The most sense I can get out of Musk’s claim that “money is a database” is that he means that money merely refers to real goods and services, in the same way an entry in a library’s database might note the location of and other identifying information about a particular physical book. Musk’s point is that the database entry is not the book. The database entry helps you obtain the book. Bringing the analogy back to money, money only helps us get items in the market.
I've seen and heard these "money is a database" comments... its a real head shaker.
Yeah, there are many things that can or have been money. Many have different attributes. Database isn't core to being money to me. This is the same problem you have when you claim bitcoin can't be money because it has no "intrinsic value" like gold supposedly has. Can you touch bitcoin? Nope so I guess its not money like gold or sea shells are money. I don't think its a helpful analogy. Sounds like the blockchain hype stuff to me.
Thus, money is not “an abstract representation of real things” or a database. It is an economic good that we value for the unique services that money offers. Holding money removes the uncertainty associated with future exchanges—we don’t know what or when we will buy in the future, nor the exact prices of things we will purchase in the future, so we hold cash.
This insight matters because if you don’t understand why people hold money, you start to slip into the thinking that cash balances are “idle,” or held for no good reason, and ought to be plundered by the state or stimulated into circulation for the sake of kickstarting the velocity of money or aggregate demand.
Money is, has been and always will be a good, itself. Although you do not hold money for itself, you hold money to buy things — goods, in the future. Musk must have been speed reading or skimming the Friedmanite economics books he was purusing reading and not taking in the details. I can’t recall ever reading ”money is a database”, myself.
The number of things Musk has said that are utter horse shit is large. He's a blow hard. He rarely provides much rational at all. I do not take him seriously. Remember all the dumb stuff he's said about bitcoin after praising it?
I guess, like everyone else, he has his areas of expertise and his areas of ignorance. And, like everyone else likes to make his opinions known, whether in his area of ignorance or expertise. There are a lot of people like this and a lot of them are, as you say, blowhards, blowing out horseisht. As to say, he’s a horse blowing it out his a**. Sometimes a horse’s a**.
purusingreading and not taking in the details. I can’t recall ever reading ”money is a database”, myself.