There is a second conclusion to be drawn from the shift to credit cards and ATM cards that is somewhat more disturbing and perhaps more telling of the changing nature of money in our emerging postmodern society. Checks and credit cards—as well as some ATM cards—can be used even though there is not sufficient money at the present time in our checking account to cover the cost of purchase. There is a humorous comment we have all heard at some point in our life. It goes something like this: “Since I still have checks in my checkbook, I must still have money in the bank.” Today, there is a variation on this remark: “My credit card hasn’t worn out yet; therefore, I must still have money in the bank.” While we all know the absurdity of these remarks, they do reveal an underlying reality: the further we are from the actual exchange of goods and services (by bartering), the more readily we can fool ourselves about our capacity to pay for a product or service.
Mortgages and credit lines further compound the temptation to purchase that which we can’t yet afford. Our grandparents often “paid cash” for everything. Many people living in non-Western societies still refuse to take out a loan when purchasing a home. They will not buy a house until they have accumulated sufficient funds to purchase it outright. This is certainly not the case in the United States or many other Western societies. The credit card, however, is still the major culprit in transforming many postmodern nations into debtor societies. Peter Drucker describes this emergence of credit cards as the new money and of the accumulating debt in his assessment of 21st-century management challenges:[i]
“. . . increasingly in all developed countries the fastest growing source of commercial credit is neither the commercial bank nor the investment bank. It is the credit card in its various forms. A still fairly small but rapidly growing number of credit card customers have multiple credit cards—some as many as twenty-five or thirty. They use these cards to obtain and to maintain a level of credit for beyond their creditworthiness. That the interest rate is very high does not seem to bother them, since they do not have any intention anyhow of paying off the loans. They manipulate them by shifting the outstanding balance from one card to the other so that they are never forced to pay more than very small, minimum amounts. The credit card has thus become what used to be called “legal tender.” Nobody knows how big this new form on money has become—but it is clearly a new form of money. And it has already become so big as to make almost meaningless the figures for money in circulation . . . on which central banks and economists base their theories and their forecasts.”
Thus, money continues to play an important role in postmodern societies. However, this role has changed. Money is no longer represented in the somewhat tangible act of paying cash. It is now a much subtler and even psychologically based entity. Money—or more precisely monetary affordability—is now nothing more than one’s sense that “somehow I will be able to take care of the financial obligation inherent in the exchange that has just taken place. I will take care of this obligation by making sure that I deposit in the checking account before the check clears, by paying off my credit card (someday).” Or, as Drucker suggests, “I assume that I will never have to pay off all my debts.”
