceptible to guaranteed losses in a way which is a symptom of irrationality. Along the way I make a suggestion about what it takes for an agent to be coherent over time. I close by offering a taxonomy of shifty epistemologies. (shrink)

Abstract: This study examined performance aptitude of successful marketing executives’ in Deposit Money Banks in Nigeria. The specific objectives include: (i) to determine the influence of aptitude on both objective and subjective performance of marketing executives in Nigerian Deposit Money Banks and (ii) to determine how these 17 aptitude variables: quantitative/math ability, cognitive ability, intelligent quotient, conscientiousness, neuroticism, openness, agreeableness, sociability, persuasiveness, aggressiveness, persistence, empathy, age, gender, marital status, height and body size/weight influence performance of marketing executives in (...) Nigerian Deposit Money Banks. Quantitative survey research design methodology was adopted for the study. By gathering primary data from 334 bank marketing executives and 219 business managers using structured questionnaire and MANCOVA statistical tool for testing the hypotheses and analyzing the data, findings revealed that: aptitude has strong and positive influence on both objective and subjective performance of marketing executives in Nigerian Deposit Money Banks and (ii) all the aptitude variables mentioned above have strong and positive influence on both objective and subjective performance of marketing executives in Nigerian Deposit Money Banks except gender, marital status and height. It was recommended that bank managers should pay adequate attention to those aptitude variables that have strong positive influence on performance of marketing executives and de-emphasize expenditures on those that do not. (shrink)