the desire for money brings us less money

[miriam_e]

I love counterintuitive things -- that have the opposite result expected. I especially enjoy things that at first give the expected result, but then reverse on further use, to give the opposite.

It looks like money turns out to work that way. Our culture, by focussing so heavily upon money, the economy, and wealth, is making us all poorer.

It works this way. Money is an extremely useful tool for trading. Before money was invented the awfully hit-or-miss barter trading system let two people trade, but only if they both had something the other wanted. Money freed up trade so that anybody could trade with anybody else. Of course it always had problems, but on the whole it was a great improvement. However we have collectively forgotten what money really is; that it is simply trading tokens. We have come to treat it as an end in itself. And so science, technology and teaching professions are all suffering now because they can't attract people into their ranks. People are instead becoming accountants and enter other fields where their lives are consumed with the purpose of simply moving money around. Moving money around doesn't actually create wealth. Science, technology, and teaching are the well-springs of wealth, and in our greed we are destroying the very things that make us richer.

Comments

[kremmen.livejournal.com]

I think Douglas Adams had this covered ...
This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

[slave-driver.livejournal.com]

You know what's funny? I seem to notice the exact opposite of what you say about money to be true, at least for me. I've noticed that when I need money the most, I have the hardest time getting it. But when I've got enough money for a while, somehow it always seems like I find new opportunities to make even more. When I'm driving my cab, if I get some good runs early in the day the rest of the day goes so much easier. It seems that when I get the monkey off my back and have a little cushion to rest on I become more relaxed, I get more creative, I take more calculated risks than when I'm completely broke, which usually pays off in the long run.

I suppose you could argue that you did say that at first it seems to work one way, but in the end things work out the other way. That used to be true for me. I used to save money but after a while something would come up and knock me off track and I'd be right back to being broke again. That was until I came up with a new budgeting system for myself that I've had in place for about 3 years now. I now have about ten thousand dollars in the bank, more than I've ever had in my life. I don't seem to have the ups and downs I used to have. I don't have to rob Peter to Pay Paul anymore, my life is more relaxed and I enjoy things more. My hope is to have enough investments in place (thus converting money into real wealth) in the next few years that my money will make enough money for me so that I don't have to work anymore. Then I can get down to playing my saxophone full time, or maybe taking some writing courses and try to write a novel. I just don't have to worry about money anymore and it seems like things keep getting better and better. The difference for me came when I really started keeping track of where every dollar goes. So for me, the more I concentrate on my budgett and the more I know where and how I spend my money, the more my bank account seems to grow.

I'm not saying you're wrong or right about your post. If you're talking about the pursuit of money making us all, as a society, collectively poorer, you might be right about that, I'm going to give it some thought. All I'm saying is that for ME personally, the exact opposite of your post seems to be true.

[slave-driver.livejournal.com]

I posted this: http://slave-driver.livejournal.com/129949.html?mode=reply to my journal, mainly because of this post. I hope you have the time to read it. I would be very interested in reading what you might have to say about it.

[qamar.livejournal.com]

I found your journal via patchworkkid. :)

I was just wondering what periods of history you're referring to where barter makes science, tech and teaching worth more? As far as I can tell (and I'm happy to acknowledge ignorance here), the issue is neither barter nor money. For thousands of years we've valued traders, war-mongerers etc... over abstract thoughts or teachers. Science is a luxury of a society which makes a lot of money/wealth through trade. Teaching is more complicated, but it doesn't seem to make a difference whether we're trading women, weapons or money to be critical of this emphasis.