In the area of communication media even this is not an isolated case. Thus, in the economic code of property the simple rule that one party's assets mean, simultaneously and to an identical degree, the lack of assets of another is, at a certain stage in the development of the code, given a secondary codification through the mechanism of money. The money-code doubles the opportunities of becoming an owner of property by means of money symbols (in themselves worthless). This puts material property in motion; it can, as it were, change people and, because of this possibility, increase its value by being handed over in return for money. As nonowners of certain goods, those with money get an opportunity to acquire them, and vice versa. A comparable problem arose in the logical scheme of the medium of truth as soon as the process of negation was legitimized reflexively and was accepted in the medium-code as more reflexive. Then, to use a formulation of Bachelard's, truths became 'dialecticized' with respect to their potential for becoming untruth, and vice versa for untruths. To contemporaries of this change it appeared that the mind itself had become placed within the framework of history. But history is not a code.

XREF: Luhmann's systems theory parallels between economic and truth media codes — connects to broader media/communication theory.

Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, loc. 644