one of the most remarkable things about language about which we've been slowly coming to a better understanding in the last few years—something that's transformed our understanding of scientific and technical subjects, in fact—is the realization that there is in fact a great deal of fundamental kinship between words used to describe physical processes, and those same words used to describe social or psychological or even financial processes. to pick an obvious example: "relaxation" in physics, and "relaxation" in a purely personal sense, are actually much the same underlying process. when a person relaxes themselves (emotionally, physically, spiritually) they are also relaxing as a physical system—i.e. pent-up energies localized in certain parts of the body are slowly released and spread throughout the entire bulk, and thus the body slowly attains thermal equilibrium with its environment. soaking in a hot tub is relaxation in every sense of the word, even the hardnosed physical-science sense of "relaxation".
I think it's important to grasp these fundamental kinships between the usage of words in different domains, because it's a valuable antidote to the Western cultural habit of "atomizing" words and concepts, i.e. fracturing them into the maximum number of purportedly discrete subunits. in the atomistic view, "relaxation" in physics and "relaxation" of emotions might as well be two completely different words, never to be mixed up—and this is, in fact, patently incorrect. the atomization of concepts is an obstruction to true understanding, and I think it's deliberate obstruction in fact—willful hindrance of what should be a full and broad intercommunication among all the various branches of human knowledge.
this brings me to the subject of "liquidity" in terms of money. there's probably no human profession that's more flagrant and heedless in its appropriation and abuse of technical language than the money-making profession. people whose lives are devoted to avarice are desperate to pretend that there's something highly intellectual and even scientific about their money-grubbing, so they've grabbed onto any word that makes monetary activity seem like something sophisticated and technical. it's an arbitrary process and yet, by the very nature of language itself, it's inevitable that the nabobs of finance grab words that make some kind of underlying sense. and I think they accidentally did something very telling, when they grabbed "liquid" from the physicists and chemists.
I think I can see what they imagine it's all about: there's "solid" wealth, and then there's "liquid" money. take an obvious example—'wealth' in the form of copper ore in the ground. one may possess huge heaps of the stuff and therefore be accounted wealthy, but it takes time and labor and considerable capital expenditure to turn that copper ore into anything salable, even if it's just raw ore suitably processed for refinement. hence wealth in the form of copper mines isn't "liquid", not even in a physical sense—the thing that confers the wealth, i.e. the copper itself, is bound tightly to the ground, amid a mass of solid rock.
but...here's where things take a hilarious left turn. the aforementioned nabobs of money-making also regard their investment portfolios as "solid" wealth. after all—to them—it's in the form of things that they regard as every bit as material and dependable as a vein of chalcopyrite: it's in the form of contracts and agreements that they regard as binding and sacrosanct. if they hold government bonds, they expect (and demand) that the bonds be honored according to contract. and therefore they regard such contractual wealth as "solid". after all, turning that form of wealth into spending money is "liquefying" it, right...?
...no. no, I don't think that's right. they're forgetting that liquids can also come from another source—the condensation of gases. they think of wealth as only solid and liquid, and they forget that there's an entire other phase of matter, the dispersed phase: the gaseous phase.
I suggest that much of the "wealth" of capitalist society is in fact gaseous wealth; it's speculative wealth, gamblers' wealth. when it's rendered "liquid" it's not a process of slowly rendering liquid money out of a solid form, as with the business of mining copper; it's in fact using pressure to condense this gaseous, speculative wealth into a form that can be easily spent and transferred. capitalists have means at their disposal to apply such pressures, because most of their wealth is directly or indirectly tied to the government's ability to force payment of debts out of persons sufficiently weak to be pressured.
why, the process of making gaseous wealth even requires the exchange of gases—i.e., words spoken and shouted.

~Chara of Pnictogen
