Where Did That Number Increase From?

On the screen, a single small number turns green. That's all it takes, and a murmur escapes someone's lips, almost to themselves: it's gone up since yesterday.

There's a quiet satisfaction seeping into that voice. They haven't actually accomplished anything. They simply opened the screen, and the number showing there happens to be a little bigger than it was yesterday. That whole event risks getting brushed aside with a single word — it went up — but I'd like to look at it a little more carefully. Behind that one word, "went up," what has actually happened? Where did that extra amount come from? No one has told us that part yet.

Where Are You Standing When You Say It Went Up?

The judgment that something "went up" looks, at first glance, like simple subtraction. Subtract yesterday's number from today's number, and the answer should come out automatically. But that subtraction actually changes its answer depending on where you're standing when you look.

This is close to the problem of measuring speed. The same motion, watched from a fixed point versus watched from a point that's moving along with it, produces two completely different numbers for how fast it's going. If the reference point itself is moving, something that looked like it went up may in fact have simply been sinking together with the reference it was measured against. — And there I go again, making it sound grander than it is. Put simply: it's risky to take that one word "went up" at face value without first checking what it's being measured against.

The number on someone's screen is indeed bigger than it was yesterday. But what is that number being measured against? If the thing serving as the reference point has itself been moving in the same direction, or moving further, then the feeling of having gained something may just be an illusion measured from a spot that only looks still. The screen won't tell you that much. It only shows you the fact that it turned green.

There's one more thing I want to add here. The ruler used to measure the number can itself quietly shrink without anyone noticing. If the price of everything in the world is quietly rising, then even if the number in your hand is exactly the same as yesterday, what it can actually buy has shrunk without your knowing it. The number itself hasn't gone up, and yet in real terms it has quietly eroded — the same logic can work in reverse just as easily. But green only ever lights up when something goes up. Most of the things that are quietly decreasing don't even get a color assigned to them; they simply pass by unnoticed.

A Stone Placed High Up Has Not Done Anything Yet

Seeing the number go up, someone feels satisfied. But what I want to check is the true nature of that satisfaction. Is that number, at this very moment, something actually sitting in someone's hand?

Picture a stone set on a high shelf. The stone is simply resting there; it hasn't done anything yet. If it were dropped, it would carry the power to do work equal to its weight times its height, but as long as it just sits there, that power exists only on paper. Most of what people celebrate as "went up" is close to this "stone that's still just resting there." Only once it's sold does that stone actually fall, changing into another form: cash. And of course, it's entirely possible for the ground itself to shift before the stone is ever dropped, taking the stone down with it and making it vanish.

What's genuinely interesting is that so many people treat a stone that's still just resting there as if it carried the same weight as cash already in hand. They celebrate work that hasn't been done yet as if it were already finished. The stone is still just sitting there. Put simply: it's really just a matter of not having it in hand yet.

And the height at which the stone sits isn't guaranteed to stay where it is forever. It may be on a high shelf today, and tomorrow the whole shelf might be moved down a level. When that happens, the power that existed only on paper quietly disappears without ever passing into anyone's hands. All that's left behind is the green memory of it having once gone up. You can't lose what you never actually held — that sounds nice enough said aloud, but it really just means it's too soon to celebrate.

Whatever Someone Gains, Someone Else Is Letting Go of Somewhere

There's one more thing I want to check here. The number that went up on someone's screen — where, exactly, was it carried in from?

The total wealth of the whole market only grows through the work of someone actually producing something. Every other act of buying and selling is nothing more than moving wealth that already exists from one pair of hands to another. When someone's number turns green, it means that somewhere behind the scenes, someone else exists, quietly, having let go of that exact same amount.

Is Your Savings Really Just Sleeping? — I recorded that once before. It was an observation that what looked like it was lying still and asleep was, in fact, being put to work and moved around constantly somewhere out of sight. This time is much the same. Behind a number that looks like it's standing still, something is definitely moving. Behind the feeling of having gained something, there is, almost always, someone who has lost something.

That someone doesn't exist any less just because they can't be seen. They simply don't appear on the same screen. If the other person were nearby, we could picture their face and might go a little easier on them because of it. But when the other party is nothing more than a faceless number somewhere beyond the horizon, the amount they lost doesn't carry enough weight to cloud our own excitement. Distance makes the other person lighter. All that remains, sharply and clearly, is the feel of the number that went up.

That someone's face never appears on anyone's screen. All that appears is one's own number, turned green. Where Does Mutual Respect Disappear To? — I once asked that question, and I suspect this is a story with the same root. Even if someone's share is quietly being discounted somewhere out of sight, the screen has nothing to say about it. Today too, all that floats there is a number that has turned green.

It may still be too soon to celebrate, I think. The stone is still just sitting up there on its high shelf. And somewhere near wherever that stone has been placed, someone, right now, may be in the middle of quietly letting something go. I haven't confirmed that part yet.