"Perception is reality", or why we all speak English and use the Canadian dollar

The other day I witnessed a miracle. I opened Facebook and all of my friends from France had learned English overnight. That is to say, they were providing updates on Facebook in English. And really good English.

How could this happen? Because Facebook has a new feature that assumes I only speak English, and automatically translates foreign languages into English. And the algorithm is so good that I wouldn't know if someone was not a native speaker, or that a machine translated the wording.

So from my perception - thanks to machine learning applied to translation - the entire world can now converse in English. And from the perception of others - French. Or every other language in the world. Maybe even Esperanto.

Then I checked out eBay, and guess what? All prices are in Canadian dollars! The world was now using CAD as the global currency, and I could order anything from around the world in my own currency. From my perception.

Of course, there was a foreign exchange translation happening behind the scenes on eBay. And unlike languages, the prices fluctuate at least once per day. And then there are the significant transaction fees.

If the developed world continues down the path of floating exchange rates, the price fluctuations will remain a reality, though could be tempered by adding a margin to the price of goods shipped internationally. Or working across borders to stabilize exchange rates where possible, though the gold standard and other efforts at managing exchange rates have demonstrated that currency markets don't like to be managed.

Create stability in prices where possible, and stability in shipping costs as is probable - and improving with the corporate focus on distribution during Covid - and we're closer than perhaps we've ever been to a global currency that is paradoxically the same and different for all countries.

That just leaves the fees. The obscure and massive foreign exchange market that will need to accommodate the retail appetite for direct access to international goods and an increasing unwillingness to pay obscene transaction fees for the behind-the-veil service of currency translation.

Who will exploit this market demand for lower fees and translate it into a global profit-making behemoth? The race is on. Que le meilleur gagne!