Post by nascent on Aug 6, 2009 20:51:29 GMT -5
(Wrote this following a very disappointing turn of events today relating to my ongoing hunt for a job IRL. Feel free to post your own thoughts as well as pick at mine. If it comes off as being somewhat anarchistic... well, I assure you that I'm no anarchist. When some big powerful concept frustrates me enough I just tend to tear it to shreds in my mind, and writing like this is born from that destructive/creative process.)
What IS money? In a way, money is trust. Before money we had the barter system: I give you something you want in exchange for something I want, and we both go home happy. There was little trust in such arrangements, as the merchandise itself was available to inspection at the time of transaction. People speculate that the first money system came into existence as a kind of I.O.U., a pledge to exchange an otherwise worthless trinket or token for the desired goods when they were available. Money at that time was quite literally a promise, and as we all know promises can, and often are, broken. Money is also perception. Ask yourself this: of what worth to the ancients were gold and silver coins? They themselves probably wouldn't have rightly understood the question. Gold is gold, silver is silver, and copper is copper. Money of that time was as deeply imbued into the common mind as the very forces of nature, for what man asks “what is fire?” while looking at a flame? If it was shiny and pleasing to the eye it was surely worth something! And yet its practical application was sorely lacking. Despite what certain liquor enthusiasts may tell you, you cannot eat gold. You cannot use it to catch food. It gives no warmth that is not imagined, no shelter in and of itself. It's a shiny rock, pure and simple. Diamonds and pearls are no different, and though you can eat paper money it's ill advisable because of the inks. To believe that such materials improve the quality of life is a gross travesty of life itself.
Money is nothing more than a mass-produced illusion of power and control. It is the great placebo, the opium of the masses, a joke played by governments to alternately pacify and arouse their people... a joke that has very often gotten out of hand, as evidenced by the Great Depression and the 2009 Recession. An unsettling assertion, I know, but if you consider the evidence there is hardly any proof to the contrary. The existence and regulation of a common currency is a mechanism of control, a great central pillar which upholds the functions of "normal" society, particularly American society. It creates the poor, wealthy, and middle class. To the first it gives a sense of helplessness and dependency, making them pliable and expendable to the culture at large; to the last it grants a mindset of indulgence and entitlement, holding the economy in a stable loop of self-satisfaction; and to the everyman in the middle it deeply ingrains a cruel notion that by simply working hard enough and pleasing the right people he can earn everything he wants in life. And it's true, partly; money makes accessible to the working man a vast array of things that the vanity fair of this life can offer... but it does so by stealing away the very things he seeks most to grasp: freedom, security, and hope. Freedom, for he is never his own master so long as there are bills to be paid, security because the worth of all he has accrued floats on the value of mere paper and metal, and hope because all his labor has not made him more the master of his own life, but less.
The modern era has revealed several startling truths about money, though the import of these revelations has largely gone unnoticed. For one, the advent of virtual currencies so popular and widespread that people can openly swap “real” money for “fake” money back and forth (notably the Linden Dollars of the MMO Second Life) and in some parts of the world use such “fake” money to buy real goods and services, as evidenced by China's virtual currency law. Ask yourself: what does this tell us about the nature of money? A wise person might decide that money, in truth, has no real nature at all, merely a phantom of value and an echo of worth. After all, isn't money only worth what it can buy? So then money, itself, is nothing at all. Isn't it absurd that this nothing runs the lives of billions of people? That nothing can determine the rise and fall of nations, build and destroy empires of goods and services, and determine whether a person gets to eat dinner or go hungry?
In so many movies, the affluent villain or debonair young millionaire speaks this line: “Money is no object.”
It's strange how right they are.
(And now, because that was WAY too heavy and grim, I give you the exact same argument in a strictly visual form.)
What IS money? In a way, money is trust. Before money we had the barter system: I give you something you want in exchange for something I want, and we both go home happy. There was little trust in such arrangements, as the merchandise itself was available to inspection at the time of transaction. People speculate that the first money system came into existence as a kind of I.O.U., a pledge to exchange an otherwise worthless trinket or token for the desired goods when they were available. Money at that time was quite literally a promise, and as we all know promises can, and often are, broken. Money is also perception. Ask yourself this: of what worth to the ancients were gold and silver coins? They themselves probably wouldn't have rightly understood the question. Gold is gold, silver is silver, and copper is copper. Money of that time was as deeply imbued into the common mind as the very forces of nature, for what man asks “what is fire?” while looking at a flame? If it was shiny and pleasing to the eye it was surely worth something! And yet its practical application was sorely lacking. Despite what certain liquor enthusiasts may tell you, you cannot eat gold. You cannot use it to catch food. It gives no warmth that is not imagined, no shelter in and of itself. It's a shiny rock, pure and simple. Diamonds and pearls are no different, and though you can eat paper money it's ill advisable because of the inks. To believe that such materials improve the quality of life is a gross travesty of life itself.
Money is nothing more than a mass-produced illusion of power and control. It is the great placebo, the opium of the masses, a joke played by governments to alternately pacify and arouse their people... a joke that has very often gotten out of hand, as evidenced by the Great Depression and the 2009 Recession. An unsettling assertion, I know, but if you consider the evidence there is hardly any proof to the contrary. The existence and regulation of a common currency is a mechanism of control, a great central pillar which upholds the functions of "normal" society, particularly American society. It creates the poor, wealthy, and middle class. To the first it gives a sense of helplessness and dependency, making them pliable and expendable to the culture at large; to the last it grants a mindset of indulgence and entitlement, holding the economy in a stable loop of self-satisfaction; and to the everyman in the middle it deeply ingrains a cruel notion that by simply working hard enough and pleasing the right people he can earn everything he wants in life. And it's true, partly; money makes accessible to the working man a vast array of things that the vanity fair of this life can offer... but it does so by stealing away the very things he seeks most to grasp: freedom, security, and hope. Freedom, for he is never his own master so long as there are bills to be paid, security because the worth of all he has accrued floats on the value of mere paper and metal, and hope because all his labor has not made him more the master of his own life, but less.
The modern era has revealed several startling truths about money, though the import of these revelations has largely gone unnoticed. For one, the advent of virtual currencies so popular and widespread that people can openly swap “real” money for “fake” money back and forth (notably the Linden Dollars of the MMO Second Life) and in some parts of the world use such “fake” money to buy real goods and services, as evidenced by China's virtual currency law. Ask yourself: what does this tell us about the nature of money? A wise person might decide that money, in truth, has no real nature at all, merely a phantom of value and an echo of worth. After all, isn't money only worth what it can buy? So then money, itself, is nothing at all. Isn't it absurd that this nothing runs the lives of billions of people? That nothing can determine the rise and fall of nations, build and destroy empires of goods and services, and determine whether a person gets to eat dinner or go hungry?
In so many movies, the affluent villain or debonair young millionaire speaks this line: “Money is no object.”
It's strange how right they are.
(And now, because that was WAY too heavy and grim, I give you the exact same argument in a strictly visual form.)
I did post in shades of grey if anyone even remembers that lmao