Increase Fungibility to Decrease Conflict

I’ve observed as a common theme in particularly intractible conflicts whereby both opposing parties place considerable intrinsic value in having exclusive agency over a non-fungible asset.

But first a fungible asset is one that can be easily swapped for any other of its kind. A US dollar bill can be swapped for any other US dollar bill. An antique table is not fungible, if you lent me your antique table and a year later I returned a table that was roughly the same size you would be very disappointed.

• Both the Jews and the Palestinians in Gaza have as a core intrinsic value obtaining ownership of an extremely non-fungible patch of ground in the Middle East.
• Both Putin and the Ukrainian people intrinsically value Kyiv and other Ukrainian territories in a non-fungible way.
• Both indigenous rights activists and settlers are motivated by placing intrinsic value in agency over disputed ancestral land.
• Both parents during a separation non-fungibly value custody over their children.

It often but not always involves land. An example involving status was Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz battling over being recognised as the inventor of calculus. Or people fighting over intellectual properties rights with patent disputes. Or museums not returning ancient artefacts to their home country.

In all these cases both parties intrinsically value a non-fungible asset. If they valued it instrumentally then they could be willing to trade the asset for something they more deeply value. If it was a fungible asset then you would be able to divide it, produce more of it or other parties could trade their copies of it to satisify the need. If only one party intrinsically values a non-fungible asset then there is no conflict because you need two parties for a conflict but there is latent potential for conflict.

Being able to construct affordable floating cities on the ocean with open immigration policies will also fundamentally increase the fungibility of land. Promoting for your country to adopt more open immigration policies for the people affected by these conflicts would also help. This will enable the people of Gaza or Ukraine to decide between their value of having agency over a patch of dirt versus their value of safety and prosperity. Not all Palestinians or Ukrainians would choose the second over the first but I suspect a lot would. Which could go a long way to reducing tensions. Currently these people do not have that choice and as a result those values are tightly coupled.

I believe that countries overvalue non-fungible territory and undervalue their fungible citizenry. When countries correct for their mis-prioritisation then they will be shifting their values away from the non-fungible to the fungible which will go a long way to reducing tensions.

And now consider if you have intrinsic values that are tied to non-fungible assets. If so please challenge yourself on that view, the more you value other more fungible things the closer both you and the world comes to peace.