Sunday 10 November 2013

The tyranny of money

I'm changing tack a bit here, but recent news about bankers and bedroom taxes and food banks has got me thinking.

Money - we don't have to like it but can't live without it. Yet it's no more than a means of exchange. When Pol Pot abolished money in Cambodia men and women bartered: I'll swap you half my bowl of rice for your shoes, that sort of thing. In our prisons, cigarettes are used in much the same way.

So, if money is no more than a means of exchange, how have we reached a point where the value (as opposed to the worth) of anything is measured be something that is, effectively, nothing more than a piece of paper? Just suppose - bear with me - our means of exchange were ears of wheat, or mittens. We could have green mittens, blue mittens, red mittens - I'll swap you three blue mittens, or ten ears of wheat, for that sparkly iPad.

Wheat, mittens - neither intrinsically beautiful in themselves yet both have value; and both are fundamentally useful.

For how have we - a wealthy country (I'm in the UK) reached a state where there are people with insufficient money (which is simply paper) to heat their homes and have enough to eat? They are cold and hungry, for want of enough paper. If mittens were our currency I could unpick an old jumper and knit a pair or two. Wheat - my cooking is truly rubbish but I have a friend who can make bread. Neighbours could pool bread, or mittens - unite and make sure no one went cold or hungry.

But we don't. Instead we have paper money. We count it. We put it in banks. Some people have so much of it that they think it makes them better, or more important, or worth more, than those who have less. The Government measures wealth by it. Yet, for want of paper, our poor and vulnerable are abandoned.

Where did our priorities go so awry?

14 comments:

  1. Oh Jo, what a great post! I often think the same thing except my feeling is that it isn't even about paper anymore. At least that's tangible. It's about numbers. If I've got a big enough number in my account, I can subtract some numbers and give you some. The paper is supposed to represent something - gold, but it doesn't anymore. It just represents numbers. Nuts! I love your idea of trading in mittens. Beautiful! As you say, that is something with real value. Bartering is at least trading in things that can really benefit people, but the problem must have started when one person didn't have something the other wanted, so they wrote a note saying I promise to pay you...

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    1. Thank you, Val - glad I'm not the only one who thinks the whole money-thing is absurd!

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  2. Interesting post! I just recently learned about the bedroom tax in the UK. If you ever want to post more about that one, I'd be intrigued to get your take on it.

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    1. Since you asked, I'll blog about the bedroom tax on Thursday!

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  3. They went awry when the Tories, under Margaret Thatcher promoted the ideology that greed was good and that there was no such thing as society. End.

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    1. Ah greed - when did it stop being one of the deadly sins?

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  4. When you put it like that, Jo, it brings a lot of perspective back into the picture. And to add to Carol's comment above, substitute Ronald Reagan for Margaret Thatcher and you've got the American version.

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    1. And yet we still worship the wretched stuff - crazy!

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  5. I have a few Mesopotamian shell coins, c. 3,000 BC, Jo, one of the earliest forms of money. You have written a very interesting post, and I have found myself wondering about money which is not related to the gold standard, which I understood. Surely if it is just money and numbers and does not represent an actual commodity, it has no worth at all. Astonishing profits seem to be made by a few, at the cost of the desperate poverty of the many, particularly in newly emerging industrial countries.

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  6. We've needed something as a means of exchange ever since we began trading - but it still seems crazy to me that something which often doesn't actually exist (ie numbers on a piece of paper) can be so divisive. It's only that way because there's collective agreement to maintain the status quo.

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  7. It truly does say something when heating your home depends on how much specific paper you have! Very pertinent! We could barter with skills...prefer it to paper, lol

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  8. I love the idea of this blog but, as we all know, if mittens were our currency then you would have had to hand over that old jumper to pay for your electricity bill and so wouldn't be able to unravel it to help out those with fewer mittens than yourself. What is more, a lost mitten would be sent to the Bank of England vaults rather than hung limply on the railing spikes in the local park.

    There is something very sick about the way our Government Treasuries work but I don't know what the answer is.

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  9. I have a feeling that if the currency were mittens there would be a number of huge burly people around who had smashed in the faces of all the old ladies and stolen their mittens. Which does not detract from the essential value of what I understand you to be saying - why can't we be using someting with inherent value? I can't quite untangle my feelings about that except that homes are increasingly being used as a form of money, and this does not seem like a good idea either. The Victorians used to say that the poor are always with us, and I think that is to some extent true, but what is shocking is that our government is not acting in a civilised way about it as befits the 6th richest nation in the world. In most decent societies and in most religions, the wealthy have a moral obligation to consider those less fortunate.

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    1. I wasn't entirely serious on the mittens-front, Jenny. But did want to ask the question how we have come to construct money as something to worship when it is nothing more than a means of exchange.

      And as for our rich having so little thought for the poor - don't get me started!

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