QUESTION6.com
We,The People, are not happy
4 - Money! Money! Money!
We were born naked. Our first relationship with our environment was “to take and to survive”. We were not in a position to negociate. The idea of ‘exchange’ and the need for money came much later.
It started as a good idea:
How can a fisherman find somebody willing to exchange fish for piano lessons? There was a need for an interface that will keep its value. Our ancestors tried to use salt and shells. They used steer hides and called it ‘a buck’. Their best solution was to use gold and silver. That was an improvement. We wanted to do even better. Why should we keep digging gold out of the mines if we are going to put it back in the cave of a bank?
Use but don’t abuse
It was easier to print paper. We replaced gold with paper and trust. The more money the governments printed, the less trust people had in their fiat currency.
We did not stop there. Printing paper was replaced with electrical impulses sent through cables. Today, we don’t even need cables. All what remains is faith. As everything else, money got polluted by human nature. Governments kept creating more and more fiat money until their money becomes worthless.
We went even further:
We associated money with time and created debts. We assumed that money and time can be mixed together like two metals can make an alloy. We assume that we can put money in a safe and when we open the safe, one year later, we will find our money plus interest.
This is how our servant became our master. When taking a loan, we are trading inner freedom for external comfort. We become more connected to possessions, payments, and promises than to our own deeper life. The body may feel safer, but the soul gets polluted.
Today, money controls our lives. It controls the house we live in, the car we drive, the education we receive, the people we meet, what we eat, and even who has a shot at getting elected.
Here is an example. When taking a $300 000 loan to buy a house with a 30-year mortgage at 6%, we will repay the principal of $300 000 plus a total of $347 515 in interest. To buy our home, we must also buy one for the banker! That was not our intention. Little by little, our life becomes organized around repayment.
Our lives became reorganized around repayment
People should be able to exchange their work for money and their money for goods and services without incurring debts. They should be able to live in a society without national debt. Something went wrong somewhere. We find ourselves in a jail that we created ourselves, one bar at a time.
In our modern society, the life of every individual is dominated by the obligation to repay his debts. Each loan is an exchange of money for freedom. We are trading part of our soul for body comfort. We may live longer but the soul is losing freedom. The situation gets worse and worse as we get car loans, student loans, mortgages, bank loans, credit cards, and the national debt.
With each loan, we lose some freedom.
The system transfers wealth from those creating goods and services to those creating money. Politicians keep arguing over who should pay taxes. That will remain a minor issue as long as the financial system remains unchanged. It is getting to the point where governments do not even try to repay their debts. They consider paying the interest to be an achievement.
Politicians make waves. Money makes the tide.
The problem is not limited to one country or one political system. Chances are that, in the future, we will see all over the world, politicians saying “Give me a chance and I will solve your problem. I can give you back the freedom you lost.” We are so desperate that we will give anybody a chance without checking his credentials.
