/lit/ - Literature

"What then comes, as the next big step, is forging of metals, which is spreading in ever more extent, with ever better procedures and with which ever higher temperatures are produced. Gold has been used from the beginning, not as cast gold but as hammered gold. The oldest art of blacksmithing is goldsmithing. It is possible that the fusibility of the metals was first discovered in gold and not in copper, all the more so as the melting points of the two naturally occurring metals are adjacent. Since the methods of determining time are becoming more and more refined, exact dating is to be expected."

Wealth must be seen in the whole of the minting process, from the stamp, to the hammering, and the refinement of materials, even the choice of the symbols and their aesthetic placement is significant. All of this is one with what it is exchanged with. Rather than abstract batter, money must be seen as raising the inheritance of the whole of a city, a people, and the relation to time and nature. It cannot be an efficiency process alone. Even where this is attempted one sees the return against value only increase, an inefficiency in yields.

>>15073546
Much of it is my own development, and I've been reading FG Junger which has been very helpful. His comments on wealth are incredible and simple, particularly in the division of wealth as a being and having:
"But what are riches? If we want to get to the bottom of the thing, this question must be asked. The notions on this point are full of confusion, owing to jumbled concepts. Riches, by definition, are either a being or a having. If I conceive of them as a being, it is obvious that I am rich not because I have much – rather, all having is dependent upon the riches of my nature. So conceived, riches are not something which alight upon man or fly away from him; they are an endowment of nature, subject to neither will nor effort. They are original wealth, an added measure of freedom which blossoms forth in certain human beings. For riches and freedom are inseparably joined together, so intimately that riches of any kind can be appraised by the measure of freedom they contain. Riches in this sense may even be identical with poverty; a rich being is consistent with a not-having, with a lack of material possessions. Homer means just this when he calls the beggar a king. Only such riches as are mine by nature can I fully command and enjoy. Where riches consist in having, the capacity for enjoying them does not necessarily go with them. It may be lacking – a frequent case."