# Money is the Map

Feb 24, 2025

A lot of smooth brains on Hacker News about the last post. I’m sorry if you spent your whole life worshipping money, but hey, the Bible warned you about false idols, don’t shoot the messenger.

> “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism” – Mark Fisher

It’s actually very easy to imagine the end of capitalism. Imagine capitalism as a game of sharks, where eventually the biggest shark ends up gobbling up all the fish, and that one shark is the last player left standing with all the money.

When one person (or company) has all the money, do you see how the money would be worthless?

I’ll spell this out clearly. Money is a map, it is not a territory. Please understand what I mean by this before continuing to read. You can erase the mountains from the map, but you still have to climb over them in real life, and even worse, now you don’t have a map!

> “Everything around you that you call ‘life’ was made up by people who were no smarter than you” – Steve Jobs

So, if money is the map, what territory is it attempting to capture? Presumably something having to do with value, but increasingly, as we are buying and selling baskets of derivatives of memecoins, nothing.

A map that doesn’t accurately capture a territory is not a Schelling point. It’s not a useful map. And maps are only as good as their usefulness. Useless maps die out.

Do you agree or disagree that money is supposed to be a map of value? If you disagree, that’s an ought and I can’t use logic to convince you otherwise, I can just call you a moron who refuses to burn paper $100 bills for warmth on a deserted island. No no don’t burn the dollars they are valuable.

Many capitalists I meet are as stupid as communists, trying to give a moral justification for their system. This is my money, I deserve it. I should be able to passively deploy my capital into the markets and live off the returns.

> “Moral victories are for minor league coaches.” – JAY-Z

A economic system is only good in so much as it effectively deploys capital for real growth. If real economic growth is only 3 percent, any time you are earning beyond that, somebody else is losing.

And yet somehow, today, you can put your money in money market accounts and earn a “risk-free” 5 percent…hmm something doesn’t make sense. Who is losing? You will eventually be unable to squeeze the productive people any further.

The worst was an e-mail I got with someone who supposedly agreed with me.

> “Value creation (for all stakeholders) is at the core of the organization/ business model I am putting together…Anyway I wanted to let you know others out there who share your vision.” – random email

Fuck your stakeholders. Fuck your business model. You don’t understand me at all.

Stop worrying so much about the distribution of the pie. Start thinking about how to make the pie bigger. With exponential (what 3 percent year over year is) growth, the latter outstrips the former by so much.

The right distribution is simply:

> From each according to his ability, to each according to his ability to effectively deploy capital to achieve real economic growth.

Communism is dumb cause it goes to the poor (who routinely demonstrate that they poorly deploy capital). Capitalism is dumb cause it goes to the rent-seekers (who frequently deploy capital to increase or maintain their moat). Acceleration is the way.