It came to me in the night that trying to use money to reduce or avoid waste is a big mistake. I think I'm thinking in particular of the belief that if something is scarce or not being used efficiently, charging more for it is an effective response to increase the supply by reducing the demand.
Never mind that this strategy is manipulative in the extreme. Though that, too, makes it a negative. A punitive response with an ulterior motive is even worse than one that's direct. But, depriving people of money in order to coerce them into using less of something they need is just plain wrong, even when it's done in the interest of avoiding waste. It's simply not possible to avoid the waste of a material resource or asset by restricting access to a symbolic representation of its value.
Is this another example of mistaking the symbol for the act? How do we keep the two distinct? Funny that binary thinkers don't seem able to do that--to separate fact from fiction, action from talk.
Of course, reducing one man's demand to increase another's supply is inherently unjust. Taking from Peter to give to Paul. The Taxed Enough Already people have a valid point. The problem is that they seem to think money is real, when, in fact, money is nothing more than an aide memoire.
We should ask them "what are you doing to do with an IOU, if you don't use it to collect your due?"