199: The Abolition of Economic Value

June 12, 2025

Three Dialogues on What Cannot Be Measured

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Today’s issue is the start of a semi-random series where we will explore a future beyond money and markets…

Intro: The Tyranny of Measure

We were taught to count, long before we were taught to feel.
We learned to price things before we learned to name them.
And so we speak the language of the market—fluent in scarcity, silent in care.

What is economic value, really?
A ghost made by capital to discipline our desires.
A formula to erase what makes life worth living.

But outside this spell, another world waits.
A world where worth is not measured, but shared.
Where value is not extracted, but grown.

Below are three dialogues.
Parables, riddles, Taoist reflections.
Not answers—but doorways.
Not metrics—but mirrors.

I. The Market and the River

In which price meets flow, and fails to dam it.

Market:
I measure the world.
From salt to silk, from breath to bone.
Everything has its price.

River:
I carry what comes.
Fish, sediment, dreams, sorrow.
Nothing is priced, yet everything flows.

Market:
Without me, there is chaos.

River:
You are the chaos.

Market:
People kill for me.

River:
People die for you.

Market:
But I make growth!

River:
And I feed it. Until it floods.
And then I take it back.

Market:
Then what am I?

River:
A fever.
A forgetting.
A force that will pass.

II. The Calculator and the Cloud

In which the fixed meets the fleeting, and learns humility.

Calculator:
I am precise. One and one is two.
Always.

Cloud:
Until the fog rolls in.
Until the storm breaks.
Then it is thunder.

Calculator:
I serve plans, profits, projections.

Cloud:
I serve longing.
And loss.
And the unplanned.

Calculator:
But I give answers!

Cloud:
And I give questions.
They dream with me, not with you.

Calculator:
Without me, how will they know what is true?

Cloud:
By listening.
By drifting.
By becoming.

III. The Capital and the Compost

In which the dead speak, and not all rot is decay.

Capital:
I accumulate.
I conquer.
I preserve myself in numbers.

Compost:
I dissolve.
I return.
I become more than I was.

Capital:
I build empires.
Monuments.
Legacies.

Compost:
And I feed gardens.
Mushrooms.
Revolutions.

Capital:
They invest in me.

Compost:
They trust in me.
Different things.

Capital:
You are waste.

Compost:
I am transformation.
You die in vaults.
I bloom in soil.

Outro: On Value and Its Undoing

Abolishing economic value does not mean we abolish value.
It means we reclaim it.
From banks. From markets. From the dead language of profit.

It means we stop asking:
“What will it cost?”
And begin asking:
“What will it heal?”
“Who will it hold?”
“How does it last?”

Let us grow value like a river grows banks.
Like a cloud brings rain.
Like compost remembers everything.

Let us measure nothing.
And make everything matter.