In this chapter and the next I will focus on money. There are sound economic and psychological reasons for this focus. The economic reason for this attention to money, which Schumpeter said was “exalted” by the capitalist system, is that money is the medium for executing the market's central function: coordinating economic activity. The very concept of a self-regulating market requires monetary feedback, and the market's network of transactions depends upon the information that money prices provide. The coordinating function of the market would not work without it. But it is the cognitive function that is of concern here.

Whereas the concept of cognitive development employed in the previous chapters means the growing capacities of the mind to cope with increasingly complex events, cognitive facilitation means the removal of concepts or circumstances that inhibit such development and the use of conceptual technology that permits people to think more clearly about their problems. Money may contribute to cognitive development; I think it does, but it is primarily an instrument of cognitive facilitation, a tool for thinking, and, as we shall see, money may also be a fetter that constrains clear thinking.