I think as long as we're trading anything, we've got an economy. If I give you three chickens and you give me a bushel of wheat, chickens and wheat are being used as currency. They're not money, but they're not strictly foodstuffs either. It's worth my while to breed extra chickens because I can trade them for other things I need but would prefer not to produce -- they have value beyond providing eggs and cutlets for me and my family.

Not sure of the definitions and differences between causally and identically here

Causally means that one of the items is the cause of the other one (it is imaginary because...) and identically means both items are equivalent (it is imaginary, which is the same as...)

But it's the semantics I'm wondering about. Every inhabitant of the planet can simultaneously stop believing in gravity, and it won't affect the pull between masses. But if we stop believing in money in significant proportions, stuff happens. If many of us lose faith, a stock market can crash. Government's a little harder--it'll take more nonbelievers (which is why I credit money as more delicate).

I don't know if imaginary is the word, but there is one, isn't there? At the very least implying the "since we agree" nature of the whole thing?

I'm aware that the existence of a market is a little less concrete than the existence of the building that it is housed in, and we can't exactly believe one of them out of existence. But the fact that something depends on a social construct isn't any more mind-blowing to me than any shared belief. I'm not saying I've given this a ton of thought, but I don't think it's profound to say "if there was never a concept of god, there wouldn't be any religions" and thinking that made the Catholic Church any less real or its effect any less discoverable. Maybe this is a false analogy, and unfortunately it's the kind of thing Bob would have a good take on but he's on a plane, as usual when these things come up.

is said to have picked Victoria for the role after being impressed by her "comic genius".

Well, that made me laugh so maybe it's true. And yet...wouldn't she have been called Clown Spice?

I think Sean's point is that economics is even more of a consensual hallucination than the culture at large. That the "value" of things derives less from their intrinsic worth (like say, Pencillin in an epidemic) than it does from a fluid agreement by consensus that say Gold is something you could possibly base a monetary system upon. Market crashes occur because people lose confidence in the direction of the market - not because there's a famine or drought or war (though all of those things can cause the loss in confidence). AOL can buy Time-Warner with a monetary worth that later proves to be somewhat illusory.

If I give you three chickens and you give me a bushel of wheat, chickens and wheat are being used as currency

And the mass hallucination is the exchange rate. It may very well be a different exchange rate every time we meet, but wheat is only currency if I get the chickens. Otherwise it's a gift.

FTR, I'm not sure how this follows. Government exists because we agree to being governed. I exist because probably no one has agreed to kill me. Contracts exist, etc., etc. I mean, there is an imaginable universe where nothing has value, but that doesn't make this one any less real.

I think the idea that economies are imaginary is heading down a wrong path. Like many things they are socially constructed. This does not make them beyond understanding.

The problem is (IMO) some economists are much more confident that they should be given the degree of uncertainty in both their theories and data, and that in general a lot of economic theories are acted upon as though they are certain.

I don't think it's profound to say "if there was never a concept of god, there wouldn't be any religions" and thinking that made the Catholic Church any less real or its effect any less discoverable

I don't see the implication that the effect of money or the economy isn't discoverable. It seems to me that you have an issue with the term semi-imaginary. Is your beef larger in scope than that?

FTR, I'm not sure how this follows. Government exists because we agree to being governed. I exist because probably no one has agreed to kill me. Contracts exist, etc., etc. I mean, there is an imaginable universe where nothing has value, but that doesn't make this one any less real.

I wouldn't say economies are alone in their consensual reality, and government is a good example, but as ita points out, there's a way in which the economy is the most ephemeral example.

But I'm not saying that there's an imaginable universe where nothing has value, I'm saying that economies only exist when large portions of us can agree that the same thing has value, and that it has roughly the same value from day to day. Not to mention the fact that the universe in which none of us can agree on much of anything is at least as real as the universe in which we all agree that certain things have certain values. Those two realities bump up against each other a lot, and not always pleasantly.

Perhaps this is a bit pat, but people disagree about the value of things, but that actually doesn't mean that a system where people trade things for value is lesser or something. In every transaction we disagree about value-- I value that People Magazine more than $2, you value that $2 more than your People Magazine. I value that bushel of wheat more than my three chickens and you have the opposite opinion.

Not sure of the definitions and differences between causally and identically here

Causally means that one of the items is the cause of the other one (it is imaginary because...) and identically means both items are equivalent (it is imaginary, which is the same as...)

Okay, I get what you're asking. Unfortunately, I'm still not sure of the answer. Just because I'm making some bold declarative statements about economics doesn't mean I understand it or have any greater insight into the subject than professional economists.

I just dig talking about economics because of its semi-imaginariness. Actually, that's probably why I dig talking about government and religion as well, but somehow the shared hallucination seems the most striking aspect (to me) about economies.