GR translation: its own definition of Earth’s surface drifting upward in value

[Mike Jing]

P241.19-33   Well, Roland must make the best of it, that’s all. If they get
this far, he has to show them what he knows about Control. That’s one of
his death’s secret missions. His cryptic utterances that night at Snoxall’s
about economic systems are merely the folksy everyday background chatter
over here, a given condition of being. Ask the Germans especially. Oh, it
is a real sad story, how shoddily their Schwärmerei for Control was used by
the folks in power. Paranoid Systems of History (PSH), a short-lived
periodical of the 1920s whose plates have all mysteriously vanished, natch,
has even suggested, in more than one editorial, that the whole German
Inflation was created deliberately, simply to drive young enthusiasts of
the Cybernetic Tradition into Control work: after all, an economy
inflating, upward bound as a balloon, its own definition of Earth’s surface
drifting upward in value, uncontrolled, drifting with the days, the
feedback system expected to maintain the value of the mark constant having,
humiliatingly, failed. . . .

What exactly is "its own definition of Earth’s surface"?  Real estate?  Or
something else entirely?
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20121118/34a496f9/attachment.html>