They say money changes you and I started to wonder why that is. What is it about money that inherently changes the way people behave. It can drive someone to lie, steal, cheat, and even kill to get it. What is it about money that causes that level of reaction, or overreaction? Why do we want money so badly? Is it because of the things we believe it can get for us? Maybe that's all it really comes down to. Money is just a concept we use. It's our way to keeping track of just how much of what you want you can have. I guess in that regard then money can equal freedom, at least in our society's terms of what freedom is. Currently our society is a capitalistic one, where one's success is rewarded with money. We tend to associate money with power because money gets you what you want. Just look at the Hollywood movie producer, who is a multi-millionaire, that controls the lives of not on the movies they produce, but also the lives of the people involved in them. They wield a ridiculous amount of power, and not just within their own little world. That is thanks to not only their own wealth, but also their ability to make money for others. Money can influence even political power. Look at our own elections. In order to be even nominated you have to generate a huge amount of money. This is just to be seen. Then if you're elected, you have to start bringing in even more money for your eventual reelection. In addition to normal skills like being able to lead, understand the law, and navigate the world of professional politics, one has to be a fundraiser as well. Does that mean money is the root of all evil or just a necessary one?
Not all that long ago it used to be that we would barter for our goods and services. You want that sack of flour then you'll need to work on my roof for a few hours. Time and energy were exchanged for equal (hopefully) time and energy. Somewhere along the way that changed. Instead of a direct exchange of services, we now tend to hand over whatever currency is accepted in exchange for something. So now if you want that bag of flour you're not going to be talking to the guy who milled it. Instead you're talking to the supermarket chain that worked out a deal with said guy or group of guys to pay them a specific amount of money for their product in exchange for the ability to take that bag of flour out beyond the reach of what the guy could have hoped to done on his own. I'm not saying this setup is bad because I don't know any guys who mill flour, which means if I want it then my options are kind of limited. No, the problem really comes from other situations where we're exchanging our time and energy for something other than equal time and energy. I have agreed to work 40 hours in a week so that you'll pay me an agreed upon of money that I can then turn around and spend on whatever I want, which is usually bills. The basic assumption is that the money you're giving me is going to have value equal to the time I invested in getting it. When you think about it though, does the money ever really match up in value to the time it took to get it? And it makes me wonder as well are we devaluing ourselves in the process? It can be rare to see your time and energy get turned into something tangible rather than some numbers put into your bank account where the other numbers live.
How is it that a majority of the world's wealth is kept by a very small minority of people? It's seemingly always been that way too be it monarchies, business owners, or extraordinary individuals who did something special. I can't fault someone for wanting to maintain their level of wealth. Very rarely do people want to go backwards in what they have. So we ask ourselves how does that billionaire justify making another fifty million dollars when they already have more than enough. Couldn't some resident in a third world nation ask that of a middle class family who is living on the combined salaries that is less than eighty thousand dollars a year, which could be exponentially greater than anything they could hope to make in their own lifetime? The family that's living on eighty thousand dollars may be very comfortable. They'll have bills and complications like everyone else, including the billionaire. Sure the billionaire is able to fly to Monaco to race a car made of diamonds against a solid gold robot he had commissioned, but some way or another he has to pay for all that, even if his reserves are much greater than the average person. The middle class family is able to keep their fridge stocked with food, their kids in new clothes, and has access to just about any medicine they would need for non-emergencies.
I'm not saying that billionaires should give their money away. I'm not mad or jealous of them for having that money. I'm just curious what they did to get it and in such high amounts. As with many things I'm sure a lot of circumstances had to come into play. They say it's easy to make money if you already have plenty to start with, which is why a lot of people will assume that if someone comes from a wealthy family then it is assumed they'll always be rich as long as nothing catastrophic happens. Is that really successful though? If you start out with a million dollars to your name and you turn that into a billion aren't you just doing what most other people are doing? Someone who starts with a thousand dollars is likely to turn that into something greater than a thousand dollars. So what are these people with money doing with their wealth? Sure some of them may be sitting on it because like Scrooge McDuck believes, the ownership of money is its own reward. Others though are spending that money. When money is spent is has to be going somewhere. Does it all just sort of circulate back to the original owner in those cases? I guess my question is how is it there are trillions of dollars moving around through the economy and yet for the most part everyone's portion of it stays roughly the same throughout their life?
Is the accumulation of wealth all just arbitrary? If tomorrow your bank account said zero then the world around you would immediately decide you have zero worth, at least until you sort out the problem, assuming you could sort out the problem. That doesn't address the larger issue though, which is that our very money, regardless of how much you have in the bank, under the mattress, or invested in offshore accounts has a value that we all have to agree upon. Currently our money isn't backed by gold like it used to be. It's backed by something else now and it's an elaborate game to keep convincing everyone we know that it's still worth the value printed on it. I don't think that tomorrow our money is suddenly going to become worthless. I doubt even that our personal value of money is going to change all that much. I do wonder though about recent situations where it's becoming painfully clear that our money isn't exactly safe and those who are supposed to be in charge of it seem to be more interested in maintaining their own levels than performing the services they were expected to do for their customers. I find it hard to believe that other countries have their economies crumble and even collapse while our own country soldiers on. Sure we have recessions and depressions. One has to wonder though does each time that happen does it make our dollar just a little bit weaker? Will it eventually get to the point where we all ask ourselves why we're using this piece of paper, which is a note saying we have some numbers in a bank, is so important to how we live? If and when that happens will we turn our attention back to something more tangible in value?
