Money as a Type of Racket Fueled by the Economy

Abstract

This article is an experience of generalizing economic and psychological views on the meaning of money in human life. The article presents an analysis of some economic theories demonstrating the deep penetration of the concept of money into various aspects of human life, as well as an original view of the authors on how money can become a racket that provokes games and determines the roles and positions of a person in an organization. The authors give a brief outline of the emergence of money as a medium of exchange and transformation of the meanings that people began to give money during the development of human society, and also talk about how stimulus hunger, hunger for recognition and hunger for structure, described by Eric Berne, are associated with stroking and recognition in the form of money. The article examines the work of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky on the theory of perspectives and cognitive distortions related to money, research on human capital by Thomas William Schultz and Gary Stanley Becker, and other economic works. The authors analyze how behavioral economics research can reveal the meaning of games in organizations in a new way, what personal prerequisites contribute to a racketeering attitude towards money as a substitute for stroking and recognition, and why people may perceive other people as “means of production”.