The world of promises

I was thinking quite a bit about all sorts of values and how the values exchange lies at the core of human lives. However, I realized that lots of real values are substituted with promises of those values. Promises are everywhere – in governments and banks, businesses and services, relationships and families, and so on. They are extremely convenient at times, especially when promises are kept, but things become much more complicated and messy when promises are broken. A single broken promise impacts the whole chain of promises connecting a real value exchange, and depending on the size and strength of such a chain, the impact may vary from unnoticeable to global.

One very simplified example, with lots of nuances omitted, would be this – we exchange time for money at our jobs and later exchange money for other goods and services. Money help us to exchange a value we generate by doing our jobs for other valuable things produced by jobs of others. Lovely, isn’t it!

I’ve seen many times that money is treated as a real value, but money is one of the most popular promises, and as I mentioned earlier, things work well as long as promises are kept. Even in this simple example so many things can go wrong.

What if someone gets a payment for a poor job, or if someone doesn’t receive a payment for a good job? What if product an individual buys is of poor quality or not delivered at all? Depending on the situation it may be a not a big deal, and cause a small disappointment, but if we’re talking about a nuclear power station, an aircraft production or a pacemaker, the consequences might be lethal for one or many.

In addition to that the history is full of examples where money would devalue so rapidly, leading to massive impact on people in some country. My parents experienced such things in Russia at least twice, and I experienced it myself, it wasn’t fun at all.

I doubt there is a universal solution to this. It’s way too hard to keep promises all the time, even with the best intent. Given that the real world is way more complex and diverse, awareness of the real value in a world full of promises helps to keep a more realistic perception and make decisions every day.