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The Limits of money
Jan 15, 2007

I believe we have to question everything that is so deeply carved in our minds and behaviours as money. In todays world I often ask myself the question:’What benefit does money have?’, and I can't come up with a good answer. Did we reach the limit of our money based economy and should we find something else, like a value based economy?

Of course I’m going to the edge, but look at it as a brainstorm where you investigate an idea, without incarcerating, or prejudgement. Let go of the accepted opinion and explore the possibilities of the creativeness that comes up when you look at the world as if you were a Martian.
 
How do you know you reached a limit?
You can’t go on. There is no progress anymore. It doesn’t work anymore, whatever you try.
 
Money was originally an instrument to simplify trade. It was easier to trade coins with an on consensus based value, then to trade your goods for other goods. If the baker needed fish, he needed to look for a fisherman who needed bread.
Money was a great instrument to simplify trade.
 
Today money is not conceived as an instrument anymore, but as a goal on itself. Money is directly associated with freedom, happiness and power. It has become an illusional digital number with no direct relationship to value, but it is accepted by everyone as something that holds great power. Power everyone wants to posses and were they are willing to do about anything for.
 
The limits of money are reached because it doesn’t contribute value anymore, but it even restrains the creation of value, or destroys it all.
 
There are all kinds of patents that restrain valuable knowledge to be spreaded across the world to benefit humanity and nature. Money determines what is done in the world, while common sense is sidetracked.

The human genome is already patented for 20%. How long does it take before a doctor tells you:’We cannot research this disease, because the fee we have to pay for use of the gene to research this disease is owned by … and is too expensive.’
 
What stopped us to invent sustainable and durable cars? Why do the products we buy break after a period of time? Can’t they make something durable and sustainable that will last for a lifetime and would reduce the mountain of waste on our lands directly, or is it profitable not to do so?
 
Our market economy isn't based on value, or efficiency, but is focussed on profit, squandering and power.
Everybody has to keep buying in order for the profits to stay growing. We need to keep producing and there have to be found ways to make people buy stuff they do not need and that hold no value at all. The production costs always need to be lowered in order to let the profit even grow further. The working crowd always gets poorer, while the calculating crowd gets richer, leading ultimately to a world full of slaves and a small bunch of lazy calculating rulers.

H.G. Wells was prophetic in his Timemachine where he portrayed the future world populated with two races: the Eloy and the Morlocks. The upperworld beings and the underworld beings.

Common sense has to be eradicated because money is freedom, money is happiness, money is power. Irrationality and childish egocentricity are the breeding grounds for profit.
 
What happens in an economic crash?
Is value destroyed, or is value newly divided?
The only things that destroy value are wearing out, or destruction. Destruction can happen through natural causes, like fire, accidents, disasters, etc…,and calculated destruction like wars and other kinds of deliberate destruction.
 
An economic crisis often has material and immaterial destruction  as result, but not as origin. An economic crisis is not a decrease of value.
 
The biggest values we know of are immaterial values. Our accumulated knowledge we grew and developed over centuries, is of a bigger value then the material value. The material value is however a basic necessity for our existence. The knowledge gives us the possibility to use the material more efficiently and increase the value of the material. You take some ground resources and you build a car.
 
Money has become the biggest problem for progress, because the promise of freedom, happiness and power, withholds us to develop further and create more value.
The sharing of knowledge can be punished by legal action, relief work gets curtailed in an ever growing bureaucracy where every syringe has its price and needs to be documented, while the value of life itself is still more devalued. There is no price on life (except of what is calculated by insurance agencies).
 
Capitalism gives completely wrong stimuli that lead to irrational behaviour, destruction of value (because a renewed building of things is profitable), devaluation of everything with value but not attached to a price, like life, air, nature, faith, religion, humanity, human connection, peace and love.
 
Even if I had a solution for healing our system, started by humans many ages ago, I don’t think I would be taken serious. I do feel we need to recognise the value we see all around us and don’t sell it out to greed and insecurity, but acknowledge it as our basic building blocks with which we construct our lives and give them meaning. In the end the solution will present itself and the Earth will handle it. I just hope we get wise before it comes this far.
 
If something contains more value then material possessions and knowledge, it is wisdom, involvement and love. Let’s invest in that.
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Posted: Monday January 15, 2007, 10:57 am
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Marc Gartmann (142) 		Monday January 15, 2007, 11:44 am
This was an old blog I wrote. I didn't know then what I know now. There are alternatives for our unsustainable moneysytem, and I'm happy I can be a part of this group to show them to you.

Past Member (0) 		Monday January 15, 2007, 1:13 pm
An exellent start and so many true words. Yes, there are other ways to do this thing we call Economy, and the goal for this group is clear. Let's tell as many as possible about this!

Shane Hennessy (18) 		Sunday February 4, 2007, 11:58 am
I watched an old episode of the Simpsons last night and Krusty the Klown had a big audience burning their dollar bills saying, "we worked hard for this money and I'll be damned if some greedy corporations are going to get their hands on it." I just thought the idea of everyone burning their money, all of it, at once, would be the ultimate expression, saying we no longer recognize this paper as having any value. A neat idea, but I won't hold my breath...

Chris L. (8) 		Wednesday February 7, 2007, 7:50 pm
I think this is a start. But I still question the comparison of money to greed. Currency in any form is a ranking system. 1 cow =2 pigs=10 chickens and so fourth. If anything the way we rank the importance of items with money is what is out of wack. There has to be a re-evaluation of the "REAL" value of things. I think to say we get rid of money is equal to saying stop all trade and barter. Because even without cash, I'll be trading a days work for food.

Past Member (0) 		Monday March 19, 2007, 12:56 am
I worked all my life to make corporations richer and for what? Today I've taken my life back, I live on very little and have kissed goodbye to the so-called status quo. I stopped thinking there was something wrong with me, if I didn't assimilate to societie's demands and expectations. Life can be beautiful when you say "no more"
Our society is built on lies and deceit, take the American or Canadian Food Guide as a mild example, what a crock of BS that is. I feel better with less, and it's no longer costing me an arm and a leg to survive. Ok maybe I'll take this up in the message department. I could chew nails and spit rust, I'm so disgusted with things we were taught, especially in schools and the workplace!

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