Money=not the root of all evil

This turned out a little longer than I expected. Sorry.


This random thought is inspired by something I just read on another site. The point was basically that money is the root of all evil. Leaving aside the debate about whether evil really even exists, let's think about money for a minute. I'd love to live in a world where we don't need money but...we don't. So I ask you to take a second and consider money in a slightly different way. A very good way to describe money is as a life unit. That's exactly what money is. Most of us trade time in our lives that we won't get back in exchange for money. Fair or not, some people get more life units than others for the time they are trading away. Life units can certainly not be considered evil. Even the love of and desire for life units is understandable. We take for granted the idea of going to work to make money to take care of ourselves and our families. But it seems more intimate to me to say that people love each other so much that they are willing to trade away part of their time on Earth for life units which will be used to take care of each other.

Ok....so that's all touchy and warm on the inside, etc. Let's take it a little further. You only have so much time to trade so to get more life units, you have to figure out how to get a higher return on your trade or figure out a way to invent more time to trade. Enter:capitalism. A perfect mechanism to invent more time. I will give you an opportunity to trade units and in return, I get to keep a few of your units for myself. It's completely true. You will never be paid the entire value of what you do unless you are signing your own paycheck.

But capitalism isn't all bad by itself. We can say we have "penny capitalism" such as people vending at the local farmers market. Trying to earn a living.....no problem there. We can also say we have "retail capitalism" with the people who own the local hardware store, employ 15 people, contribute to local charities and the economy. No problem there either. We need places like hardware stores. Then we also have "international corporate capitalism". That's where the game changes and people start to just be numbers on a balance sheet. Acceptable levels of environmental and economic disaster are defined by how many life units can be earned from them.

So the next time someone asks why the rich should be demonized for being successful....the next time the average person is accused of inciting "class warfare" for questioning the system....the next time someone tells you that you should just work harder....think about this. The problem isn't with profit. The problem is with so few controlling the life units that so many have been forced to trade away in exchange for so little. Instead of those units being reinvested into society, they are horded away into dynastic wealth that will never be fairly used again. We are told that the system depends on us trading our life units and that the more we trade, the better it will be for everyone. Hording so many of those units should be considered criminal and asking why you should have to pay a higher tax rate back to society for the privilege of owning all of those units forever is disgusting and insulting.

 

Ever been to a food bank?

Tons of food all bulked up in plastic bins, stacked in cases on shelves and packed 'til the door can barely shut in freezers. It *needs* to be that way. It is a reserve. However, that food needs to be circulated. Circulating the food won't diminish the reserve but it will prevent the food from expiring (thereby, losing all of its value).

I see financial wealth in a similar way. There actually *does* need to be a reserve. It serves a purpose. But when somebody's maintenance fees are exuberant (say, $20K per month for landscaping and dusting high walls) when people in the same county sleep on the backside porches of abandoned houses.. something's a bit screwy with that picture.

I'm looking forward to next month when the town will lay out new mulch and plant new shrubs and flowers. That *has* to happen. But when the same town fails to circulate it's reserve of expired and near expiring macaroni and cheese, I gotta question people's awareness and priorities. I don't think it's always a matter of "greed". I think it can be as simple as lack of perspective, lack of awareness and lack of priorities.

Now onto something that I actually do think was indefensible evil..

Obama's 50th birthday .. a "fundraiser".

"President Obama received a warm embrace from his die-hard supporters at a 50th birthday campaign fundraiser in Chicago Wednesday night. The Chicago event kicked off with a concert featuring Jennifer Hudson and OkGo! Tickets range in price from $50 (for the concert) to $35,800 (for VIP seating and dinner with the president)."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...d-fundraising/2011/07/29/gIQAK29LnI_blog.html


This was big news. But there was even BIGGER news during that exact same time. What was the news?

The government was threatening Americans that they couldn't afford to make Social Security payments in August. I immediately thought of all the sick and elderly people in this country who I knew would believe that they wouldn't get their Social Security checks. I also knew that the government was LYING and that yes they could, and would, make those payments. I wondered how many people had unnecessary anxiety attacks, how many people ended up in emergency rooms and how many people ended up swallowing toxic drugs for a FAKED "crisis".

And while Americans were having to put up with the government's bullshit, attacking people's Social Security, they also had to endure the taunt of Obama's THIRTY FIVE THOUSAND DOLLAR PER PLATE fundraiser. Talk about rubbing it in people's faces, hmm?

That was the rudest, cruelest thing. Made me so angry.

 

I agree with you, but I don't really understand why you don't just say money instead of 'life unit'.

 

I call bullshit.

Life unit? C'mon, man. That sounds almost as lame as "freedom fries."

Money is just another way of controlling people and keeping them in line. I might be more likely to have a favorable opinion of money if it wasn't such an artificial system. I mean, the money we have today has no real worth. It's printed by private banks which should have been never given authority to print that money and determine the value of it via the manipulation of interest rates and the amount of it in circulation at any given time. People don't even understand money and where it comes from. They think that it's somehow backed by something when it's not. It's a total ruse. It's used to put people and entire nations in debt, which is completely artificial since the money itself is artificial and has no actual worth.

A lot of evil in the world stems from money, but it goes deeper than that. However, there is no denying that much of the suffering in the world can be blamed on money. If you don't have money -- and often times having lots of it requires stepping on those below you -- then you suffer. Think of all the people that have died simply because they didn't have money to buy food, shelter, etc.

I am no fan of capitalism, but I also despise communism and socialism, which are simply forms of monopoly state capitalism also controlled and administered by the banks. All three are simply mechanisms of control.

 

Yeah but when they printed the new $5 bills I thought America discovered some royalty in the land. haha

I call them "the royal fives"

 

ginalee--I actually have been to a food bank before. I grew up fairly poor (using food banks) and have donated time and energy to food banks as an adult. I think your comparison is a good one.

I could have picked any term but life unit seems fitting...partially for effect but also because instead of calling it a dollar, you are just as correct in thinking about it as "x amount" of minutes of your life.

You're absolutely correct and I couldn't agree more but none of this runs counter to anything I said. And we can use whatever term we want but it doesn't change the fact that in this system, we need money to buy things.

 

of course not. aggressiveness is. money is just one of the more convenient excuses for it.