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People have loved money ever since it was invented. The philosophers David Hume and Socrates, on the other hand, were not so keen on money because of its drawbacks, which we distill into three, which arise from its static nature:
1. Money builds ego
Money is naturally static and unconnected with other money. Put a coin beside a coin and nothing will happen no matter how long you wait.
But put a living thing, such as a man beside another man, or a plant beside another plant, then something will happen between them over time.
Because of this natural disconnection, the holders of money will naturally be also disconnected to others and instead be more connected to material objects.
Having a lot of money gives the ego power over other egos, giving a feeling of superiority to the monied-ego since humans manifest as physical beings.
This leads to arbitrary actions which encroaches on other egos, creating injustice and eventually, evil.
A dirt-poor evil bum can hurt a few people, but an ultra rich evil man can hurt so many.
We solve this by using the effort theory of value, facilitated by social contracts in order to prevent injustice and the growth of evil. This will prevent democracies from degenerating into tyranny and aristocracies from slipping into oligrachy, in Socrates-speak. The contracts create or even force a connection between people to build fellow-feeling instead of ego and disconnection.
None of the most furious excesses of love and ambition are in any respect to be compared to the extremes of avarice.
2. Money destroys information in every exchange
If you work for 1 hour in exchange for 10 dollars, then your work-information generated in that hour will be overwritten by the 10-dollar-money-information, just as a particle is bumped off by another particle.
You don’t remember most of what you did in every day of the first month of your first job, but you remember your first salary amount very well.
In contrast, a productivity-for-productivity system would retain all the information about that productivity, allowing precision in productivity-allocation.
For example, if you barter potatoes for a haircut, the barber can know that the potatoes and therefore, fertilizer and water was part of his revenue.
This will then make people have concern for other industries and the interconnected nature of the economy.
The lack of money can never injure any state within itself because people and commodities are the real strength of any community.
3. Money only works for the here and now
Prices can only be assigned by the mind relative to the current moment and place. This is why asset prices fluctuate far more than wages or most commodities that circulate regularly.
Money doesn’t work for things that have a not-so-obvious-value (wave-value) such as:
- the unseen labour being done by a rainforest in cleaning the air
- the health benefits of eating a vegetable
- the inventions that will only have impact after long and costly research
Economics has no way to accurately put a price on the future effects of such things, but Supereconomics has, through relational effort-valuation and barter credits.
Deprive a man of all business and serious occupation, he runs restless from one amusement to another. He feels such a great weight and oppression from idleness and forgets the future ruin of his immoderate expences.
The key is not in having a lot of money or having no money, but in having the right amount of money at the right time:
Under the influence either of poverty or of wealth, workers can degenerate. Here, then, is a discovery of new evils of wealth and poverty, against which the guardians will have to watch, or they will creep into the city unobserved. Wealth is the parent of luxury and indolence. Poverty is the parent of meanness and viciousness. Both are parents of discontent.
Every unnecessary accumulation of money is a dead stock which could be employed in enriching the nation by foreign commerce.
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