Revaluation & Reparative Economy

Part III.

I would like to conclude this essay by proposing that exploitative financial services that devalue cultural landscapes can (and should) be countered by reparative financial services that revalue cultural landscapes. 

Revaluing a cultural landscape that has undergone devaluation is like rewilding a natural landscape that has undergone desertification. A natural landscape cannot return to what was before being undone by desertification. Similarly, a cultural landscape cannot return to what was before being undone by devaluation. Rewilding and revaluation both tend to and mend what has come before, yes, but in so doing they also amend what has come before and create something new and different. Rewilding (re-)creates natural landscapes anew and weaves delicate and intricate webs of differing and deferring lifeforms anew. Similarly, revaluation (re-)creates cultural landscapes anew and weaves delicate and intricate webs of differing and deferring lifeways anew.

Revaluations are species of valueworks that make more transvaluations possible and, in so doing, making fewer devaluations necessary. Species of valueworks that do the opposite, that make more devaluations necessary and fewer transvaluations possible, are overvaluations-and-undervaluations. All revaluations begin by deconstructing overvaluations-and-undervaluations and then proceed to (re-)construct potentials for transvaluation. I shall describe this two step process step-by-step.

The deconstruction of overvaluations-and-undervaluations begins with the recognition that there is no overvaluation that is not also the flip side of an undervaluation. For instance, there are exploitative valueworks that overvalue computing services performed by men, giving men engaged in computing exclusive access to bountiful streams and reservoirs of value. These exploitative valueworks simultaneously undervalue house cleaning services performed by women, denying women engaged in house cleaning access to bountiful streams and reservoirs of value and only giving these women access to meager streams and reservoirs of value. Thanks to these exploitative valueworks, these overvaluations-and-undervaluations, women engaged in providing house cleaning services face greater pressure to devalue and liquidate their lifeways whenever they need to come up with deposits, while men engaged in providing computing services are safe in their lifeways.

Imagine, if you will, a Hatian cleaning lady named Grace who cleans the homes of Silicon Valley tech bros. Imagine that, this year, Grace needs to come up with some money to pay for a medical procedure. Every year before this one, Grace had traveled back to Haiti in December to visit her aging mother for the Christmas holiday but, in order to make money to pay for her medical procedure, Grace has devalued and liquidated this custom this year in order to work through the month of December and make some extra money. The following January, however, Grace’s mother in Haiti passes away suddenly from a stroke, and Grace realizes that she devalued her last opportunity to spend Christmas in Haiti with her beloved mother. Still reeling from the news of her mother's death, but also still working hard to make money for her procedure, our protagonist stumbles upon a bank statement that one of her tech bro employers carelessly left out for her to see. Reviewing the bank statement, Grace discovers just how easily her employer could have both paid for her medical procedure and her annual trip to Haiti and still had deposits to spare.

This imagined scenario, the overvaluation of the tech bro and the undervaluation of the cleaning lady, is a prime example of how an artless expression of the idea of money leads to tragic devaluations and liquidations of living customs. How might we make artful reparations for such an artless expression of the idea of money? How might we revalue Grace’s custom of visiting her mother in Haiti every December, especially now that her mother is dead and gone? Going further, how might we transvalue this custom after it has been revalued so that Grace might afford the medical procedure that she needs?

I do not intend to answer these questions fully in this essay. I only hope to convince you that these are the kinds of questions that we ought to be asking ourselves if we are interested in artful expressions of the idea of money and in reparative financial services. We are asking artless questions (i) when we ask how we can subsidize healthcare for people performing low paying "menial" labor, and (ii) when we ask how we might retrain the workforce in order to create more highly paid "hi-tech" laborers. The artful question to ask is how to revalue delicate and intricate webs of lifeways so that overvaluations-and-undervaluations do not lead to devaluations and liquidations. In the specific scenario above, we might rephrase the artful question as follows, “How might we revalue the custom of periodically visiting far away family members so that overvaluations-and-undervaluations do not precipitate the devaluation and liquidation of the custom?” Again, I do not intend to answer this question fully in this essay. That being said, however, in order to convince you that this is the right question to ask, I will imagine the beginnings of a possible answer in order to spark your imagination.

As I imagine them, revaluations artfully insure against overvaluations-and-undervaluations. Art-less insurance, as an exploitative financial service, comes in the form of compensation in the event of an overvaluation-and-undervaluation: a pay-off for your troubles. By contrast, art-ful insurance, as a reparative financial service, comes in the form of options that precede, exceed, and succeed any event of overvaluation-and-undervaluation. In finance, an option is an agreement that conveys to its holder the opportunity, but not the obligation, to access and draw from a stream or reservoir of value in the interim between two specified events. Revaluations, as I imagine them, would deconstruct exclusive property rights over streams and reservoirs of values so as to (re-)construct options to access and draw from streams and reservoirs of value. As I imagine them, reparations for Grace would deconstruct the exclusive property rights that her Silicon Valley tech bro employers have over streams and reservoirs of value, and they would give Grace, as their employee, options to access these very same streams and reservoirs of value in the event that she needs to pay for an expensive medical procedure, or in the event of her annual visit to Haiti in the winter, or in accord with some other ordinary and extraordinary events that one can speculate upon.

Indeed, revaluations, as I imagine them, would transform all economic relations (e.g., the employer-employee relation, landlord-tenant relation, and creditor-debtor relation) by (re-)founding them anew on the basis of options instead of property rights. Revaluations would deconstruct exclusive property rights on streams and reservoirs of value that are held by employers, landlords, and creditors, and they would give employees, tenants, and debtors options to access and draw from these very same streams and reservoirs of value in accord with ordinary and extraordinary events that can be speculated upon by the employer and employee, the landlord and tenant, the creditor and debtor. 

As a result of the revaluations that I imagine, employer-employee, landlord-tenant, creditor-debtor, and all other kinds of economic relations would be founded on options that precede, exceed, and succeed any and all payments and property rights, and the transvaluations that would follow from such revaluations would be swaps of options. In finance, a swap of options is a speculative arrangement between two counterparties to exchange options on different streams and reservoirs of value in accord with ordinary and extraordinary events that can be speculated upon. For instance, an employee of a small business concern might swap options for a time with a friend or relative who is employed by a large business concern in the event that they require a medical procedure that they could not have paid for by drawing from the streams and reservoirs available to them via the small business concern. In the meantime, the friend or relative involved in the swap will meet their own needs by accessing and drawing from the streams and reservoirs of the small business concern which they gained access to in the swap. In effect, swaps of options create confluences and crossings between different streams and reservoirs of value, allowing value to flow more freely over a given cultural landscape. Indeed, swaps and options together are what you might call leakily designed financial services or dissipators of value.

The practice of designing options and swaps, as I understand it, revolves around speculating upon the events that govern the terms of options and swaps. Insofar I aim to revalue and transvalue lifeways, I hold that the events that govern the terms options and swaps ought to be life-events that are integral to lifeways: either (i) life-events conditioned by lifeways or (ii) life-events that condition lifeways. Options and swaps that are governed by no more than the passage of time, like an option for a period of twelve months or a swap for a period of twelve weeks, are art-less options and swaps because of the fact that their terms do not specify any life-events that are integral to lifeways. By contrast, art-ful options and swaps are contracted for intervals between specified life-events and, as such, they revalue and transvalue the lifeways that specified life-events are integral to. Life-events integral to lifeways that could govern the terms of options and swaps could include births, deaths, meals, comings of age, illnesses, extreme weather events, marriages, divorces, vacations, hirings, firings, resignings, retirings, relocatings, bandings together, disbandings, reunions, and more.

Putting all of this aside, my point is this: our protagonist, Grace, and others like her will never have reparations for lifeways that they have had to devalue and liquidate for as long as they know that, when misfortune strikes again, they will have no option other than to devalue and liquidate their lifeways again in order to make deposits. In this text, I have only imagined one possible way by which Grace might have reparations by being given options other than devaluation, but there are many, many other ways that can be imagined. I invite you to imagine alternative ways for yourself and I challenge you to try and bring them into being.