Moneta is also the name used for Mnemosyne, mother of the Muses, by Livius Andronicus in his translation of the Odyssey, and Hyginus' citation of Jupiter and Moneta as parents of the muses. The name Mnemosyne or Memory was connected to Juno Moneta who maintained in her temple an unimpeachable record of historical events.[2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_Juno_MonetaIt's easy to confuse past performance with future expectations. Our economic system does so all the time. But I don't think money is simply a record of the past. It's a prediction of the future.
I've been thinking about this a bit, lately. The Romans had a basically steady-state economy, powered by renewable energy. It failed when they used some shady financing, monetary debasement, and military adventurism to turn their economy into a ponzi scheme. But did it really fail? Did the Romans end up worse off because of this? The assumption is yes. But it's kind of an open question.
How do you measure one's monetary worth in a steady-state economy? Easy, right? Past performance is a good indicator of future expectations. I like to think this, in some way, may have had some connection to the Roman rituals of burnt offering performed at their temples. Their economy was agrarian, based on the collection of solar energy and its conversion into grains, animals and oils. In real economic terms, sacrificing a small portion of this harvest didn't have much negative impact on the economy. But the information it conveyed, in terms of proving productive ability, and therefore predicting future production, would have been invaluable.
That's all well and good. It worked well, for a long time. But the assumption that past performance equals future expectations breaks, when the economy grows outside its previous bounds, as the Roman economy inevitably did. Economic performance is inflated by the addition of new resources. This creates the expectation of continued growth. Growth doesn't last forever. Eventually reality catches up. Boom. Past performance no longer equals future expectations. In the Roman example, this process was accelerated, because they manipulated their system, and forced growth when it was not natural.
How does Bitcoin measure monetary worth? It's interesting that there is this hybridization. During the growth phase, this ostentatious display of wealth, mining with wasted electricity, performs the function of proving past performance. But at the same time, Bitcoin's value is increasingly based on the collective future predictions of all the people gambling on its price. Past performance is used to bootstrap the system, but accurate future expectations are what transforms Bitcoin into real money.
At the same time, each new entrant into the Bitcoin economy invariably goes through this transformation, this ritual of sorts. They start out mining, wasting electricity and resources in a contrived, zero-sum game. Only to eventually recognize that past performance, ostentatious displays of wealth, doesn't necessarily predict future expectations. Mining doesn't necessarily pay off. There is a much more powerful force at work. This force is the collective will of the market, guiding the economy via millions of individual decisions, collectively forming an accurate prediction of future expectations in a way that no individual ever could.
So, I guess what I'm saying is, don't assume that money is a record of the past. That view will hurt us when we inevitably grow beyond our current boundaries. Money is a prediction of the future. Bitcoin is a well-designed system for enabling this type of money to emerge, naturally and organically. Don't try to force it. Just watch it happen.
