Velocity of Money

The most basic difference between the demand theory of money and exchange theory of money lies in the understanding of quantity equation

M . v = P . Y —– (1)

Here M is money supply, P is price and Y is real output; in addition, v is constant velocity of money. The demand theory understands that (1) reflects the needs of the economic individual for money, not only the meaning of exchange. Under the assumption of liquidity preference, the demand theory introduces nominal interest rate into demand function of money, thus exhibiting more economic pictures than traditional quantity theory does. Let us, however concentrate on the economic movement through linearization of exchange theory emphasizing exchange medium function of money.

Let us assume that the central bank provides a very small supply M of money, which implies that the value PY of products manufactured by the producer will be unable to be realized only through one transaction. The producer has to suspend the transaction until the purchasers possess money at hand again, which will elevate the transaction costs and even result in the bankruptcy of the producer. Then, will the producer do nothing and wait for the bankruptcy?

In reality, producers would rather adjust sales value through raising or lowering the price or amount of product to attempt the realization of a maximal sales value M than reserve the stock of products to subject the sale to the limit of velocity of money. In other words, producer would adjust price or real output to control the velocity of money, since the velocity of money can influence the realization of the product value.

Every time money changes hands, a transaction is completed; thus numerous turnovers of money for an individual during a given period of time constitute a macroeconomic exchange ∑_ip_iY_i if the prices p_i can be replaced by an average price P, then we can rewrite the value of exchange as ∑_ip_iY_i = P . Y. In a real economy, the producer will manage to make P . Y close the money supply M as much as possible through adjusting the real output or its price.

For example, when a retailer comes to a strange community to sell her commodities, she always prefers to make a price through trial and error. If she finds that higher price can still promote the sales amount, then she will choose to continue raising the price until the sales amount less changes; on the other hand, if she confirms that lower price can create the more sales amount, then she will decrease the price of the commodity. Her strategy of pricing depends on price elasticity of demand for the commodity. However, the maximal value of the sales amount is determined by how much money the community can supply, thus the pricing of the retailer will make her sales close this maximal sale value, namely money for consumption of the community. This explains why the same commodity can always be sold at a higher price in the rich area.

Equation (1) is not an identical equation but an equilibrium state of exchange process in an economic system. Evidently, the difference M –  P . Y  between the supply of money and present sales value provides a vacancy for elevating sales value, in other words, the supply of money acts as the role of a carrying capacity for sales value. We assume that the vacancy is in direct proportion to velocity of increase of the sales value, and then derive a dynamical quantity equation

M(t) - P(t) . Y(t)  =  k . d[P(t) . Y(t)]/d(t) —– (2)

Here k is a positive constant and expresses a characteristic time with which the vacancy is filled. This is a speculated basic dynamical quantity equation of exchange by money. In reality, the money supply M(t) can usually be given; (2) is actually an evolution equation of sales value P(t)Y(t) , which can uniquely determine an evolving path of the price.

The role of money in (2) can be seen that money is only a medium of commodity exchange, just like the chopsticks for eating and the soap for washing. All needs for money are or will be order to carry out the commodity exchange. The behavior of holding money of the economic individuals implies a potential exchange in the future, whether for speculation or for the preservation of wealth, but it cannot directly determine the present price because every realistic price always comes from the commodity exchange, and no exchange and no price. In other words, what we are concerned with is not the reason of money generation, but form of money generation, namely we are concerned about money generation as a function of time rather than it as a function of income or interest rate. The potential needs for money which you can use various reasons to explain cannot contribute to price as long as the money does not participate in the exchange, thus the money supply not used to exchange will not occur in (2).

On the other hand, the change in money supply would result in a temporary vacancy of sales value, although sales value will also be achieved through exchanging with the new money supply at the next moment, since the price or sales volume may change. For example, a group of residents spend M(t) to buy houses of P(t)Y(t) through the loan at time t, evidently M(t) = P(t)Y(t). At time t+1, another group of residents spend M(t+1) to buy houses of P(t+1)Y(t+1) through the loan, and M(t+1) = P(t+1)Y(t+1). Thus, we can consider M(t+1) – M(t) as increase in money supply, and this increase can cause a temporary vacancy of sales value M(t+1) – P(t)Y(t). It is this vacancy that encourages sellers to try to maximize sales through adjusting the price by trial and error and also real estate developers to increase or decrease their housing production. Ultimately, new prices and production are produced and the exchange is completed at the level of M(t+1) = P(t+1)Y(t+1). In reality, the gap between M(t+1) and M(t) is often much smaller than the vacancy M(t+1) – P(t)Y(t), therefore we can approximately consider M(t+1) as M(t) if the money supply function M(t) is continuous and smooth.

However, it is necessary to emphasize that (2) is not a generation equation of demand function P(Y), which means (2) is a unique equation of determination of price (path), since, from the perspective of monetary exchange theory, the evolution of price depends only on money supply and production and arises from commodity exchange rather than relationship between supply and demand of products in the traditional economics where the meaning of the exchange is not obvious. In addition, velocity of money is not contained in this dynamical quantity equation, but its significance PY/M will be endogenously exhibited by the system.

Advertisement

The Concern for Historical Materialism. Thought of the Day 53.0

The concern for historical materialism, in spite of Marx’s differentiation between history and pre-history, is that totalisation might not be historically groundable after all, and must instead be constituted in other ways: whether logically, transcendentally or naturally. The ‘Consciousness’ chapter of the Phenomenology, a blend of all three, becomes a transcendent(al) logic of phenomena – individual, universal, particular – and ceases to provide any genuine phenomenology of ‘the experience of consciousness’. Natural consciousness is not strictly speaking a standpoint (no real opposition), so it can offer no critical grounds of itself to confer synthetic unity upon the universal, that which is taken to a higher level in ‘Self-Consciousness’ (only to be retrospectively confirmed). Yet Hegel does just this from the outset. In ‘Perception’, we read that, ‘[o]n account of the universality [Allgemeinheit] of the property, I must … take the objective essence to be on the whole a community [Gemeinschaft]’. Universality always sides with community, the Allgemeine with the Gemeinschaft, as if the synthetic operation had taken place prior to its very operability. Unfortunately for Hegel, the ‘free matters’ of all possible properties paves the way for the ‘interchange of forces’ in ‘Force and the Understanding’, and hence infinity, life and – spirit. In the midst of the master-slave dialectic, Hegel admits that, ‘[i]n this movement we see repeated the process which represented itself as the play of forces, but repeated now in consciousness [sic].

The Locus of Renormalization. Note Quote.

Since symmetries and the related conservation properties have a major role in physics, it is interesting to consider the paradigmatic case where symmetry changes are at the core of the analysis: critical transitions. In these state transitions, “something is not preserved”. In general, this is expressed by the fact that some symmetries are broken or new ones are obtained after the transition (symmetry changes, corresponding to state changes). At the transition, typically, there is the passage to a new “coherence structure” (a non-trivial scale symmetry); mathematically, this is described by the non-analyticity of the pertinent formal development. Consider the classical para-ferromagnetic transition: the system goes from a disordered state to sudden common orientation of spins, up to the complete ordered state of a unique orientation. Or percolation, often based on the formation of fractal structures, that is the iteration of a statistically invariant motif. Similarly for the formation of a snow flake . . . . In all these circumstances, a “new physical object of observation” is formed. Most of the current analyses deal with transitions at equilibrium; the less studied and more challenging case of far form equilibrium critical transitions may require new mathematical tools, or variants of the powerful renormalization methods. These methods change the pertinent object, yet they are based on symmetries and conservation properties such as energy or other invariants. That is, one obtains a new object, yet not necessarily new observables for the theoretical analysis. Another key mathematical aspect of renormalization is that it analyzes point-wise transitions, that is, mathematically, the physical transition is seen as happening in an isolated mathematical point (isolated with respect to the interval topology, or the topology induced by the usual measurement and the associated metrics).

One can say in full generality that a mathematical frame completely handles the determination of the object it describes as long as no strong enough singularity (i.e. relevant infinity or divergences) shows up to break this very mathematical determination. In classical statistical fields (at criticality) and in quantum field theories this leads to the necessity of using renormalization methods. The point of these methods is that when it is impossible to handle mathematically all the interaction of the system in a direct manner (because they lead to infinite quantities and therefore to no relevant account of the situation), one can still analyze parts of the interactions in a systematic manner, typically within arbitrary scale intervals. This allows us to exhibit a symmetry between partial sets of “interactions”, when the arbitrary scales are taken as a parameter.

In this situation, the intelligibility still has an “upward” flavor since renormalization is based on the stability of the equational determination when one considers a part of the interactions occurring in the system. Now, the “locus of the objectivity” is not in the description of the parts but in the stability of the equational determination when taking more and more interactions into account. This is true for critical phenomena, where the parts, atoms for example, can be objectivized outside the system and have a characteristic scale. In general, though, only scale invariance matters and the contingent choice of a fundamental (atomic) scale is irrelevant. Even worse, in quantum fields theories, the parts are not really separable from the whole (this would mean to separate an electron from the field it generates) and there is no relevant elementary scale which would allow ONE to get rid of the infinities (and again this would be quite arbitrary, since the objectivity needs the inter-scale relationship).

In short, even in physics there are situations where the whole is not the sum of the parts because the parts cannot be summed on (this is not specific to quantum fields and is also relevant for classical fields, in principle). In these situations, the intelligibility is obtained by the scale symmetry which is why fundamental scale choices are arbitrary with respect to this phenomena. This choice of the object of quantitative and objective analysis is at the core of the scientific enterprise: looking only at molecules as the only pertinent observable of life is worse than reductionist, it is against the history of physics and its audacious unifications and invention of new observables, scale invariances and even conceptual frames.

As for criticality in biology, there exists substantial empirical evidence that living organisms undergo critical transitions. These are mostly analyzed as limit situations, either never really reached by an organism or as occasional point-wise transitions. Or also, as researchers nicely claim in specific analysis: a biological system, a cell genetic regulatory networks, brain and brain slices …are “poised at criticality”. In other words, critical state transitions happen continually.

Thus, as for the pertinent observables, the phenotypes, we propose to understand evolutionary trajectories as cascades of critical transitions, thus of symmetry changes. In this perspective, one cannot pre-give, nor formally pre-define, the phase space for the biological dynamics, in contrast to what has been done for the profound mathematical frame for physics. This does not forbid a scientific analysis of life. This may just be given in different terms.

As for evolution, there is no possible equational entailment nor a causal structure of determination derived from such entailment, as in physics. The point is that these are better understood and correlated, since the work of Noether and Weyl in the last century, as symmetries in the intended equations, where they express the underlying invariants and invariant preserving transformations. No theoretical symmetries, no equations, thus no laws and no entailed causes allow the mathematical deduction of biological trajectories in pre-given phase spaces – at least not in the deep and strong sense established by the physico-mathematical theories. Observe that the robust, clear, powerful physico-mathematical sense of entailing law has been permeating all sciences, including societal ones, economics among others. If we are correct, this permeating physico-mathematical sense of entailing law must be given up for unentailed diachronic evolution in biology, in economic evolution, and cultural evolution.

As a fundamental example of symmetry change, observe that mitosis yields different proteome distributions, differences in DNA or DNA expressions, in membranes or organelles: the symmetries are not preserved. In a multi-cellular organism, each mitosis asymmetrically reconstructs a new coherent “Kantian whole”, in the sense of the physics of critical transitions: a new tissue matrix, new collagen structure, new cell-to-cell connections . . . . And we undergo millions of mitosis each minute. More, this is not “noise”: this is variability, which yields diversity, which is at the core of evolution and even of stability of an organism or an ecosystem. Organisms and ecosystems are structurally stable, also because they are Kantian wholes that permanently and non-identically reconstruct themselves: they do it in an always different, thus adaptive, way. They change the coherence structure, thus its symmetries. This reconstruction is thus random, but also not random, as it heavily depends on constraints, such as the proteins types imposed by the DNA, the relative geometric distribution of cells in embryogenesis, interactions in an organism, in a niche, but also on the opposite of constraints, the autonomy of Kantian wholes.

In the interaction with the ecosystem, the evolutionary trajectory of an organism is characterized by the co-constitution of new interfaces, i.e. new functions and organs that are the proper observables for the Darwinian analysis. And the change of a (major) function induces a change in the global Kantian whole as a coherence structure, that is it changes the internal symmetries: the fish with the new bladder will swim differently, its heart-vascular system will relevantly change ….

Organisms transform the ecosystem while transforming themselves and they can stand/do it because they have an internal preserved universe. Its stability is maintained also by slightly, yet constantly changing internal symmetries. The notion of extended criticality in biology focuses on the dynamics of symmetry changes and provides an insight into the permanent, ontogenetic and evolutionary adaptability, as long as these changes are compatible with the co-constituted Kantian whole and the ecosystem. As we said, autonomy is integrated in and regulated by constraints, with an organism itself and of an organism within an ecosystem. Autonomy makes no sense without constraints and constraints apply to an autonomous Kantian whole. So constraints shape autonomy, which in turn modifies constraints, within the margin of viability, i.e. within the limits of the interval of extended criticality. The extended critical transition proper to the biological dynamics does not allow one to prestate the symmetries and the correlated phase space.

Consider, say, a microbial ecosystem in a human. It has some 150 different microbial species in the intestinal tract. Each person’s ecosystem is unique, and tends largely to be restored following antibiotic treatment. Each of these microbes is a Kantian whole, and in ways we do not understand yet, the “community” in the intestines co-creates their worlds together, co-creating the niches by which each and all achieve, with the surrounding human tissue, a task closure that is “always” sustained even if it may change by immigration of new microbial species into the community and extinction of old species in the community. With such community membership turnover, or community assembly, the phase space of the system is undergoing continual and open ended changes. Moreover, given the rate of mutation in microbial populations, it is very likely that these microbial communities are also co-evolving with one another on a rapid time scale. Again, the phase space is continually changing as are the symmetries.

Can one have a complete description of actual and potential biological niches? If so, the description seems to be incompressible, in the sense that any linguistic description may require new names and meanings for the new unprestable functions, where functions and their names make only sense in the newly co-constructed biological and historical (linguistic) environment. Even for existing niches, short descriptions are given from a specific perspective (they are very epistemic), looking at a purpose, say. One finds out a feature in a niche, because you observe that if it goes away the intended organisms dies. In other terms, niches are compared by differences: one may not be able to prove that two niches are identical or equivalent (in supporting life), but one may show that two niches are different. Once more, there are no symmetries organizing over time these spaces and their internal relations. Mathematically, no symmetry (groups) nor (partial-) order (semigroups) organize the phase spaces of phenotypes, in contrast to physical phase spaces.

Finally, here is one of the many logical challenges posed by evolution: the circularity of the definition of niches is more than the circularity in the definitions. The “in the definitions” circularity concerns the quantities (or quantitative distributions) of given observables. Typically, a numerical function defined by recursion or by impredicative tools yields a circularity in the definition and poses no mathematical nor logical problems, in contemporary logic (this is so also for recursive definitions of metabolic cycles in biology). Similarly, a river flow, which shapes its own border, presents technical difficulties for a careful equational description of its dynamics, but no mathematical nor logical impossibility: one has to optimize a highly non linear and large action/reaction system, yielding a dynamically constructed geodetic, the river path, in perfectly known phase spaces (momentum and space or energy and time, say, as pertinent observables and variables).

The circularity “of the definitions” applies, instead, when it is impossible to prestate the phase space, so the very novel interaction (including the “boundary conditions” in the niche and the biological dynamics) co-defines new observables. The circularity then radically differs from the one in the definition, since it is at the meta-theoretical (meta-linguistic) level: which are the observables and variables to put in the equations? It is not just within prestatable yet circular equations within the theory (ordinary recursion and extended non – linear dynamics), but in the ever changing observables, the phenotypes and the biological functions in a circularly co-specified niche. Mathematically and logically, no law entails the evolution of the biosphere.