Consensus

There is a souvenir banknote vending machine on the hill by the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco. The wind is strong. A 0-euro note, sold for 2 euros.

The buildings on real euro banknotes are all fictitious, so as not to favour any one country. The 0-euro notes bear real landmarks from across Europe, scattered in vending machines you can find here and there.

Examine this 0-euro note closely: its anti-counterfeiting features and paper stock are indistinguishable from a 100-euro bill. Corollary: the production cost of a 100-euro note is less than 2 euros.

In fact, likely far less. After all, that 2 euros still contains profit margin and the maintenance cost of the vending machine. And the print run of the Oceanographic Museum’s 0-euro note is far smaller than that of the 100-euro, meaning a higher unit cost.

What gives the 100-euro note its value? Consensus. Everyone agrees that 100 euros is worth 100 euros, so 100 euros is worth 100 euros. Everyone agrees that 0 euros is worth 0 euros, so 0 euros is worth 0 euros.

How did I end up climbing a hill in Monaco by myself? In Nice, our Airbnb cost 120 euros a night. She said we’d split flights and accommodation. I said fine.

She wasn’t feeling well. I brought her lunch — how many euros was it? 20 or 40? I forget. I paid. Not because I have money, but because she expected me to pay for meals.

She said, I’ll rest by myself this afternoon.

I said, I want to go to Monaco.

She said, do you love me.

I said, I love you baby.

She said, I love you too.

Consensus reached. Only then did she let me go.

The facade of the Monte Carlo Casino was under renovation. I know — someone on Xiaohongshu said to avoid it. I went anyway. They had covered the scaffolding with a photograph of the facade. It’s nothing, I told myself. Just one facade concealing another.

At the harbour I saw many yachts. An AI helped me identify the flags, telling me which tax haven each yacht was registered in. It said: this is sovereignty arbitrage by small nations.

On the hill in Monaco, I spent 2 euros. The wind was strong and I felt happy. A happiness I hadn’t felt in a long time.

In that moment, it occurred to me: my happiness needs no consensus with anyone.

She said, in a relationship the man should pay more. She said, if being with me would lower her quality of life, she’d leave. She said her ex-boyfriend wasn’t the literary type, but he was generous with money. She said if I wouldn’t spend money, I wasn’t committed enough to love.

Money is consensus. Love is also consensus. For the sake of consensus, I had to spend consensus.

From the Palace Square you can look down over Port Hercule. Just now I climbed up from there, from where I was watching the yachts. A corner of the Mediterranean.

I’ve heard there was a time when the Mediterranean was dry. A great flood refilled it over five million years ago — like a giant bathtub — apparently because a rock at the Strait of Gibraltar came loose. Of course, back then they hadn’t yet been given the names Mediterranean and Strait of Gibraltar.

After all, Homo sapiens has only been around for a few hundred thousand years. I wonder if there would still be humans without the Mediterranean. At the very least, there would have been no Greek civilisation, and no Western civilisation at all.

The only thing of value in the universe is human consciousness. Looking out at the blue Mediterranean, I suddenly thought this.

Consensus is shared consciousness.

True power is the power to create consensus.

Monaco’s power comes from everyone agreeing that Monaco is Monaco — tax haven, safety deposit box, yacht harbour, casino city — and not a part of France, deserving its own mark on the map.

Conversely, true enslavement is being forced into a consensus created by someone else.

— The people in the casino count.

Money is ______‘s colonisation of individual consciousness.

What fills the blank? Capitalism, “the Machine”, Brave New World? It doesn’t matter. You know what I mean.

— Perhaps the people on those yachts and in those Porsches are enslaved too?

Love is consensus… yes. But it should be two individuals opening their consciousness to each other.

— Oh. So I was also…

She used the consensus of love to force me into the consensus of money.

I lied to myself. I said it was all for the sake of loving her.

In the end, what I wasted was not money, but my own consciousness.

Getting consciousness for 2 euros is quite a bargain.