Or, more appropriately, why I hate
wealth.
Sometimes you just have to shake your head and ask yourself "how did we get here"? In today's global economy, Money is both a means and an end. It affords unthinkable privilege to those that have it, and dooms those that don't to a life filled with hardship and sacrifice. What is it about those scraps of paper that turn men (and women) into Gods?
Follow me below the fold, wherein I pontificate on the history and meaning of the almighty dollar.
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"He had heard people speak contemptuously of money: he wondered if they ever had tried to do without it."
- W. Somerset Maugham, "Of Human Bondage", 1915
Currency is a wonderful thing, in theory. It serves as a representation of goods and services. It allows ease of trade between people, and now, even between countries. If there were no currency, and I made rocking chairs, I'd have to seek out someone who wanted a rocking chair, and then figure out how many pigs or carrots they would be willing to give me in exchange for one of my rocking chairs. But all that changes with currency. It allows us to trade exactly 1.56 rocking chairs for a weeks worth of food. It further enables us to avoid spending exorbitant amounts of time seeking out buyers and sellers, allowing consolidation of goods which can be purchased with representative services, and vice versa.
"Money alone sets all the world in motion"
-Publius Syrus, "Maxims", circa 100 BC
Indeed, a society is incapable of growth without currency. As a group, we need a way to evaluate the relative worth of our labors. It enables us to do much more complex things than would otherwise be possible. Can you imagine having to put in 8 hours stocking shelves at your local grocery store to receive your weekly rations? Currency boils all the negotiation and arbitration out of everyday life. It's supposed to make things fair and equal, affording everyone the opportunity to do whatever it is they want to do, so long as someone, somewhere in the greater society wants what they produce.
Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves
- Albert Einstein
But, from noble beginnings, currency has become so convoluted as to become almost totally disconnected from its original meaning. Sure, most of the time it seems at least somewhat fair. Everyone thinks they're entitled to make more for what they do. But objectively speaking, most everyone can look at a day's labor, receive their paycheck, and know that the dollars and cents that get put into their bank accounts are a fair representation of what they've been doing for the past two weeks.
With a small fraction of the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on the Iraq war, the US and Australia could ensure every starving, sunken-eyed child on the planet could be well fed, have clean water and sanitation, and a local school to go to.
- Robert James Brown
This, however, is not the case for those who already have lots of money. For the millionaires and billionaires who inherited their wealth, they are essentially living off the goods and services produced by their ancestors. That would be fine if the distribution were even remotely fair. But consider how much money a billion dollars is. It's certainly more money than I will make in my entire lifetime. Enough to buy high-quality food for millions of people in a year. Enough to pay for the complete primary education of an entire state's worth of young people for months. Enough to pay for an entire higher education from a state university for five consecutive graduating classes.
What good is money if it can't inspire terror in your fellow man?
- C. Montgomery Burns, "The Simpsons"
Given how much that money could do, I often ask myself, do the people that have it actually deserve it? What makes them so special, that we, as a society, continue to accept the fact that they are holding onto a vast sum of the collective worth of our goods and services? And at what point do we cease to recognize the paper in their wallets and the electrons in their bank accounts as representative of their worth?
If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.
- Dorothy Parker
Money was never a big motivation for me, except as a way to keep score.
- Donald Trump, "Art of the Deal"
I can think of zero cases, in the history of man, in which the goods or services of one person, or even a whole family of people, is worth that collective sum. I don't care how brilliant, or attractive, or charismatic you are. There is nothing you can do to justify being worth billions of dollars. In my opinion, that includes martyrdom. Which we don't adequately fund anyway, even if it were worth that much.
No one can earn a million dollars honestly
- William Jennings Bryan
And the greater perversion, the thing about our system of currency that is mind-numbingly, stroke-inducingly, vacuously indescribable, is that it is no longer just a tool. It is a living, breathing entity. Through the magic of investment, money can now grow. People are earning their "goods and services" simply by holding in hock the representative "goods and services" of their fellow citizens. Are they producing anything? Are they selling something we wish to buy, that makes our life better or more enjoyable? Is their daily routine contributing to society?
Capital as such is not evil; it is its wrong use that is evil. Capital in some form will always be needed.
- Mohandas K. Gandhi
With certain rare exceptions, I would say the overwhelming answer to that question is a big fat no. The ultra wealthy are taking advantage of the beauty of currency, twisting the system so that they don't HAVE to be brilliant, or innovative, or entertaining, or virtuous. All they have to do, the prime activity that their lavish lifestyles depend on, is ensuring that the system stays in place. Because without the system, they have nothing.
Endless money forms the sinews of war.
- Cicero, Philippics
What's the point? I don't really have one. This isn't a call to revolution. And I don't intend it as hate speech towards those with vast accumulated wealth. But I think it's important for the ordinary citizen - civic minded people like you and I - to remember our base principles. It is only through collective recognition of what money represents that we can become truly aware of what is now happening in our society - an economy headed towards recession, the destruction of the middle class, virtual indentured servitude to credit companies arising through draconian bankruptcy laws, and the simultaneous squandering of our labor and the lives and well being of our young soldiers for the cynical interests of the few who disproportionately benefit from it.
Money is good for nothing unless you know the value of it by experience
- P.T. Barnum
The next time you look at your paycheck, stop and think what it means. What did you have to do for that money? Are you receiving your fair share? And keep that in mind when you spend it. Stop and think about what you had to do (or will have to do, in this new credit-based economy) to receive that good or service.
Money helped build our civilization. We can't exist without it. But when currency is perverted so that a few can experience a quality of life several orders of magnitude above their fellow man for doing nothing at all, the system is flawed. And it's only a matter of time before it breaks.