Stories and Money: Moving the World

Information

• In Nexus, Yuval Harari argues that while it’s important to ask whether information is true or false, a more critical question is how effectively it connects people and what new networks it creates. For example, when the three-hour martial law was declared in Korea six months ago, its legitimacy was quickly determined, but its greater impact lay in how it brought people together and ultimately influenced the election half a year later.
• Most information is nothing more than noise, but a well-crafted narrative built on that information becomes a tool for uniting supporters—and the stories those supporters believe shape a nation’s direction. In other words, information on its own may be weak, but once it gains believers and followers, it can wield enough power to change the course of a group’s fate.

Money

• In both politics and capitalist markets, information is generally just noise; nevertheless, markets tend to move in the direction favored by the majority who trust and follow that information. Politics and markets alike shift toward the side where more people want money to be injected into the system.
• The three arrows of Abenomics were quantitative easing, fiscal expansion, and growth strategies. Given that Korea’s economic structure closely resembles Japan’s, there’s no obvious reason why Korea couldn’t adopt its own version of “three arrows” that start with the letter “K.”
• At its core, those three arrows are about money—and the value of money is determined by interest rates.
• However, unlike in elections, market influence is uneven: those who have substantial funds wield far more power than those with very little. So even if money’s cost decreases and its supply grows, not everyone can take advantage of that opportunity equally.
• People with significant wealth can capitalize on their financial power to seize those opportunities, while those without money can, if they choose, simply focus on working to build their own influence.