- Money Rituals.
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- "Money is like an iron ring we've put through our
noses. We've forgotten that we designed it, and now it is leading us around."
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- ~ Bernard Lietaer, Belgian currency expert
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- History
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- Money is a relatively recent invention for the human
species. How did they get along before that?
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- In a small tribe there were work roles for everyone.
If someone slacked social pressure could bring them into line.
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- There was a pecking order. Alpha males got the first
crack at the kill.
- Between groups there was barter.
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- Later, with the rise of civilisations there was a caste
system. Depending on which caste you were born into, you received different
privilege and access to goods.
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- Money As A Caste Tool
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- "The poverty of our century is unlike that of any
other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity,
but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich.
Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied but written off as trash.
The twentieth-century consumer economy has produced the first culture for
which a beggar is a reminder of nothing."
- ~ John Berger
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- I contend that money is a disguised caste tool. Consider:
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- Money neatly stratifies society. Those at the top get
the best foods and cars. Those at the bottom are forced to eat pesticide-laden
and artificial foods with low nutritive value. Those at the top get acres
of living space per person. Those at the bottom are crammed 12 to a room.
There are restaurants and entertainment places where only the very wealthy
are allowed to enter. All the entertainments are graded by which strata
are permitted to enjoy them.
- In England your caste is determined by your accent. However,
this does not help peg a foreigner. Money lets others know your proper
status, even when they have never heard of you or your family before.
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- Money ensures your descendants will enjoy your same privileged
caste status. You can transfer it to them. If you give them enough, even
if they do absolutely nothing to earn more, they can become even wealthier
than you just on the interest. Interest on the public debt is tribute the
non-rich pay in perpetuity to the rich to reward them for having rich ancestors.
The deadbeat bond holders are a much bigger drain on the government than
the collective welfare moms. The difference is the law is so rigged that
the government can reduce the money flow to the welfare mom, but not the
rich interest leech.
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- Just as in a traditional caste system, there are bars
to keep people from crossing caste lines. For example, you need an education
to earn serious money, yet that education is so expensive only wealthy
families can afford to educate their young. On the other hand, a wealthy
person can get relatively easily get millions in loans to bail them out
should they get into financial trouble.
- There are welfare systems designed to counterbalance
the gravity of money which tends to make the rich richer and the poor poorer,
however the rich always ensure the poor remain uncomfortably poor. The
easiest way for a high caste person to feel exalted is to make someone
lower on the scale even more miserable.
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- "People who will not turn a shovel full of dirt
on the project (Muscle Shoals Dam) nor contribute a pound of material,
will collect more money from the United States that will the People who
supply all the material and do all the work."
- ~ Thomas Alva Edison
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- If Bill Gates or a movie star walked into a McDonald's
restaurant, he does not need to pay like anyone else. This is a privilege
of rank.
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- Money As Motivator
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- "Money motivates people to do what they otherwise
wouldn't want to do."
- ~ Philip Slater
- In any society there are dirty jobs that have to be done,
like unclogging toilets. In theory, money rewards those people willing
to tackle the most dangerous or odious jobs. Strangely though, the people
with the cushiest jobs, clipping bond coupons, for example, earn the most
money.
- "If unpaid household labour performed by both men
and women in the United States were given minimum remuneration, it would
equal the entire amount paid out in wages and salaries by all the corporations
in the United States. So much for money as the great motivator."
- ~ Philip Slater
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- Money As Favour-Tracking Mechanism
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- What is money for? In theory, it ensures the people who
do the most work get the lion's share of the community product. It's job
is to encourage people to work harder to produce what others want produced.
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- You could look on money as a formal way of keeping track
of who owes whom a favour. The favours are transferable. We neurotically
keep track of favours as small as a penny.
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- Unfortunately, there are thousands of ways to cheat and
fool the money system into thinking it owes you a favour even when you
have not done anything for anyone else, e.g. speculating in currency, counterfeiting,
selling shoddy goods, monopolistic price gouging, lending money at usurious
rates
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- Further there are many favours you do for others that
the monetary system ignores, such as a providing a website of useful information,
volunteering or donating your time to charities.
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- Money as Ritual
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- Imagine watching a movie where, with special effects,
money were made invisible. You would see people going into stores and collecting
goods. The clerk and customer would pat each other's hands.
- In the bank, the most impressive building in the city,
there would be people muttering to themselves like nuns counting rosaries
as they toted up the invisible piles of bills. You would see some stock
brokers sitting at computers all day apparently staring at a blank screen,
but typing furiously.
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- People who play with money for a living produce nothing.
They are a bit like priests of yore, who handled the sacraments.
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- At the theatre, people come to petition a woman behind
a booth to see if they will be allowed into the theatre. If you she okays
them, she gives them a ticket. She okays nearly everyone but the young
and the scruffy.
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- Money As Parlour Trick
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- Money is a sort of magician's trick to distract people
from noticing their pockets are being picked. It is easiest to understand
on a global level. The United States has about 4.7% of the world's population
and consumes about 30% of the world's natural resources. Money is the illusion
that makes people accept this inequality as natural.
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- Allegory Of the Five Gluttons
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- This global inequity is roughly analogous to a banquet
with 100 guests. All the guests labour and bring food. However, five guests
run about scarfing down the food off 30 other guest's plates leaving them
with almost none. These five actually laboured less than the rest. The
five gluttonous guests explain their behaviour by saying, "We deserve
the generous extra share of the pie because we are richer. Those 30 other
guests had no money so they deserved nothing." Note the three don't
dispute that all contributed labour and food to the banquet. They hypnotize
their marks by claiming privilege based on wealth. What is so strange,
is nearly everyone buys this con, both rich and poor.
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- Using economic power, the wealthy nations force the poor
ones to labour for them at slave wages, and the slaves are supposed to
feel grateful for the work. The poor nations were much better off in pre-colonial
days when they consumed the fruits of their own labours.
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- Republicans tax the poor and give tax breaks and loopholes
to the wealthy. The poor then feel ashamed of not having money. They believe
they don't deserve any of the resource pie. The poor see the lack of money
not as evidence of a rip-off, but of being undeserving.
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- Money Vs Wealth
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- "Today's official monetary system has almost nothing
to do with real wealth. Just to give you an idea, 1995 statistics indicate
that the volume of currency exchanged on the global level is $1.3 trillion
US per day. This is thirty times more than the daily gross domestic product
(GDP) of all the developed countries of the world put together. Of all
that volume, only 2 to 3 percent has to do with real trade or investment;
the remainder takes place in the speculative global cyber-casino; currency
trading and speculation, for example. This means the real economy has become
relegated to mere frosting on the speculative cake, an exact reversal of
two decades ago."
- ~ Bernard Lietaer The Future of Money
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- recommend bookÞThe Future of Money: Creating New
Wealth, Work and a Wiser World
- 0-7126-9991-0
- Bernard Lietaer
- Bernard Lietaer is a Belgian currency expert who helped
design the Euro. He explains how money has become decoupled from real wealth.
This accessible book is easier to find in British and European bookstores.
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- Real wealth increases when somebody labours and produces
something, and decreases when that product decays or is destroyed. Money
is almost fully decoupled from physical wealth.
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- Oddly money follows a quite different birth and death
plan. Governments can print it (and spend it) or burn it any time they
choose. Printing it has much the same effect as counterfeiting, decreasing
the value of existing money causing inflation. Only a tiny fraction of
the money in circulation is in the form of bills. Most of it the banks
manufacture by a sort of slight of hand. When you deposit $100, they can
lend it out. The people who borrow the money keep that same money in the
bank. Therefore that same money can be lent out over and over again. Each
time the banks collect interest. This is how the banks can make fabulous
sums of money even when the difference between interest paid and charged
is tiny. On average, every dollar you deposit is relent out 12 times. Even
if the borrower spends the money, chances are the money ends back up in
some bank in another account, where it can be lent out yet again. The whole
thing depends on not everyone withdrawing their money at once - a bank
run, since they have nowhere near enough reserves in the vaults to cover
all the deposits.
- Then there is the stock market which is chimera of wealth
and money. Speculators bid up the price of a stock, then sell it in exchange
for cash from some other speculator. Usually the price collapses, leaving
the second speculator holding the bag, the victim of a semi-legal confidence
game. However, sometimes the company behind the stock actually starts paying
dividends, and the price stays high, reflecting the true wealth of the
corporation.
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- Summary
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- "Only when the last tree is cut; only when the last
river is polluted; only when the last fish is caught; only then will they
realise that you cannot eat money."
- ~ Cree Indian Proverb
- We laugh at the caste system in India even when we have
one of our own which has even finer gradations from most lavish to deliberate
degradation. We pretend it is not a caste system. I see it as just primate
pecking order status on a grand scale. We forget it is just another social
game. We tend to treat money as if it had independent power from the society
that plays it.
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- http://mindprod.com/money/capitalism.html
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