This is possible only because of the development of state, financial institutions, laws and customs. The rise of money not only has an economic impact on society but, according to Simmel, it also has a crucial psychological impact.

Divisibility of money leads to limitless quantification of human activity. Therefore, money reduces all quality and individuality to a purely quantitative level. It is a context where production is done only for the market—the one who produces never sees the one who purchases. There is a complete dissociation between the producer and consumer in the context of mass production.

The life in monetized economy makes the modern mind a calculating mind — weighing, calculating, enumerating, and thereby reducing qualitative values to quantitative terms. Moreover, the calculability of money brings a sense of precision in relation to equalities and inequalities.

Simmel points out that the device that had also led to precise calculability is the diffusion of pocket watches. Lewis Mumford had pointed out that the concept of ordered and  routinized  time had come from the routine in the monastery. In the case of the metropolis, it was not the question of coordinating the personal routine of the few but that of coordinating the personal and professional lives of millions. According to Simmel, it was the dissemination of the pocket watch that made it possible.