The deeper point being, I think, that money in a sense is no more "real" than points on a screen.

Money is a social construct, and therefore not materially real. If all human beings disappeared tomorrow dollars/merits/etc. would cease to have real-world efficacy.

I thought the deeper point was, perhaps, that everyone has their price. That nothing, not even the very things people think are "radical" or "revolutionary", escapes the logic of money. That everything can be commodified and turned to serve the very system they try to escape.

> Money is a social construct, and therefore not materially real. If all human beings disappeared tomorrow dollars/merits/etc. would cease to have real-world efficacy.

But so would couches. Without humans they're just ... things, without any implied use of being sat on.

I think he means not necessarily that it's a social construct but that it is intrinsically valueless and serves no purpose without human existance whereas a couch could be used for at least some other purpose than sitting on.

Well, if by "real" you don't mean "constrained by the limitations of physical reality" then sure. But that also depends on what your definition of money is. Note, it might not be the same as others'.

That's what I got out of the episode, too. And when you look into it there is quite a bit of truth to it. At least in the US, the vast majority of our currency only exists in electronic formats.

The works of Beethoven or greatest chess games of all times could only exist in electronic format as well, without affecting their value.

The fact that the value of something is abstracted away from actual physical entities doesn't (by itself) make it in any way inferior.

Quite the contrary - it's the ability to grasp the concept of virtual value, rather than only recognizing it in bananas etc. that makes us human.

(Sorry about the English, that's a tad too abstract for my working command of the language :/ )