Series on Materialism IV: Money

Part I: Clutter
Part II: Want
Part III: Debt

This is going to be different from the other three, and easily the longest piece written so far. The other three sort of mesh and link and feed off each other, and it's almost too easy to point the links out between them. Money is different, so I'm going to see if I can arrange my thoughts in a layered way. I'll know if I've done a good job by the end. As I see it, this should be the last in the series, with maybe one more for tying things up neatly and putting a bow on top.

Ok...Money. Where to start? One thing for sure - I won't start with the almighty (sarcasm intended), ubiquitous US Dollar, and the presence, or not (as some might argue), of the all-seeing eye placed above the pyramid, which for some is the mark of the freemasons, and for others the portents of a Dajjalic system, and for some people in a very weird Venn Diagram, a sign of both. For that, I refer you to the web series known as The Arrivals, and leave you to make your own conclusions.

What I will start with is my understanding of what money is. Money, put very simply, is a means of exchange, which facilitates trade and transactions of all kinds. Before the concept of money existed, people would have to trade goods, but with its creation, money could act as a sort of go-between. Then, all you had to do, instead of trading physical goods for each other, was trade them for coins of a set value instead, and all of a sudden, life becomes easier. We can, instead of measuring physical goods of different kinds against each other, put money in the middle, and measure the goods against money. And today, it remains the same, though we have notes as well as coins. So, on the first level, money is an artificially constructed means of exchange, superimposed onto our daily lives, providing a quick way of valuing goods and services, which makes life easier.

Imagine an everyday transaction, with one buyer and seller, and see things through each perspective with this new idea. Then, when you buy something, you are making a decision to part with money for an item. Therefore, whatever the value of the item is, you value the item more than the money you parted with it for. And for selling, the opposite is true. You are willing to part with the item for money because you value the item less than the money you would get for it. Each time there is a choice between the item, and the money, and the buyer chooses one, the seller the other, and both are satisfied (one hopes, anyway).

That it's a measure of exchange, but inherently worthless on its own, forces different consequences and conclusions to what we normally think about money. Money then becomes only as valuable as what you can exchange it for, and some things will not, and never be, available for exchange. Having wealth, or being wealthier means that you now have more to exchange with, and can therefore ostensibly exchange for more - more variety, more quantity, and more quality. With that, I believe, comes a bit of responsibility, with regard to how you spend your money, as now it matters not how much you have, but what you spend it on.

But what would you exchange it for? When considering large spends, and now even for a few small spends, I keep on thinking whether I would rather have the item desired, or have the money. Sometimes the decision is obvious, other times less so (Materialism really does pull, it seems). I think the best way to deal with such is to consider the cost not in money itself, but in how many hours you worked to get the money for an item - which makes things much more real. The weird thing is, you always feel that you could have spent the money in a better way. And for all the ways in which it is possible to spend your money - look around....every shop wants you to spend it with them - only two stand out to me as being the best uses of money. One is the paying of debts that are owed, and the second is in making a difference to someone else's life, through charities and other means. Case in point- £1, or £10, or to some, even £100 may not be worth a lot here, but right now, in Pakistan, after those floods, it may well save a life, or feed a person for a few days, or provide much needed clothing/shelter/etc.

I did say in a preceding paragraph that money was inherently worthless, and I hope to have raised some question marks by saying that. Allow me to explain. To start with, money was actually gold and silver and bronze coins, and these had intrinsic value of their own, which allowed them being used as money. We have now stopped using gold and silver for coinage, and replaced them with metals of lesser value. And now we use banknotes, which are essentially printed pieces of cotton. These are worthless - its only societal acceptance and government backing that makes one piece of printed cotton worth more than another. That this can be printed on demand lessens its value still. The only real currency is gold, and possibly silver, and that gold is becoming more and more expensive shows that our own currencies are becoming more and more worthless. This is happening slowly - we have targets for inflation to make it more manageable, but it's happening nonetheless, and the illusion of worth is kept going on that little bit longer.

-----------------

Wow. Honestly, I did not envisage myself writing all this. In a way, I've known all this info for years, but in bits and pieces, and its only now that I've strung all the bits in a way that makes sense. To me, at least. If this makes no sense, I totally apologise. Ignore this post, and take what is good from the preceding three. I'm definitely going to need to write one more piece to tie things up.

Part V: Addendum