If time is money, then I am the wealthiest man alive.
I have long since distrusted money, not seeing there to be any true value or substance to it. Time, however, is priceless but still a useable commodity.
I have no money to speak of, so I pay for things in time. I’m a bit of a miser with my time: if I feel you deserve it, I will give you a lot of it; if I feel you do not, I will keep it for myself. I would hope that all of my friends would know this fact and ask for my time freely—I will not always accede to their requests, but when I do, I will single-mindedly dedicate a proportion of my time to them.
Given that most people consider money to be a ‘necessity’, I have often struggled with my animosity towards this concept. I don’t believe that ‘money is the root of all evil’ or that ‘everyone has their price’. It is not the object that corrupts; if a person is rotten already, the object will merely bring this fact to the surface. I can see a utility to there being money so that we can set standard prices and proportions for goods and services rendered. This is akin to my ability to see how fossil fuels are useful in that they allow for large-scale electrical grids, international locomotion and all of the subsequent benefits provided as a result of these two miracles of the modern era. However, fossil fuels have a demonstrably adverse effect on our environment and if it were not for corporate greed (whose manifestation was made possible in part by money), then we would have long ago started along a more sustainable path to a solution for our energy and fuel needs that was beneficial to the whole world.
I view money as a poor decision made millennia ago whose negative effects we have forgotten in the interest of avarice. I don’t see the financial system we have adopted as a sustainable solution. It is a band-aid on a bullet wound.
This is not an argument for communism (or at least what I understand communism to be) as they call for an equal distribution of ‘wealth’, when it is obvious—to me at least—that not everyone contributes equally. I embrace meritocracy and a fair exchange of services; I also embrace a modified form of altruism whereby we provide for aspiring great minds and nurture them until they can provide for themselves.
This is also not a call to return to a bartering system where goods and services are indistinguishable from money: the more goods you have, the wealthier you are. Bartering is a less efficient form of our current monetary system. It’s not that far off, though, insofar as there is not a single world currency. Cost of living and earned-income vary greatly from place to place (generally the two are commensurate). This is a strong indicator of the arbitrariness of prices: why does an Indian working in a call center make about 1/10th of what an American doing the same job will? It’s the same exact service, yet it’s a hell of a lot cheaper in certain cases. Additionally, prices are never really set as you can bargain in many countries and thus, regress closer to the progenitor of our current system: the barter system.
Nor is this a vilification of money itself. As I said previously, money is not the issue; rather, the way it is used has disastrous consequences. The premise from which we start is no longer how to make a quality product, but rather how to mass-produce a product at low-cost and (sometimes) maintain a certain standard. Poisoned food products are constantly being reclaimed because of lax quality/safety standard in their processing; animals are treated cruelly and pumped full of large doses of growth hormones, antibiotics and other unnatural elements—this not only influences them, but also those who consume their meat. Grains are also manifestly produced with profit in mind and not quality.
Oddly enough, the powerful sway money holds over the majority of the world is in and of itself an illusion perpetuated by those keepers of the faith. It is a dictator who derives its power from its unaware citizenry. Remove the support of people and it is but a hollow shell without substance. Our collective belief makes its power over us possible: we believe that money is essential and in believing make it so. In reality, we have a choice: we can believe in the power of ‘money’ and mistake this for a property inherent to money or we can recognize that money is only as necessary as we make it.
No, I do not see money as a necessity. It’s a vestigial implement we should have grown out of once people had figured out a more elegant solution to the question of how to trade goods and services. The harmful side-effects of its continued use will be felt universally (those hoarders of money are not excluded from the negative effects: diseases like gout and diabetes can only happen through benenutrition [opposite of malnutrition?] & whenever the wealthy minority become too oppressive, peasants will be peasants and rebel to redistribute the wealth to the majority). I want to see us move beyond the quick fix that money is into something more sustainable and equitable (again, not in a equal distribution of wealth, but where slave-laborers are compensated for their labor to the same extent as a non-slave laborer doing the same job would be).
More than anything, what I would ask for is a paradigm shift whereby we discard the fallacious notion that ‘money is evil’ or that ‘money is good’ and that we see it for what it is: a tool. As with every tool, if it is poorly designed for its given task, then it will perform inefficiently and/or undesirably—trying to hammer in a nail with a light-bulb might be possible, but it’s certainly not optimal. Money is malleable as a tool and can have multiple uses, so discarding it completely doesn’t seem entirely necessary at this point. That said, it may become entirely obsolete at some point in the future—a day, I will likely not live to see, but hope will be a glorious and happy day for the denizens of tomorrow.
I would propose that we re-evaluate the value of certain professions. In what universe do movie-makers, entertainers, athletes, politicians, etc. ‘deserve’ more money than educators, sewer cleaners, construction workers, fire-fighters, etc.—the discrepancy between the perceived value of these professions is depressing indeed. I don’t think the situation should be reversed either where a teacher earns obscene amounts of money. If it’s a job that you enjoy then the happiness purveyed by this profession would be its own reward—obviously, covering your necessities is primary and prerequisite to happiness, generally; thus, happiness would not be the only reward. Additionally, if all jobs had a relatively similar salary; we would eliminate the motivation for abandoning ethics for the sake of hoarding money. I also believe that level of skill and quality of the product should be a huge determining factor with regards to your salary—if I work a job that requires no skill and no experience, then I should be on the lower end of the salary spectrum; if my job requires high-level skills and bountiful experience, then I should be on the higher end of the spectrum. However, the spectrum should not span a range from one dollar a day to one million dollars a day. Instead, we could have a system whereby the salary cap would be no more than 500% the lowest income; then the lowest level worker would earn 100 dollars/day and the highest level worker would earn 500 dollars/day. This would ensure that even the most poor and incapable of us would at least be able to satisfy our basic necessities and still have time to pursue happiness. This would also provide incentive to increase one’s skill/experience level in order to purchase things beyond necessities that one may desire, while simultaneously not exaggerating the utility of any given profession—doctors need farmers just as much as farmers need doctors; society is an organism and when acting in unison it functions, when acting as though each organ were completely isolated, it breaks down.
A second proposal would be to eliminate the myriad currencies and adopt a singular global currency and call it the Global Nomen of Monetary Equivalence (or the GNOME., what can I say? I just really like gnomes! Also, this is a non-negotiable part of the proposal). Admittedly, I know relatively little about modern-day financial systems/networks, but I believe that they are unequivocally broken as-is and need a radical overhaul. As is often said, insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results; if we got into this mess with our current financial practices, we most certainly won’t clean it up through continuing said practices. I believe that consolidating all of the global currencies into a single, universally accepted one will lead to a sustainable solution—although it may not be the solution itself, the willingness to experiment will inevitably lead to people infinitely more intelligent than myself to pore over this conundrum and eventually proffer a viable solution. I think adopting a single currency would simplify our lives and create a more stable global economy.
Next I propose to eliminate the motivation to accumulate funds by creating a law of conservation of quality: you will receive in kind that which you contribute. Yes, McDonald’s provides low-cost food to the poor, yet it also significantly contributes to health problems. In order to avoid this ludicrous benefit to detraction ratio; we should cap profit margins: you can only make a 5% profit on any good vended or service provided. Therefore, instead of making a cheeseburger for 100 GNOMEs and selling it for 200 GNOMEs, you will only be able to sell it for 105 GNOMEs. Thus, if you want more profit, you have to spend more on the product, which will, at least in theory, improve the quality of said product. You now spend 200 GNOMEs on making the cheeseburger and charge 210 GNOMEs, which will yield twice the amount of profits while maintaining the same ratio. Now the goal will not be to cut corners to increase profit, but rather to increase quality as a way to increase profit. Additionally, given the fact that even the lowest worker on the totem pole will have enough to cover their basic needs, this quality food will be affordable to all. Presumably people could take the approach to mass-produce poor quality materials and make up for the low profit margin by selling vast quantities. We can then reason that if we sold 1,000 cheeseburgers at 210 GNOMEs a piece (having made them at a cost of 200 GNOMEs), then we would make a profit of 10,000 GNOMEs; we could make the same 10,000 GNOMEs by selling 2,000 cheeseburgers at 105 GNOMEs (having made them at a cost of 100 GNOMEs); thus circumventing the ideal of producing quality goods. Well, it wouldn’t be much of a law of conservation of quality if we allowed for that to happen, now would it? A related proposal then would be to limit quantities produced. In which nightmarish dystopia do we prefer purchasing 2,000 low-quality products when we can afford 1,000 high-quality ones? If we don’t have enough to satisfy our basic needs, then marginally poisonous low-cost alternative foods will appeal to us; if we have the financial power to demand quality, though, who wouldn’t choose to do so? Assuming that there is a critical mass of people out there who would still opt for the low-quality products, we could have a cap placed on production quantity
Lastly I propose a paradigm shift in our education: I suggest that we not inculcate the belief in our pupils that money buys happiness. A dearth of money leading to an inability to satisfy basic needs will indubitably impact our ability to be happy in a negative manner; however, an over-abundance of funds will not lead to an over-abundance of happiness. We need to train people to do what will make them optimally happy. If that entails working a few hours a day, satisfying your basic needs and then going fishing the rest of the day, then you need a job that is not too time-demanding (your sacrifice is in the form of money). If it encompasses working constantly towards curing cancer, then you need high-levels of skill, loads of experience, nearly inhuman hours and will provide you with some serious fundage (your sacrifice, however, comes in the form of time). Decide what makes you optimally happy and work toward that goal. People change over the course of time, so mobility between jobs should not be prohibitively impossible given that the person is willing to put in the effort. We then need to educate people on how to learn instead of cramming useless facts into their heads. We need to educate them in terms of practical skills and encourage them to explore the different possibilities out there while providing them with a safe environment in which to experiment.
If all of these systems are global, then people could move all around the world without a need to re-learn the use of the tool. What I want is a turn-key operation for the world, one that will work indefinitely and that is flexible enough to change with the times.
02/02/12
chaosisharmony 