Agnes:

Uh, today we're gonna talk about a book, uh, called The Philosophy of Money, uh, by the sociologist Georg Simmel. Uh, actually, we're gonna talk about chapter one of the book. Um-

Robin:

At least.

Agnes:

At least, right. Um, uh, I mean, I don't know, maybe we'll only get through the first half of chapter one.

Robin:

May- maybe. Let's, let's find out.

Agnes:

All right. Um-

Robin:

So this is from 1900. Our readers should understand this is quite a while ago.

Agnes:

Okay. Um-

Robin:

And I don't actually know the history of economics very well to understand the economic state of mind of economists at the time, uh, this was written, so I'm somewhat trying to infer that from reading this book.

Agnes:

He does make clear in the preface this is not a work of economics.

Robin:

He, he says that, yes.

Agnes:

Um-

Robin:

But the concepts he's using certainly overlap with economics concepts, and that what makes it-

Agnes:

Right

Robin:

... a little difficult to distinguish the economics concepts that go by similar names from the concepts he's using. Are they the same? Are they intended to be different? Are they intended to serve different roles? That's a bit of an obstacle for me in reading this.

Agnes:

So let me say a few sentences about what I think his view is that he presents in, uh, chapter one, and then you can add or correct it. And then there's a puzzle that I... Uh, there's actually two puzzles that I have about money that are addressed in this chapter, but I'm actually not sure how he resolves them. Okay, so, um, I think the general theory that he's trying to put forward is that, um, value is relative but not subjective. Um, he's trying to introduce a kind of, um, objective, quasi-objective, at least intersubjective form of value relativism. Um, and then sort of claiming that m- He's going to claim that money is like the avatar or symbol of the world in which that form of value relativism is fully realized. Um, and, um, the kind of, um, the node of this value relativism is the concept of exchange, which I think he thinks of as, um, like a sui generis sociological concept. Um, that is, exchange can't be reduced to utility. It can't be reduced to demand or supply. Those concepts have to be understood in terms of exchange. Um, and, um, and the idea is that, you know, in a, um, sufficiently advanced society, the questions of what can be exchanged for what sets up, like, a system of values. It sort of, like, tells you what the values of things are in relation to each other. Um, the idea is that there's not any inherent value in a thing, like in my hair clip. Um, uh, but he also wants to deny that the value of my hair clip is just, like, how much I care about it. That is, um, that's why he's not a subjectivist. He doesn't think that things have the value they have because that's how much people like them or care about them. Uh, in some way, he's even, he's... That's not a deep enough relativism for him, right? Because the idea that, um, you know, the source of the value of this is in me is still too unrelative. The value of this has to do with all the things it could be traded for, basically. Um, and, you know, in a sufficiently developed economy, that set of relationships is itself developed, and then mon- money's gonna be sort of, um, the measure of that in some way. Um, but that's, um, that's his, uh, that's his theory of value, and that's what he's kind of putting forward in, um, uh, in chapter one. And then he wants to say that concepts like utility and scarcity are themselves relative to po- Sorry, not relative to. Um, I meant to say posterior to a concept like exchange. Um, and so we can't define them without having something like an idea of exchange. And then, I'll say, I have to say one more thing that's really important because he wants to say the concept of exchange, even though it's sui generis, he's still, he's gonna flesh it out in terms of sacrifice. That is, an exchange is an exchange of sacrifices. So, um, I... W- we exchange when I give something up in a way that's causally correlated with you giving something up. So we each give things up in a way where my giving it up causes you to give it up, and your giving it up causes me to give it up. That's exchange for Simmel. Uh, and, um, and he thinks that, um, you know, there are ways in which people can get things. There are other ways to get things in situations where you need stuff and you don't have it besides exchange, and in primitive cultures people preferred those other ways. They disrespected the exchange way. Um, but again, as a society develops, it develops towards this exchange mode, which is moving towards a mode of objective value, which is to say relative value. That is, relativism is the form of objectivism. It- what it is for value to be objective is for it to be a re- relative in this way that is part of this network of value. Okay, that's what I take to be, uh, the big claims of chapter one. You can say whether you, you agree with that as a summary and whether there's anything you wanna add.

Robin:

So as I said, I'm a professional economist, and so I've been trained in the economics of my generation, uh, and standard academic, you know, concepts and, and structures. And so many of those words are familiar words In my world, but I'm less clear to what extent he's trying to use the words the same way so that it's intended or not to be the same concept. And I'm not s- so we have a set of concepts, and we don't necessarily commit to what are the more fundamental concepts. We, we tend to talk in terms of a set of con- a, a view of the world where there's a set of concepts that fit with each other and that we can use to describe the world. That's different than saying which of them were prior and which of them couldn't function had the other ones not happened first or something. That's a different set of claims you can make about-

Agnes:

That doesn't seem true. So for example, I think that preferences, um, come in at a pretty foundational level in economics. That is, um, you're not gonna try to understand preferences, define them in terms of businesses or something. You're gonna define businesses in terms of preferences.

Robin:

If he says that preferences don't exist without exchange, but then he says people do things instead of exchange, then, then it's, it's these other things that define preferences. I, I, I'm not even confused by what does it mean for him to say, you know-

Agnes:

There are no preferences in his theory. It doesn't even show up-

Robin:

That value, what, what are the things that are created by exchange in his view? It's desire, it's value. Well-

Agnes:

Value, I think.

Robin:

Okay.

Agnes:

Objective value. I mean-

Robin:

Then value doesn't exist in these other societies that don't have exchange?

Agnes:

Right. That's what-

Robin:

They, they don't have value. So what is it they have? They have something.

Agnes:

Right. So what he's gonna say is, um, that they-

Robin:

Desire they have?

Agnes:

Um, not really because, um... So desire for, um... They, they're, they're gonna have proto versions of all these things. I mean, so th- but so-

Robin:

Fine. Let's talk about-

Agnes:

I just wanna, I just wanna flag something, which is you've shifted from your... So a minute ago you said you don't understand this because you don't understand the idea of some terms being prior in a theory to other things. I was like, no, that's wrong, because there's clearly terms, say, in economics that are prior to other terms, that you define A in terms of B, and not B in terms of A. For instance, preferences come in at a relatively fundamental level. So that can't be your objection to Simmel. So you might object a- about which terms are prior, right? And you might think it's crazy to think that exchange or the idea of exchanging sacrifices is gonna be this fundamental term. Okay. But I just... That's, that's a different objection.

Robin:

Well-

Agnes:

I can defend him on those terms.

Robin:

I mean, I can talk in standard economic terms about which are as a habit built on which, but if I'm not so sure which of his terms correspond to which of the economics terms, I'm not gonna be so sure about his claims about which things are prior mapping onto the others. But anyway, yes, it's our habit to talk about people and preferences first, and then about their choices, and then we can compare different institutions, and some of those might be market institutions within which we could talk about prices and money appearing. But the framework of being able to talk first about preferences and information and options lets us talk about a wide range of other places people could be placed, and use the same theory to compare, uh, stealing and, uh, uh, you know, the other things he says people do instead of exchange in other societies. That's part of our trying to be general, is to have concepts that could, uh, apply in all those different contexts.

Agnes:

I think we are only gonna get through part of chapter one. So, um, I think that there is a, a framework here, um, that, um... I sort of noticed the thing that you're mentioning in Simmel, um, that I would describe as Hegelian. Um, though I have no idea whether Simmel is actually taking it from Hegel, but he probably is. Which is that there is this idea of a concept where it, um, recei- it's like the idea of aspiration, but for concepts. So where it receives a progressively fuller articulation over time. So you might think, um, um, you know, was ancient science science? Or was ancient medicine medicine? And, um, you might think, well, insofar as, um, they didn't use a lot of the, um, standards and techniques and whatever that would be definitive for us of science or medicine, where if people today were doing the things that they were doing, we would not call that science or medicine, right? Um, then the, the, but the, the answer isn't still, still isn't straightforwardly no. It's that they had a primitive version of science and medicine, and that primitive version requires you to sort of, um, have something like a primitive version of the concept, where, um, um, what that means is if you wanna understand them or if you wanna understand the concept of science and medicine, don't start with them. Start with the later thing. That gives you the thing in its fullest form, and then you can go back and be like, okay, there's a way in which people in the robber society had preferences. There's a way in which they were people. There's a way in which they were subjects. But it's less than the way that we have now, and so we shouldn't try to take them as, as paradigmatic. So, um, you need to silence your, like, inner anti-snob 'cause you're worried that we're not, like, sufficiently elevating these primitive peoples, okay? 'Cause that's just not relevant to this, um, particular kind of analysis.

Robin:

That's not my complaint.

Agnes:

Okay. So, um, so the idea is that, you know, um, um, um, the... Like, what Simmel wants to say is that the very dif- distance between subject and object that is presupposed with the idea of something like a preference, right? So a preference is, like, something that's resolutely in me. It's not in the thing at all. It's for the thing, but it, um-

Robin:

It's... I mean, it's a relation to a thing, whether a re- a relation between two things in, is in one or another is less clear. Uh, but it is relational.

Agnes:

I mean, um, it's relational in the sense that, like, a belief about Mount Everest is relational-

Robin:

Yes

Agnes:

... 'cause it's about Mount Everest. But my belief about Mount Everest is resolutely in me. None of it is located in Mount Everest.

Robin:

Well, we don't-

Agnes:

Mount Everest doesn't have beliefs

Robin:

I don't know that we need to settle that, but-

Agnes:

My preferences are, are psychological states, right?

Robin:

So let's go back to your nested concept thing. You start with a simple concept that makes sense in our current context, and then you move out of the context and now you stretch the concept and you create a proto version of it that-

Agnes:

Yes

Robin:

... uh, can make more sense in the wider space of context. And then if we go farther, we make a stretched further-

Agnes:

Yeah

Robin:

... more proto version of it, and now those stretched versions may be less well-defined or less clearly defined, since we don't have as many cases to pin them down, uh, relative to the more familiar cases. Uh-

Agnes:

Um, no, I don't think it's because we don't have enough cases. I think it's because, um, the thing itself is not coming through fully. That, that's the idea. That's the Hegelian idea. That, uh, I wanna flag this is a different way of using concepts than economists use them. Okay? But it is actually very, very standard in philosophy to talk in this way.

Robin:

I, I don't doubt you. Uh, but in all the STEM fields I've ever been, we have had the practice where we have a concept and then we try it out in a new context, and then we see that the context needs stretching in order to encompass the new concepts. But then our goal is to try to redefine the concept, reconceive it so that the same concept then applies in this new context and in the original context. That is, this is-

Agnes:

Right

Robin:

... part of how we try to make a robust set of concepts, is by continuing to stretch them into new applications and then rearranging the concepts as necessary to have a robust general set of concepts that applies in all the-

Agnes:

Yes

Robin:

... situations we know.

Agnes:

I understand. That's not what Simmel's doing. He thinks that would be a mistake in this case. So-

Robin:

Right. But that makes it hard for me

Agnes:

... you make the Hegelian move only when your move would be the wrong way to think about it. It would confuse your understanding.

Robin:

I'm not convinced it is the wrong move here yet, but I'm willing to listen to him to hear an argument about why-

Agnes:

Right

Robin:

... we should do it that way.

Agnes:

But at, at the moment all I'm trying... all we're trying to do is understand what he's saying, right? And so to, in order to understand what he, what he's saying, you have to see that this is the kind of move that he's making. And so let me go back and answer your earlier question about the primitive people, right? So the idea is that subject and object were just less differentiated. So speaking of something like a preference, which is a psychological state located inside a subject and is not located in objects. Speaking of a preference is a little bit of a less right thing to... it's less right way to speak. And one of the way that Simmel talks about this is that, um, the more you care about something like the satisfaction of your desires, and the less you care about exactly how they get satisfied, the more you're like the primitive person. Um, where you're not that interested in the object. You're just interested in like, let's say, getting rid of your hunger. So any food will do, or, um, any woman will do. Um, uh, and the thought like, "No, I, I really need this particular object," that, that's the moment at which the object comes into view as something very separate from the subject. And so Simmel thinks of that as a development, that the subject and object can be differentiated, and this development or this differentiation, um, is part of what the very concept of desire requires, right? Because desire is not just directed at the satisfaction of a drive. It is directed typically at an object that is different and separate from you. Um, and so yes, I think he thinks that desire, like exchange, like all these concepts, are, are... Maybe this is part of what he means by saying it's a sociological concept. Um, though he doesn't use that word. I'm, uh, I'm attributing that to him.

Robin:

Thank you.

Agnes:

That's what I think he's arguing towards the end of, uh, I think part two. Uh, part two of chapter one. Um, uh, he thinks that, um, uh, that we're, we're only gonna fully understand, um... Like, we have to understand these primitive people as primitive. That is, as inchoate versions of something else, where there isn't some third thing that they're clearly doing. There's nothing they're clearly doing. They're just unclearly doing the thing that we're doing. Yeah.

Robin:

So again, I come from, you know, 2026 social science, which has a set of concepts that we would use to describe these primitive people, and it seems to me that they are adequate to describing their behavior. And now there's this alternative concept that Simmel had 126 years ago, and I'm struggling to understand to what extent I can inhabit his concepts and that I want to bother. That is, the highest level question would be, if I go to all the work to inhabit his concepts and his nested sets of concepts, what will I understand that I can't already understand with the modern versions of these concepts?

Agnes:

Okay. So I think that, um, economics just doesn't cover the territory that, um, Simmel is trying to theorize. Simmel, as I said when I, that my, introduced my comment, Simmel's giving a theory of value, of what is good or what is important. I do not think economists even try to do that. Most of them are deaf to the concept. They have the idea of satisfaction of preferences, but they don't have the idea of value.

Robin:

But what is the va- theory of value?

Agnes:

They might conceptually be utilitarians, and then you can plug... That, that's the most comfortable theory for them to plug themselves into. I just explained the theory of value. It's a theory of value as relative and objective. Um, but I think-

Robin:

I don't understand those phrases, so let me just-

Agnes:

That's fine. That's, that's a question you can ask, right?

Robin:

Okay.

Agnes:

That's a different move from-

Robin:

So, so tell me-

Agnes:

... I have all this stuff explained already.

Robin:

So, so our usual concept, you know, to review for the audience, not necessarily for you. Uh, individuals have their preferences, options, and information. They then make choices. In the context of something like a market, their choices will produce a market price, and that market price isn't... is an amalgam of all the different people participating and their various wealth and preferences producing the market price. So that market price- ... is not subjective in the sense of being particular to an individual, but it's not objective in the sense that it would be the same had those, the community not been different. Uh, so is a price, uh, relative or objective, or what is it in his terms, and is value different? That it is... Price is the closest thing I can see to what he's saying is value, is pr-

Agnes:

Yeah, I think he is basically saying that. I think, I think he-

Robin:

Price is relative, but not subjective.

Agnes:

No. Price is a measure. Like, money is a measure. So it's-

Robin:

Yes

Agnes:

... the value is the thing that's being measured.

Robin:

Okay. Right. But price is a measure of value.

Agnes:

Of value. Yes.

Robin:

Okay.

Agnes:

Exactly.

Robin:

Right. But surely-

Agnes:

So that's why they're, they're...

Robin:

But economists definitely have the idea of price as a measure of value. That's not something we've for- we've neglected to do over the last centuries. Uh, if you say economists don't have a concept of value and say, "Yes, but of course we have prices," and you say his concept of value is prices. What's the difference?

Agnes:

They, they don't tell you what makes, um, the thing that price measures be value. That's what he's trying to give you an account of. So when you're talking-

Robin:

You're saying economists don't tell us where prices come from? Is that his claim?

Agnes:

No. Economists don't tell us why the thing that price measures should deserve the name value. He wants-

Robin:

And how does he do that?

Agnes:

He does it by saying that, um, the thing that price measures is a certain kind of stage in the journey of, um, the objectivization of the exchange relation, um, or maybe we even wanna say of desire. Um, that is that-

Robin:

But we are, we knew that. That's not new to economists. We, we, we know that that happens. Yes, of course. Markets change over time, and they acquire, uh, more activity and more focus and more, uh, precision of estimates of individuals with respect to it. Yes, over time, prices entrench and become more salient and central and focal. And what is he saying beyond that?

Agnes:

So, um, he's saying that that's how the subject and the object become differentiated.

Robin:

So he, he has this point, which of course makes sense, that if you just got-

Agnes:

I'm just trying to phrase it in some way where you won't say-

Robin:

Well, okay

Agnes:

... "Oh, economists say that, too."

Robin:

I mean, he says, look, if you could just get whatever you want without even trying, you wouldn't even bother to think about the thing as outside of yourself. You would just treat it as inside yourself. You only start to think-

Agnes:

There would be no economy in a world where everybody just got what they want. Yes.

Robin:

Right. So you have to see some resistance to getting what you want in order to see a thing as outside of yourself, and then once you see it as outside of yourself, you can see it as something you want or don't want to some degree, and then you can have preferences about it or at least be explicit in your mind that you have a desire for it. And that's something you say that economists don't know?

Agnes:

Um, so I think that there's an, a, the... What's super interesting is that he thinks there's another step. That is, um, um, to get value, i.e. exchange, um, um, or rather to get, um, objective value, i.e. systems of exchange going, you need more than the fact that, um, there's stuff you want and, um, it's not all immediately available to you. You even need more. You need, first of all, you need, it needs to be a little bit available to you, right? Um, like-

Robin:

Right. There's that, the intermediate. You have to be able to get it somewhat, but not e- overwhelmingly easy.

Agnes:

Right. But then even that-

Robin:

But not too hard

Agnes:

... even that is not enough, right? Um, because as he points out, you could deal with that situation. That is, with the situation where there's something you want and it's hard, but not too hard to get. You could deal with it in one of three ways. Ascetic renunciation. You could just decide you're not gonna have it. Um, uh, fighting. You could try and fight someone for it, or robbery. Similar to fighting, in my view-

Robin:

Right

Agnes:

... but he distinguishes them. Okay. Um-

Robin:

Or trade is the fourth.

Agnes:

Right. But, um, um, trade requires you to already have a sort of a mindset of something like, oh, this object has a value that is potentially, like, parallel to the value of some other object. Now you're starting to think in terms of value. You didn't do that-

Robin:

That's-

Agnes:

... when you just thought about desire

Robin:

... but that's not true for robbery or fighting. You definitely need a concept of the value of something for when you decide whether to rob it or fight for it. So, uh, tr- it's, then this concept of value is not at all unique to trade. It's just any action where you have different actions you could take. You need value to choose, and that's what preferences are. That's the whole point.

Agnes:

Okay. Good. So I think here, sorry, I think this is a bit of a problem for Simmel. Um, so the problem is that he wants to say that exchange, um, is not different in principle from, like, labor. Um, because when I labor-

Robin:

Right

Agnes:

... I exchange my efforts for, um, some fruits, let's say, of-

Robin:

Right

Agnes:

... those efforts. Right? So, like, I pl- I plow the land, and then I get stuff, and that's also a kind of exchange. Um, and, um, uh, and he thinks, um... And, and, and sa- in saying this, he's really pushing against Marxists, I think, because Marxists thinks that there's this very distinctive thing that happens with labor and with selling your labor, and he's like, "Selling your labor is just like any other kind of trade."

Robin:

Right.

Agnes:

Um, uh, and, um, but then-

Robin:

Well, of course, there's a difference between working to get something and then trading in a labor market to get something. That would be the difference between the exchange and, say, even the fighting. You can fight an animal and kill it and then eat it, and then your labor has gotten you the animal to eat. But there's, since there's not a market, you wouldn't necessarily be able to compare your price with other people's prices.

Agnes:

Right. No, absolutely. But, um, the point is that, um, the, there's a kind of exchange that's already implicit in anything that you do- Um, because you have to decide that it's worth the effort-

Robin:

Right

Agnes:

... of doing it.

Robin:

So you have a set of internal prices by which you choose your different things you choose, and then that gets matched with other people's prices when you have an exchange world.

Agnes:

Right. So if, if-

Robin:

And then those prices get integrated

Agnes:

... I think if you think that there's these internal prices, right, then that's kind of a problem for Simmel. That is, Simmel has to say, "No, it's really, um, uh, it's really only when you hit, you know, um, something like barter, um, but even more ideally, you know, monetary exchange that you have this sense that there is, um, a real value of the thing that you have and of the thing that you want." Um-

Robin:

Well, it's more real in the sense that it's more what we'd call intersubjective. And I don't know if that's the kind of real he is willing to consider.

Agnes:

That is-

Robin:

There is this difference between subjective and intersubjective where-

Agnes:

Right. But if subjective-

Robin:

... different people together agree

Agnes:

... is also a system where, with a bunch of values that are relative to each other, right? That is inside your head if you have, like, well, there's how much, um, you know, like it's worth it to me to, like not sweat and there's how much it's worth it to me to get to food. And, um, then that's gonna be, it's gonna be intrasubjective, but it's still gonna be... By Simmel's definition, it's going to be objective. Namely, it's going to be a system in which a bunch of things stand in fixed relations to one another. They're just, like in your head instead of out in the world.

Robin:

Yeah. But that's what a preference is. I mean, a preference is a structure-

Agnes:

Right

Robin:

... that predicts many different choices through some integrated set of relative prices through... That's what preferences are-

Agnes:

Right

Robin:

... the relative prices of your different choices within yourself.

Agnes:

Right. And so I think that, um, um, it is a bit of a problem for Simmel that, um, robbery and regular old labor, um, uh, and fighting are sort of imply already the kind of, um, trade-off logic or something that he thinks of as, um, paradigmatic of, you know, ideally monetary exchange. Maybe what he has to say is something, is a thing that he sort of does say later when he's talking about primitive people, which is just that those systems aren't very well worked out. That is, the structure in your head, um, is not going to get stabilized without, um, sort of external support. And so he does talk about how, like children, right, will make trades that are, like terrible trades. Um, uh, and they will prefer the present value over the future-

Robin:

So-

Agnes:

... in some huge way

Robin:

... e- economists have some, and finance people have some related concepts here. If we have different markets, we have a concept of sort of the arbitrage cost of trading between them, and as that cost goes down, the market's prices get more aligned. So we have this concept that there are often different prices in different places that are close but not the same because there's some finite degree of, of the cost of coordinating those prices. And so then you could say, you know, for example, a world of hunters who don't interact at all with each other, they'll still face roughly the same hunting environment and similar physical trade-offs, and so their prices would be somewhat correlated, except each person might have different physical abilities and then their prices would be different for that. But then once these hunters would start trading their hunt, well, now the prices of, of a fish or an antelope or whatever would be more in alignment because each person would think, "Well, I could fish, but I could more easily pu- hunt an antelope and then sell my antelope and buy more fish." And then as people trade, these prices get more integrated and more the same. And is that the concept of objective is just a larger, more integrated set of prices? 'Cause you might think, "Well, there's some other planet out there and they have very different prices." In what sense does he mean objective other than more widely shared, more intersubjective based on people interacting more and having cheaper, faster interaction, which is what will make their prices be more aligned?

Agnes:

I think that his thought has to be that if you could somehow imagine the conceit of, like a person on their own, um, then you're ei- like, you're either in a case where they're just like a non-human animal, and so they're just driven by instinct at every moment. Or they're gonna behave like a child, um, that is they're gonna have like super, um, you know, intransitive preferences and they're going to... There's not going to be a system, there's not gonna be a stable price system.

Robin:

But that's just-

Agnes:

I do think

Robin:

... but we have large literatures say, not only of individual hunters of humans, we have many animals. We have what, there's foraging literatures of animals, and they have sophisticated strategies whereby they trade off the costs of various actions, uh, in their hunting strategies and their, you know, collecting of food strategies, and those are, have many prices in that. That is, we, we have a large literatures on this in biology of they're not like children who just do random stuff. Most animals have pretty sophisticated, carefully trading off strategies of whether to, say, stay in one place or go somewhere else, whether to go after a near thing that's bigger or a small thing that's farther, going after something sick that's healthy. Different species you might go after, different times of the year you would do it, different times of day. They aren't at all random. They are quite systematic and in a way that's understandable in terms of their basic cost trade-offs. They basically have prices for their various hunting, foraging moves.

Agnes:

So the thing I said was not that the children are like the animals. I said they're unlike. I said there are two different cases. One case is either they would be like animals, in which case they don't make choices- Now, they still might, we still might be able to model their behavior using prices and preferences and all of that, right? But they don't think to themselves, "Which of these two things should I do?" That's one possibility. And the other possibility is they do that, but they resolve those decisions in a childish way. So I wasn't claiming that the animals behave like children. I was claiming they don't behave like children.

Robin:

What is then Simmel's claim about the difference between how an animal, even a human animal, would hunt by themselves with lots of complicated trade-offs in the hunting or foraging, and that not being value, and somehow the market exchange being value? Uh, or even, like, people who fight have value. That is often there's a thing you're f- if we have a tournament, right? There's the prize in the tournament, and then our-

Agnes:

Yeah

Robin:

... various struggles in the tournament are set by the shared value of the prize in the tournament. Is that like a market price, where a group of people's values are being coordinated by their relative efforts to win a prize?

Agnes:

So Simmel's view is that there are different degrees of differentiation between the subject and the object. And, um, the, uh, antiquity or whatever, pre-antiquity, is gonna have... You're gonna be in a more undifferentiated state, such that, for example, concepts like selfishness are just harder to apply. Like, they're hard to apply to animals. Are animals selfish? Do they act selflessly when they take care of their young? Like, those concepts don't, don't work. They start to apply at a certain point, um, and that's when you have this sense of a, um, a world that is, like, distant from you. Um, and then you have thoughts about it, about how to navigate it, and different possibilities of ways that you can navigate it. So I guess I would say, um, the most natural way that I find, though Simmel doesn't say, says he doesn't talk about animals at all. Um, but the most natural way that I find is to just imagine it as occurrent thoughts. That is, saying to yourself, "Which of these two things should I do?" Or something like that. Which involves something like a conception of yourself as a self, and a conception of, like, the, you know, food you could get as an object that's out there that isn't part of me or connected to me. One of the things that he says that I thought was interesting about the, the resistance, the, the, the idea that robbery was valued more, it was more noble than exchange. Um, there was this thought, um, uh, that when you exchange something for something else, then suddenly you are, like, submitting yourself to an external rule that says, "This thing is worth this," right? And there's a way in which that's kind of offensive. Um, uh, he, he has some line about that it's the, um, objectification of the self or something like that. Um, uh, and, um, that there is this other attitude that comes into view in relation to objects, which is... That, that becomes possible through development. Which is something like a respect for objects, an aesthetic appreciation for them. So the aesthetic is, like, the limit of this development of the object as an object. You can have a disinterested concern with it, right? Animals, as far as we know, don't aesthetically, um, engage with objects. Um, they don't appreciate a beautiful painting. Um, and, um, uh, the... I mean, look, for, for all we know, animals have secretly human minds or whatever. Like, right? And so that's fine. The point is, take a view on which they don't. Um, uh, then this would be the difference. It would be that, um, the animal doesn't separate itself from its world. It doesn't conceive of itself as a self and of the things outside of it as different in that way. And that, um, that means that, for instance, it, it, it can't have respect for objects. It can't, um, um, appreciate them independently of the satisfactions that they provide.

Robin:

So again, I'm coming this from our social science concepts of today. Using those concepts applied to these cases, we wouldn't need to be making these distinctions. We would just say, and we do say, the animals have preferences and they have strategies to achieve them, which have relative prices in their actions. And then primitive humans do in their world, and then we to do in the market today. And from the spense- sense of those concepts, it's all the same concept of value, uh, but correlated more as people have more interactions to be able to have shared concepts of value. Uh, but it sounds like you're saying, well, no, Simmel has some other agendas with his value concept. He needs his concept to distinguish between humans and other humans in certain ways, and between modern humans and primitive humans in certain ways. And therefore, he needs a set of concepts that helps him support those distinctions. And he's gonna wanna how to integrate some concept of aesthetics into his concept of choice and value. And then what I'm seeing is this complicated set of concepts he has. And again, to me, the key question for any intellectual is, when they do a bunch of analysis, they define some terms, they make some discussion, they make some claims. How opaque is it from the outside? How much are they building on sort of standard other concepts that you could, you know, use as an entry to understand what they're saying, or how much do you have to figure out their new set of concepts in their own new terms? And then the more they're doing of that, the more they're asking of you, the reader. And now the question is- Are they gonna have a payoff for that that's gonna make it worth you entering into their world, figuring out things their way, seeing how they understand concepts so that you can finally at some point get some insight that you could then maybe translate into the languages you might have used before you entered their world? So that's my reaction to Simmel at the moment, is you're elaborating all the ways in which his concepts are special and unique and not like all the concepts people use today, and maybe not even like the concepts people back then used. It might be his own little world he made. And he's, he's constructing and defining various things. But now my question's gonna be what insights can you s- you know, tempt me with to say, "Well, eventually if you play with his concepts enough, and you think in his terms, and you build up these structures the way he did, then the answer will be something. We will get something out of this." And-

Agnes:

So I've done that a bunch of times in this conversation, but I feel like the thing that you... that is I've tried to say, "Here, what's the point? What is he arguing for?" I've tried to say what's original. I've tried to say what's interesting. And you're like, "But why can't I just use these economic terms?" And then I'm saying, "Well, because you're not capturing all of what I'm saying. You're only capturing some fraction of it." Um, and then you're like, "I think I've captured all of it." It's a little bit like, say there was a swimming pool, and, um, and, uh, and you were like, "What's it gonna be like if I jump in the pool?" And I try to talk to you about it, you know, and you're like, "Well, that doesn't seem that different or w- from my other experiences." And I'm like, "Well, you know, I'll t- I'll tell you b- a little bit more about how it feels." And you're like, "Look, it's a lot of effort to ask me to jump into that pool." I'm like, "Do you wanna just maybe stick your toe in?" And you're just like, "No, no, first tell me. Before, before I try to think using any-

Robin:

But-

Agnes:

... of Simmel's concepts, tell me exactly what conclusions I'm gonna draw." And what I'm telling you is those conclusions are drawn using those concepts. So if you're not even willing to try a little bit to inhabit those concepts, I'm not gonna be able to tell you the conclusions in a form where you could hear them.

Robin:

But for, for context, I read the whole book. Before this discussion, we both read the whole book.

Agnes:

Yes.

Robin:

So I struggled through the whole book, and I've gotta say, sentence by sentence, he's hard to follow. It, it's not clear what he's saying in each sentence because it's not clear what the concepts mean.

Agnes:

Well, that's why I ga- I, I sent you an outline, and I also gave you my, um, summary just a minute ago. So, um-

Robin:

But you're telling me he has a unique concept of value, and therefore that's the ans-

Agnes:

It's not unique. It's the concept all philosophers use. It's just the one that economists are deaf to. So for example, animals-

Robin:

Tell me more about this concept, then. What, what is it so-

Agnes:

One, one difference is that animals don't seem to have values. That is, they don't, um... It's true that they pursue some things and avoid others, but it's also true of this pencil, that if I drop it, it's gonna go somewhere. That doesn't mean it wants to go anywhere, aka Aristotle. Um, and-

Robin:

You don't think the animals want to do things?

Agnes:

Um, no, no. I, I'm granting that the animals want to do things. Um-

Robin:

Okay

Agnes:

... what I'm saying is that just as moving in a certain direction isn't s- isn't, um, sufficient for desire, so too desire isn't sufficient for valuing. That is, to value something is to think that in some way it matters or it really is good regardless of whether or not I want it. And that's what Simmel is trying to explain. He's trying to explain the emergence of the thought, "This thing over here really is good regardless of whether I pursue it, or want it, or I'm driven towards it by instinct." And his thought is that the emergence of that concept is connected to the idea of money.

Robin:

But there's a close by related concept that I would say economists are quite w- very aware of. So for example, when you buy a house and you think about, you know, changing the patio or something, a thing people often say is, "Well, how will this affect the sale value of the house?" And often even if you'd enjoy the patio, if it's gonna lower the sale value of the house, you might not do it. So people are very well aware of the value of things in terms of in an exchange market what could they get for it, and that's a outside of themselves concept of value people use in the market. But is that the kind of value you mean?

Agnes:

So I think it depends on how we, um, theorize that example. That is, this is often the problem, is that you think you're covering the same territory, um, but you're either just giving no theory underneath something or assuming one that disagrees, right? You can use a lot of the same words but not be saying the same thing. Um, but let me just flag, Simmel's not using the word value in a way that's at all weird for philosophers. He's completely using it in a standard way for philosophers. So he's giving a theory of value in the same sense in which utilitarians give a theory of value, and Kantians give a theory of value, and Aristotelians give a theory of value, and economists have no theory of value at all, but occasionally they'll plug in utilitarianism. Okay, so, um, I, um, um, um, sorry, I got off track because of my, um, diatribe. So just remind me of the, the, the-

Robin:

So you say-

Agnes:

... the three words

Robin:

... he's showing a special kind of value that philosophers like. I say the value he looks... he's, like he's pointing to looks like resale value, like market value.

Agnes:

Oh, right, right, right. Okay, I got it. I got it. Yeah.

Robin:

And so what's the difference between his real value-

Agnes:

Yeah

Robin:

... and the economist's resale or market value?

Agnes:

Right. So the difference is that, um, one way to think about the, the importance of resale value might be something like just cash it out in terms of my other preferences, right? So that, well, I don't actually prefer to have a nice patio that I can enjoy if the cost of that patio is that when I'm retired I can't go on that many vacations, right? So there I'm trading my patio against my future vacations, and there there's no sense of objective value. There's, there's no sense that, um, really in reality the vacations are more valuable than the patio or vice versa.

Robin:

Oh, there, there is the objective value of the market price.

Agnes:

There's just which I like more, right? Um, the market value helps me, um, convert which of those things I get, right? The point is I might actually care about the value of something. That is, I might care not about what I can get, or what I can experience, or which desires of mine can be satisfied. It might just matter to me that my house is a valuable house, for example. So there the resale value would be a sign of its value, but I wouldn't care at the end about the resale value.

Robin:

Right. But-

Agnes:

But, yeah

Robin:

... it doesn't look like Simmel shows me how to use resale values to actually infer real values. He just usually assumes They are the same thing. He's not showing me any way to infer real value from prices other than to accept the prices as the real values.

Agnes:

Okay. Well, let's turn to the thing, one of the two puzzles that I wanted to discuss. So, um, he talks about how, um, you know, in an exchange for the first time you get the idea of an equivalence, um, that is, um, uh, that there, that there's something that this hammer is worth because I can trade it for, like, two carrots, but not four carrots or something. Um, you get this idea of an equivalence. But now, okay, here... And this is the thing that's always puzzles me. Now, um, is the hammer of equivalent value to, let's say, the two carrots? Suppose I'm willing... Suppose you have two carrots and I have a hammer, and I'm like, uh, "I'm willing to trade." Presumably the reason I'm willing to trade is that I think the hammer is worth less than the two carrots.

Robin:

Right.

Agnes:

And presumably you are willing to trade because you think that the hammer's worth more than the two carrots.

Robin:

Right.

Agnes:

So it seems-

Robin:

But not in some absolute value sense. In our-

Agnes:

Well, hold on

Robin:

... private preference value sense.

Agnes:

So, so far, so far, right, so far it looks like neither of us has used the concept of equality, right, of them being of equal value. That is, we both think they're of differing value, and we're willing to trade because we think they're of differing value. Okay, now, um, let's look at the outside point of view, right? So, so Simmel has this, um, I'm not sure where he'll define it, um, but he has this, um, idea of an observer, right? And he's like, well, from the point of view of the observer these, uh, you know... So, oh, yeah, I found it. Okay, here's a quote. Um, uh, uh, "A would not have any reason, uh, to give, uh, away X if he received only an equal value Y by acquiring it," right? Um, and so it must be that Y is more valuable than X for A, and, and for vice versa for B. Um, um, uh, but the differences objectively balance each other as far as an observer is concerned. So that seems false to me, because it could be that X is much more valuable for the one, and Y is only a little bit more valuable for the other, and so they might not balance.

Robin:

Well, but when observers use market prices, his statement is correct in terms of market prices, it's just not true in terms of personal value. So that's in a standard... Economists make the distinction between relative values in terms of market prices, and then individual value for things. And isn't Simmel just talking about this market value as value? And that was my question before, why think this normative philosophy concept of value corresponds to the market price value?

Agnes:

So, um, I think he really is thinking here of a trade where it doesn't nec- we don't necessarily ha- It, it's not framed in terms of money. That is, that's why he has, like, X and Y, um, uh-

Robin:

Right

Agnes:

... barter, right? And maybe there isn't a market, right? Maybe these are just two individuals trading two things, but his thought is that that is already introducing, uh, uh, some kind of-

Robin:

Okay. But your, your pitch here was that Simmel will help us see real value, not just economists talk about value-

Agnes:

Yeah

Robin:

... but real value, the kind philosophers mean.

Agnes:

Yeah.

Robin:

And then we say, where does Phil- Simmel point us to to find real value? It seems to me he points us to market prices. What else does he point us to besides market prices as the place to see real value?

Agnes:

I was raising this passage as something that I'm confused about. That is-

Robin:

Okay

Agnes:

... I don't understand why he thinks that the differences objectively balance each other as far as an observer is concerned. Your thought is, well, if there's, uh, a market price, then they do. But-

Robin:

No, I'm, I'm-

Agnes:

Even if there is a market price-

Robin:

I'm just saying-

Agnes:

... it seems to me that the differences might not balance each other.

Robin:

We agree that there is this concept of personal value-

Agnes:

Yes

Robin:

... how much you get out of something, and then there's this separate concept of objective value. So they don't have to be equal. So if market price equals objective value, it doesn't have to equal personal value.

Agnes:

Right.

Robin:

And your personal value for something could be higher than the objective value.

Agnes:

Right.

Robin:

And so the trade would happen. If we can identify market price value with real value, the philosopher value that you say is the reason we're reading this. But is it, in fact?

Agnes:

But even if we can, I'm, I'm asking a question about a sentence in Simmel that I don't understand. What I'm saying is, um, this sentence seems to me to come out false even if we assume that there is a market. The differences don't objectively balance each other as far as an observer is concerned. It could still be true even if there's an official price, and the price of a hammer is two carrots. That's accepted-

Robin:

Right

Agnes:

... in our whole society. It still might be that the value of the carrots to me is just far greater than the value of the hammer to you. And so the difference, namely how valuable something is for the one person compared to how it is for the other person, is not getting balanced out.

Robin:

Are you sure that objective value is supposed to balance those two things out?

Agnes:

Well-

Robin:

Is that a claim about objective value, that it's somehow weighing-

Agnes:

Let me read the sentence again. Um, uh, this is in the chapter. It's around page, um, like-

Robin:

I'm seeing your quote from it here, from the text you sent me.

Agnes:

Okay. Okay. So yeah, under, it's under Theories of Utility and Scarcity on, in my outline.

Robin:

Right, that's where I'm at reading it.

Agnes:

Okay. So, um, if X is more valuable than Y for A, and Y is more valuable than X for B, the differences objectively balance each other as far as an observer is concerned.

Robin:

Which means the observer isn't concerned about these differences. They, they just care about the market price. That, that seems to be the interpretation to me. The market price is the objective value.

Agnes:

He's saying the differences, the, the differences that he just referred to, namely the difference between how much X value is-

Robin:

Right

Agnes:

... uh, uh, X is valuable for A and how much those differences are balanced out.

Robin:

But they could be balanced out if they just count for zero. They don't count.

Agnes:

I see. Okay. That's a very odd way to say that they don't count.

Robin:

I, I agree.

Agnes:

It's unlikely that that's what he meant. Um-

Robin:

But-

Agnes:

I, I... But here's why this is really important. This is the li- this is the part where he is trying to establish that there is this equalization and that there is this kind of objectivity that's coming in, right? The, the objectively, the, the adverb objectively is what's gonna become objectivity. So I mean, in a way, my, my problem here is that this is his attempt to get to the idea that market prices, um, measure objective value, is like this is where that's happening in the argument.

Robin:

So w- we economists have many standard examples of how prices are asymmetric in the sense that one side of the transaction gets a lot more out of it than the other side. That's just a very standard, uh... But we mo- think the marginal value is more equal, but not the aggregate, m- you know, non-marginal value. So the standard example is water. Without water we all die, but because there's so much of it we can each buy water very cheaply. And so our value of water is vastly above the price we pay for it, and people supplying water, that's not so true. They're supplying water more at their cost, uh, because it's pretty costly to supply water at such a low price as we all pay for it. So on the people selling water side, they're actually not getting that much extra surplus. But we people on the buying water side, we're getting this enormous surplus. We get to live which we otherwise would die-

Agnes:

But is that just-

Robin:

... without water

Agnes:

... not thinking about... I mean, that is the marginal value of the water for us is roughly what we're paying for it now.

Robin:

Right. He's not doing a marginal analysis here, but that could save this. If he had redone the sentence in a marginal sense, he could just say, well, at the margin you're getting no z- no extra value from the marginal unit.

Agnes:

I don't think the sentence comes out true if we stick the word marginal everywhere. That is, it could be that X is marginally much more valuable for A than how valuable-

Robin:

No

Agnes:

... marginally valuable Y is for B, given how much of an-

Robin:

No, but they-

Agnes:

... X, Y

Robin:

... it would be zero. On the margin they would both be zero. That would be the standard market answer. On the margin, your marginal unit is worth zero to you, and therefore you're getting zero value above the price, and similarly for them, their marginal cost-

Agnes:

Then why are you, uh, if, if it's not valuable to you at all, why are you, um-

Robin:

Because it's all the units up to that margin that you're getting the value from. But the marginal unit you're not getting any value from, that's the whole point.

Agnes:

But, like, you, you do a bunch of transactions, right? And so, like, is this a transaction or not? That is, do you buy the marginal unit of water or not? If you buy it, it seems to me you must get some value from it.

Robin:

But, but you split them into infinitesimal things and then, you know, you're getting closer and closer to zero-

Agnes:

Well, you don't-

Robin:

... it's just but the infinite

Agnes:

... transactions are not infinitely divisible.

Robin:

Okay, but then-

Agnes:

I know that

Robin:

... then we'll look at the finite last thing and say that on average sometimes it's positive and negative and you're making a guess and, you know, that, that's how it's gonna go for the marginal one. But on average it'll be zero or near zero. The point is, uh... But again, my issue is-

Agnes:

I mean, that's another way to... So my puzzle here, I've always been puzzled about this feature of exchange, which is that every exchange seems to entail a disagreement about the value of things. Um, you just put it in an equally paradoxical way, which is like every exchange is for no value at all, at least-

Robin:

At the margin. The mar-

Agnes:

Yeah

Robin:

... the last unit is no value.

Agnes:

Right. But I mean, say what you want to understand is exch- actual exchanges that happen, right? Where it's like, you know, I go to the store and I buy a certain amount of groceries, and, like, I have groceries in my house-

Robin:

Right

Agnes:

... but this is a marginal grocery trip in the sense that it's in addition to-

Robin:

Right

Agnes:

... all my other groceries.

Robin:

But in a market, most of the transactions aren't at the margins. So, uh, but the price is set by the marginal transactions. And so at the margin you have this relation, but all, most of the trans-

Agnes:

But why aren't all the prices zero for everything since all the marginal values are zero?

Robin:

Like, you go to the store and buy some food. Your marginal value isn't zero for that food usually, but somebody's marginal value is zero, and that's what's setting the price is a standard story. But it-

Agnes:

But why wouldn't it set the price at zero then?

Robin:

It sets it at the zero difference between value and pri- price and price and cost, not at a zero price. It, it's about the difference between value and price and price and cost, uh, value, price and value co- you know.

Agnes:

So I guess that suggests, okay, price can't be a measure of value, 'cause if it were then it would have to be zero if the marginal value is zero, right? So it can't-

Robin:

The, the marginal value of what you're getting above price is zero, not that the price is zero. That... Sorry. So, you know, the standard you buy apples and they're a dol- you know, a, a dime an apple or something. Uh-

Agnes:

Right

Robin:

... the point is that, um, if you were to buy one more apple it would be worth a dime to you.

Agnes:

Mm-hmm.

Robin:

Not that it would be worth zero to you. And that their cost of producing one more apple would be a dime. So on the margin the price is a dime because both the seller and the buyer, that's the last unit they'd be willing to buy or sell.

Agnes:

Right. But-

Robin:

But all the other units, their costs are lower than the dime and your value's higher than the dime. That's why all the other units are happening. The last unit-

Agnes:

But does it follow that nobody would ever buy or produce the last unit?

Robin:

It... You could think of the last unit as the unit after the last unit, and that one isn't being produced, right? You're right next to the one that isn't being produced. But, but again, my, my issue here is again, wh- how do we know this has anything to do with philosophical value? Wh- what's the relation between market price value and philosoph- so market price value is a intersubjective value. It's not fully subjective. It is produced by a group of people trading, and it's the net effect that they share, so they agree together on that price. It's a shared price, but why would that be philosophical value? If the whole point is to say Simmel is getting us that philosophical value, not just economic value.

Agnes:

Right. I think that, um, his thought is that the process by which a market forms and, um, the increasing abs- the increasing abstraction of, let's say, money moving away from just being objects of value to being fully symbolic, right? That that process is a process in the objectification of value. So it's a process that develops objects as things that you can care about. So, um, it, let's say, moves us in the direction of being able to have an aesthetic relation to objects.

Robin:

If the move is just from subjective to intersubjective, then, I mean, economists has understood that for a very long time, that prices are intersubjective, but then people have complained, yes, but prices aren't real value. They are just this economic thing. So does Simmel have a move there to object those complaints, that, yes, it's a shared thing, but is it the real value, the thing that's connected to aesthetics, morality, whatever. Those are the ... Many people over the years have said, economic value isn't real value, and they have said, "Look at it, it's just stupid stuff you're buying, and real value is this wonderful stuff, and those couldn't be comparable. So your numbers couldn't be tracking that great stuff."

Agnes:

Right. So I think he sort of agrees with that. Um, what he thinks is that the process that produces, um, economic value is also the process that produces aesthetic value in distinction with economic value. That is that once you start to see that there's this kind of thing that makes everything fungible, you then start to see, wait, what would it be for something to stand outside of that? And so that concept is not available to the primitive people. Um-

Robin:

Standing outside of market prices isn't available if you don't have a market price, but it's not clear that that's the key way to understand wonderful stuff, is to understand it as outside of market prices.

Agnes:

Well, so what, um, um, um, what he wants to say is that part of what it is to value an object as such is to think of it, for instance, as not substitutable or not replaceable by another object. Um, and that is an attitude we tend to take towards things insofar as we wouldn't buy them or sell them. But that the process of even just getting the object in view is a process of, um, becoming, um, more alienated from our world in ways that money helps with.

Robin:

But-

Agnes:

So I guess he's saying something a little bit paradoxical, which is b- that money both creates but also puts itself in tension with, um, these things of, like, uh, uh, the pure objects.

Robin:

But surely people who fight or steal for things also conceive of those objects as outside of themselves and conceive them as in terms of at least personal prices that they will pay for them. Uh-

Agnes:

Right

Robin:

... those concepts are available to people outside of markets.

Agnes:

So per ... So the point is that the personal prices are not good enough. That is, the personal prices don't count as values. So animals also have personal prices.

Robin:

And why don't they count as values? I, I'm not seeing the-

Agnes:

Um-

Robin:

You know, if it's relative to me and my lifetime, that's not good enough. It's, if it's relative to me and my tribe, that's not good enough. But it's relative to me and, like, the village nearby, it's good enough or-

Agnes:

No, I think the tribe is, is making progress. Um-

Robin:

But-

Agnes:

I think that-

Robin:

Why does the scale over which people share and coordinate values, why is that so important as a meas- thing of true real value?

Agnes:

Um, I think, I think that it is just the point about differentiation. That is, that, um, insofar as the, the things in the world are just the intermediaries between your desire and the satisfaction of your desire, and you're just looking to discharge that loop as quickly as possible, that it seems right to say, but you don't really care about those things. That is, you would take one instead of the other one, and you don't see them as, like, an autonomous domain of valuable things in their own right. They're just ways of satisfying your desires. And it's other people that help us get a view on the world where things in the world matter. So maybe that's, that's what makes this a very sociological theory of value. It's to say we are able to get the thought in our heads, the thought, this thing is important, only with the help of other people, only by coordinating on its level of importance with other people. That's how we can have the very idea-

Robin:

But-

Agnes:

... of a thing being important. Otherwise, I feel-

Robin:

Okay, but even two people could do that, right? Two people in a couple. I realize you want something more than me, and I let you get it, and now I am using a social world to understand value as not just my desires. Isn't that enough?

Agnes:

I, I think Simmel would agree with that. Um, I, I think he thinks, um, the bigger, the more. So he thinks even a, you know, even a, a nation state is not enough. Like, you need globalization. Um, that is-

Robin:

Is one planet enough?

Agnes:

I think he would say if we knew that there were, if we knew that there were beings on other planets, and we also knew that they had value systems and whatever, um, the answer is no, it would not be enough.

Robin:

I think we're out of our time here for today.

Agnes:

Yeah.

Robin:

And, uh, to be continued perhaps.

Agnes:

Okay.