This sounds to me like a perfectly good explanation of mathematics as well as language and numbers ... I hope you "get" what I am trying to say.
Every time we get to a thousand dollars in our system we then multiply those dollars by one thousand. This is in order to get a word. We need new words, like a "million" --- which is one thousand dollars times one thousand, or one thousand repeated one thousand times.
One billion dollars is a thousand million or a hundred increments of ten million each. That makes a billion.
The debt ceiling argument is about increments of 1,000 of those one billion dollar increments. That is called one "trillion;" however, when we get higher, we are lacking a word. So, I am saying no word exists for ten increments of one hundred trillion. I my opinion there is no such word.
So: that reality does not exist. It will be possible to talk about increments of ten trillion, or 30 trillion, or 40 trillion, for many years into the future --- so why worry?
there's no word for one thousand trillion -- that I know of, OK? -- so, we revert to what is more sober, to more sober reality, and proceed to count out our real trillions, in the realm of the real, which is to say, what there exist words for. That's called "fiscal responsibility." Dealing with reality.
ReplyDeleteA thousand trillion is a Quintillio. The word is universally employed by mathematicians, it's just not in common usage. Words for abstract entities (like numbers) are merely conventions anyway, so even if there wasn't a word for a particular number this would not make the existence of a number of those things less 'real'
ReplyDeleteHi, anonymous.
ReplyDeleteI think the point of the piece was that you are supposed to get a bit fatigued, at the point where you go from billion to trillion and upwards. And, anyway, how do you know you are the one who is "right"?
from,
Jack
Also, you are saying that a thing cannot become any more real, or less real, if we have cited it already, or exposed it already, as abstraction ---as you put it, "abstract entity." That is what money does: it does becomes more, or less, real to us. Money does this even as it is your "abstract entity."
ReplyDeleteSo, there was a deep, deep point to it...which you totally missed because you were being so superficial.
I cite you and thank you, too, for the demonstration of the meaningful use of the term "abstract entity."
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