Money

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How do you view money, do you find it important? Comments, discussion?

I may be at odd with some the era of consumption that we live in, but i do not see how having so much money can make you happy (it generally doesn't). Yet it seems that so much people have huge amounts of money by doing almost nothing while some people have to get 2 jobs if not more to earn a decent living... (bare minimum : electricity, hot water for showers, cooking and laundry, etc) What does everyone think?

Money? It exists. It is useful. It is hard to imagine a large-scale society, with individuals having diverse interests, where some form of money does not exist to account for these different interests.

Money does not necessarily make you happier, at certain levels you are happier than others, but a major issue with money is the issue of a hedonic treadmill.

I do not see how your first sentence and your second sentence really fit,(2nd paragraph), one actually seems to contradict the other.

Money makes my tummy ache.

haha you guys have not lived in a third world country. people who work full time in other countries live worse than homeless men in USA.

I don't have any need for money itself, but it is useful in obtaining other things I want (such as food).


I don't think this division of wealth you're railing against bears all that much relation to money per se. I think the extent to which there is a serious class divide in modern society is somewhat exaggerated, and I get bored of class-warfare rhetoric.

the new spirit of the age - gain wealth forgetting all but self. it is unnatural and we should rebel against it.

Selfishness is neither new nor unnatural. You could argue that it is somehow undesirable, but you'd run into some issues.

the new spirit of the age is new because it appeared in the 1800's and it is about the economy and the distribution of wealth and jobs as far as i know (but i know next to nothing on this subject)

Because ancient Rome did not have division of wealth? Because ancient Babylonians weren't greedy?

People always point to some nonexistent past. No, humans are, and always have been, selfish bastards.

yup. started long ago. people tend to see humans as, somehow, divine. even non-religiously speaking, lay-men refering to our ancestors, imagining some STEP that was taken
"now.. i caveman... me stupid! eat rocks... " *steps* "and now i am noble! well-spoken, and i drink wine!"

every deep seeded trait we have, we have since before we were human.
on other words, we're doomed.
money will never go away, cus in some form or other, we've probably craved it for as long as we've know to give one object, for another in return.

Actually, i have a class about ancient civilizations (prime states, not like Greece and the like) And i've found some interesting stuff. You see, in most of these kind of civilizations, there is an agricultural surplus, which is then abbrogated (sp?) by the state in order to save it for hard times and for trading, that surplus is then given back to the population in the form of feasts or goods (if you think about Egyptians, the funeral treasures were not plundered recently, most of them were stolen not long after the place had been entombed, mostly because of hard times). The state is comprised of elites, both political and ideological (later became ecnomical). So hrm, just some food for thought here.

Also, we were discussing a recently found civilization called Harappa, near the Indus valley, suprisingly, they were pretty well urbanised (for being contemporary with Sumer and Egypt), they had cities with a main street that ranged from west to east and north to south. A very interesting fact is that there was no palace, apparently no ruling elite class was found, all the houses were made more or less the same, and there was no decoration anywhere. People think they could've been ruled by a guild of merchants, or a network of merchants between the cities. There were baths and even a sewer system (a bit crude, but it was still covered by tiles and there was a way out for used waters) and most houses had a private well. Anyways, maybe i'm just rambling on about the past here -.- ...

Money is a necessary medium of exchange. The number of goods and services in an advanced culture is so large that item for item barter is totally impractical. Given n things trading for m things the number of barters is n*m/2. When n and m are very large, general barter become infeasible. Hence a universal trade item is required. This is money. It could be metal. It could be another comodity. It could be something difficult to make (like wampum) or it could be fiat money which is a conventional trade medium having no intrinsic value and virtually no labor value.

ruveyn.

One of the major problems with money is that it represents value that is not intrinsic. People tend to accept that money is a value that remains fairly constant so that commerce can take place on a rational level and a particular good's money value represents the cost of production and input of labor and material. But money value tends to reflect merely the desirability of a good and that fluctuates wildly so money becomes an undependable standard and does all sorts of strange things to society, not all good.

Hmmm Sand, i like your answer so far.

Wrong. It is the price of a good that is commensurate with its desirability or usefulness. Money is just a medium of exchange and is simple the yardstick of price. A ruler is not length. It is the means of measuring length. You are confusing length with unit of measurement, so to speak.

Price is determined by the supply and demand for a good or service. Money is just the measure of the balance struck.

Where money has a problem is that its quantity can be varied with no regard to its cost of production. That is why a fiat money supply can be expanded by government with no regard to the amount of goods and services being produced. That is how we have price inflation. Too much money chasing the available goods and services. So the law of supply and demand works for money as it does for any other good or service than is tradable.

The cure for that is using a commodity whose quantity cannot be expanded without a substantial labor cost. Gold, sliver or other durable and scarce substance will fulfill that role. When we had the gold standard there was little or no inflation. Inflation was a problem only when silver was over valued.

I have proposed a two tier commodity basis for money (as opposed to fiat money). Gold and Oil. The question is what shall we call the unit of currency based on these commodities? For gold I propose the unit of currency be called The Trojan, since gold is weight by the troy weight standard (troy ounces). For Oil I propose that the unit of currency be called The Shiek since most oil is produce in Arabia and the Sheikdoms. Then as we look at our wallets stuffed with Trojans and Sheiks we know exactly what the bankers and the Arabs are doing to us.

ruveyn

I see. Then the price of a meal or rent or any other expense was exactly the same when the US went off the gold standard in 1971 as it was in say, 1850, or 1920, or 1935. Where ever did I get any other notion?