When the Money Goes First

Money is the most nervous thing in any society. It moves before people move. It moves before laws change. Sometimes it moves before the people who own it have quite decided to move it.

When pressures of this kind begin to release, money starts to move towards places that feel safer. Safer does not always mean calmer. Sometimes it means somewhere with more weapons, or more food, or values closer to those of the people sending the money. Different money goes to different places, depending on who owns it and what they are afraid of.

This is not, usually, about political ideology. It is about where people feel their grandchildren will be welcome.

Once the money has begun to move, the places it leaves lose something they had been quietly relying on. The tax base. The investment. The confidence of everyone else, who sees the money leaving and begins to wonder whether they should leave too.

The places the money arrives at also change. Not only in their wealth. They inherit, with the money, some of the character of the people who sent it. The arrivals buy property, fund institutions, shape the place in their image. Within a generation, the place is a different place.

Sometimes money moves in panic, rather than by affinity. Then every country loses some, no country gains much, and value is destroyed rather than moved. This has happened before, in times of general crisis.

Either way, when the money has begun to move, the people are usually not far behind.