Question6.com: The gist of our life
19 - Money! Money! Money!
The problem is not money itself but the way we use it.
It started with a very good idea.
Money was created to facilitate the exchange of objects of the same value. Objects are dead. They don’t reproduce.
A fisherman needed to exchange fish for something that is not perishable. He needed an exchange between objects of the same value. Gold was selected because it is expensive and can be divided into small quantities. The problem started when goods and services increased faster than the production of gold. We replaced gold with paper money and faith. Then, we replaced paper money with electrical impulses along wires. Today we don’t even need the wires. All we have left is fiat money and faith.
What is a loan?
The banks do not loan you their own money. About 90% of your loan is fiat money created out of thin air. The value of the money they give you comes from the value of the money held by other people. It is stealing.
The lender also expects his share of what is created with his money. It is called “interest” and this is another problem. A farmer can use a loan to produce more corn. The ability to reproduce is in the seeds - not in the money. You cannot put money in a safe and rely on promiscuity to make it reproduce.
Today people have to pay for their credit card, their mortgage, their student loan, and their bank loans. They devote most of their life to working to pay their debts. They have lost most of their freedom. This is not the kind of society the Founding Fathers had in mind. Something went wrong somewhere. We replaced the dictature of the kings with the dictature of money.
The interest could be paid in corn, but the farmer cannot create money. Selling the corn requires an increase of the money in circulation. The banks are expecting the borrowers to produce every year a lot of money that the borrowers don’t have and cannot create.
The banks know where this money will come from. It will come from the 90% of the new loans that they are going to make. They need new borrowers to create new money to pay the interest of previous borrowers. Does that ring a bell? It sounds very much like a Ponzi scheme. The interest represents a percentage that the creator of money takes away from the development of the economy. The system transfers value from those who create it to those who create money.
To take a loan is to sell some of our freedom.
A loan, is an exchange. The bank gives you money. What do you give the bank when you sign the loan?
You give the commitment that you are going to work to pay back the loan with interest. You associate time with money. You give the lender the use of your time. That means that you are giving part of your life and part of your freedom. There is a name for this situation. It is called “debt bondage”. The more loans you get, the less freedom you have left.
The general feeling
You cannot blame people for having a vague feeling that they are exploited. People should be able to live in society without incurring debts. How can you work all your life and the result of all your work is to increase the National Debt to a point where nobody will ever be able to pay it back?
We may have tolerated a system that is not perfect, but this system may be going too far. Debts could be a temporary solution as long as they are limited to small amounts and a limited time. To put a price on people’s freedom and trade it as common goods is not the normal use of money. People should not have to sell their soul to survive in society. This is not the purpose of their life. We are abusing money. This system is pulling us down to the material level.
Let's try some empathy
- We keep producing more and more goods and services. There is a need for more and more money to be created.
By increasing the money supply, we lower the value of the money in circulation. It is a tax those who have money. That could be justified by saying that we collect a small amount from many people and concentrate its use where it is most needed. The result is a better use of the money in circulation. This is necessary for the development of the economy. In those conditions, the creation of new money should be done by economists and follow the ups and down of the economy.. It could be wise to keep the creation of new money out of reach of the politicians.
- Our financial system needs much more than the exchange of objects of the same value.
Every new industry must develop its own tools. Farmers need the plow, the tractors and other machines. Dentists have their own tools. Teachers, restaurants, theaters, doctors, car manufacturers and every other industry had to develop its own tools. The same rule applies to finance. Our financiers should create their own tools instead of abusing our money. The use of money should be limited to the exchange of goods and services of the same value. If you need something else, create the tools that you need. It is your problem. Don’t solve your problems by abusing the use of our money.
Imagine a world where money is secondary.
Instead of sorting the countries by their GDP we would sort them by their level of happiness.
The main concern of the CEO would be to better satisfy his customers instead of satisfying his shareholders. The pharmaceutical industry would make cheaper and cheaper medicines based only on the 250 molecules that we really need. Instead of judging people by their bank account we could judge them by the way they use money. Did they get their money out of the driver’s seat and back on the passenger’s seat?
Keep dreaming...
A better use of money would require a higher level of consciousness.
Stealing something makes you a thief, even if nobody notices that something is missing. To kill somebody makes you a murderer even if the police never find you. We need to be aware that whatever we are doing to others we are also doing it to our society and to ourselves, at the same time. We belong to the society of the Homo sapiens. Nobody will survive unless the Homo sapiens survive. The best way to serve ourselves is to serve others.
In short:
We, The People Of The World, have a problem with money. We abused it and we became the prisoners of our own creation. The money we first created was a ‘thing’ to help the exchange of ‘things’. It worked as long as we did not associate money with our freedom. We tried to associate the material with the immaterial, like our body is associated with our soul. This is outside the domain of human prerogatives. We failed. Our money loses its value and we lost our freedom. Our financial system pulls us down to the material World. This goes against the purpose of our life. Getting as much money as possible above our needs for food and shelter does not serve the purpose of our life.
People make waves. Money makes the tide.
The first step to get out of our jail is to become fully conscious of our predicament. We are so used to living in a Ponzi scheme that we consider it to be ‘normal’. We readily accept the idea that people should spend all their life paying debts and their children will have to pay their increased National Debt. Should we ask a team of economists to design a new financial system? If a politician has a solution to this problem, should we give him a chance or should we wait for a solution from economists? There is a danger of postponing the debate and getting desperate to the point of accepting any solution – including war.