After listening to at least 1000 rap songs about money, I know that at least some people are thinking about it.
I have a few questions about money, but I think they all come down to one in the end: “Why does money exist”?
People often get asked the question, “If you won the lottery, would you keep your job?” Winning the lottery is potentially a liberating event - something that would free you from the societal need of money for survival, but would it free you from the desire for more?
I have another question: if money didn’t exist, what would you be doing? Would it be anything like your current occupation? How would you spend your time?
Here is what I think about money. I have no idea what people think about these and I’m doing this without any research – let me know if you disagree.
1. Money was created to provide humans with an incentive to serve others. Would you dedicate your life to serving others without receiving something in return? Would a construction worker build a house for someone out of the good of his heart if he weren’t being compensated? In my mind, no one is going to totally sacrifice themselves for others. “You help me out and I’ll help you out.” Or, “I’ll help you out if I get money, which will satisfy my personal needs/wants.” With money came other social concepts – status, power, etc. Even if you think about jobs which appear to be more “human-driven” than others - say a doctor or a teacher - I’m not sure if these jobs would have ever existed without a monetary system in place. Granted, you may also feel better about yourself in jobs like these that might make you believe you are doing something useful for others. Without a monetary system, I think anarchy prevails.
2. Money has fostered competition, jealousy, and greed amongst humans. Money is responsible for the concept of “invention”. Money is also responsible for most of the crimes in the world today (I have no stats to back that up). Money is a distraction from boredom. The monetary system controls human life.
3. The “value” of anything is based on whatever someone else will pay for it. The stock market and monetary system were created by humans, and their success or failure will continue to be driven by human emotions relating to those systems. If humans no longer “buy-in” (pun intended) to the idea of the stock market, it will fail. “Expert” investors can claim that their “success” is a result of genius, sophisticated mathematics/formulas, or whatever, but unless someone else agrees with whatever they are doing or “values” something similarly using a different methodology, their “genius” or “sophisticated formula” is worthless. In business you often hear the expression “it’s an art, not a science”. Really, it’s about manufacturing ideas and a story and getting someone else to believe in it.
Thought experiment - you and I are the last 2 people on earth. I have a supply of water and food that will allow me to live for 100 days. You have a supply of gold and try to exchange some gold for my water. Who has more "value" now? I guess neither of us cause that situation would be awful for the both of us and I probably wouldn't want to live alone, but hopefully you get my point.
4. In our society, money gets you a lot of things. Your basic necessities – food, housing, health. After your basic needs you have things that you don’t need, but you might desire. These include pleasure, power, status, etc. Examples include a “bigger” house, “better” food, entertainment, a really big TV, etc. You might think, “people will like me more and I’ll feel better about myself if I can afford to live in a mansion”. Who knows? In my mind, money can’t get you happiness.
5. Money is a self-propagating or self-fulfilling concept. If money never existed, the big TVs you need money to buy would never have existed. Also, in general, it costs money to make money (i.e. college degree required for high-paying job).
6. The function of the finance arm in our economy is to facilitate the growth of all industries in the monetary system including the finance arm itself. If I want to start a business in our society right now, I need to have someone give me the money. The money had to be created at some point in time. A bank will help me get money – either by creating the money or connecting me with someone who has money which has already been created. The bank will also make money just by creating money (the concept of interest) and collect fees for their services. Right now it seems like a lot of people are unhappy with the level of complexity in the financial industry and with the amount of money people in finance are making. There is a perception that many or all people who work in finance are greedy. Why is the majority of the country’s wealth held by a small percentage of people?
7. Creating money out of “nothing” (leverage) is the driver for all past economic “growth”. There are ebbs and flows, but generally people seem to agree with the foundation of debt and the leverage “bubble”. I mean, more and more money needs to be manufactured or else more of it would never exist.
8. Given the current level of dissatisfaction, some changes will probably be made to the system that satisfy enough people with social status to get the monetary system moving again. People seem to generally have confidence in Obama and the government and people tend to forget about the past. The rich will continue to be rich and the poor will continue to be poor, and the wide disparity in social status will persist. We’ll ultimately run into another period in which people are unhappy with or lack confidence in the system, and the cycle will continue.
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