Selling the Silverware to Pay the Caterer: NZ Universities and the Money Myth
Photo by Mathieu Stern on Unsplash
The focus of this post on the actions of New Zealand universities selling their assets and how their actions are entirely logical and at the same time nonsensical and dumb-as-a-sack-of-hammers. I’ll explain, bear with me.
Yuval Noah Harari is a talented writer who I have been enjoying reading. I’ve read Sapiens, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century and I’m currently reading Nexus. One area he discusses that I found inciteful is the power of stories. Humans share stories, its a major way we make sense of the world. They don’t have to be true ( I wrote about common wisdom here), in fact they can be batshit crazy. They only have to be accepted and shared. He uses the Christian bible as an example - there are a lot of areas that are, at best, questionable, but a large group of people believe - end of story (excuse the pun).
The particular story I want to highlight in this post is the story we share about money. Everyone knows how money works, right? Wrong! In fact, so utterly wrong that it will be laughable one day to future generations.
I was talking to a couple of older men recently. One had recently been given a large amount of money in cash. The second man said …
“Keep it hidden. You never know when the banks might go broke.”
“Good idea,” was the reply.
I couldn’t help myself. “You do realise that if banks go broke, that money turns into a pile of worthless paper.”
It took a while for them to think through this. Their combined reply …
Stacks of hyperinflated currency during the Weimar Republic, 1922
‘No, you just won’t be able to get any money out. Cash will be worth even more.”
I left it at that. Money is only valuable while everyone believes in the same story. Change the story, everything changes.
The story about money is so powerful, so ubiquitous that it has become axiomatic (an unchallenged truth)
Let’s turn to university asset sales. (NB - the argument I will be making can be extended to Privitisation in general but we won’t go there today.)
