A short reflection about money

I have peers my age from whom I would hear statements such as “I want to become a billionaire in the future”, or “One day, I will get myself onto the Forbes list as one of the richest people in the world”, or “Ultimately, money is everything.” Such statements may come from peers I have in law school, and even from Christians. I have been thinking about money, and have been reflecting on how this pervasive concept that humans have invented and put into practice in its commercial dealings should be put in perspective.

There is this video that I chanced upon presenting the illuminati conspiracy theory of how the Rothschild rule USA. The video was giving an account of how money and banks came into being. The primitive method for transaction was barter trading whereby physical goods were exchanged as the sole means for commercial transaction. But this was inconvenient, and soon people found substitutes like gold that were easily carried and had value in themselves due to their rarity and difficulty of production and replication, such that they could be traded for other goods. Subsequently, the banking system developed, people placed their gold in banks for investment and security purposes in return for a piece of paper guaranteeing these deposits and promising return of gold on presentation of these ‘I Owe You’ papers. The character in the video says that these “I Owe You” papers were the first invention of paper money, which later became transactable in themselves in place of the physical gold. To digress a little, the character in the video claims that bankers unscrupulously started printing more of these papers and handing them out as loans for interest when there were no equivalent value of golds stashed in the banks. When those who had deposited their golds found out that the value of their paper money were being eroded by inflation and made a run for the bank to repossess their gold, they found out that the bankers had absconded with their gold. And now, modern day currencies are no longer backed by gold but are fiat currency that obtains its value based on recognition by government as legal tender, giving those who control the production of money (which is supposedly the Federal Reserve that is allegedly owned by the Rothschild) a subtle way to repossess wealth from the common people into their own hands through the printing of paper money and the control of interest-based central banking system.

But my main point for this article is not to examine the conspiracy theory, which I have indeed some questions about, but to ask, how should we view money, and put it in its place? I hope that I can find a way to state my opinions in a manner that retains a sense of realism about the importance of money, but find certain insights that would place money and its acquisition in a perspective that places it for what it is.

For one, I believe that too many people place their sense of self-worth upon the quantity of money they possess. Take for example, the statement “I want to be so rich that I appear on the Forbes magazine”. It is as if having money simply for its value as a medium for commodity transaction and acquisition is not enough, but to the degree that one is recognized in society that one is in possession of such wealth. I have read the writings of a girl on her blog about how she believes in Darwinian theory of evolution, and she exhorts that it is only understandable that girls should go for guys who are rich because wealth is an indicator of the guy’s good genes (such as intelligence) that is responsible for his acquiring of such wealth. I can’t help but say as a guy that I feel a certain uneasy cringe to know that some girls may indeed think like this.

But my comment is this. A man can be both rich or poor in his lifetime, owing to circumstances such as luck or misfortune. Moreover, there is more than just intelligence that is at hand for the wealth of an individual. We should not forget things like ethics, and there are people in the world who stoop to no minimum limits on their standards of integrity to obtain money, such as trafficking drugs, or embezzling funds. Why, I encountered this Singapore case from my law studies where a lawyer absconded with $10 million from his client’s trust fund that was meant for the conveyancing of his client’s property purchase and was never found again up till today. He left his family, which includes his wife and daughter behind. I don’t suppose that should a girl who sports the mentality that I just mentioned above meets a nefarious guy like this, she would fall heads over heels with the criminal simply because he splurges on her with the tainted money he had obtained, and I would think it quite sad if all girls were to see guys like this.

Moreover, I find the publication of a magazine that details the accumulation of personal wealth by the various richest individuals in the world somewhat dubitable. Firstly, what is there to verify that these individuals have indeed such wealth, or if the figures are concoted for some individuals who had bribed the magazine publication to give them a place on the rolls for bragging rights. Secondly, there are probably individuals in the world who are rich enough to qualify on the Forbes list, individuals who might indeed be even richer than Bill Gates, but who would prefer to be discreet about their wealth acquisition, perhaps to avoid inquiry into the nefarious means by which they have acquired such wealth, to avoid tax, or on a more nobler purpose, to avoid jealousy.

That said, I wish to also talk about my opinions about the importance of which money entails. I don’t think I can identify with the other extreme view which is completely denunciatory of money or its possession. I think a sensible understanding of money should highlight the function of money foremost, which is a portable means of exchange by which to conduct commercial dealings and transaction. An apposite quote by my favourite philosopher, Bertrand Russell, comes to mind, though I am unable to remember the exact quote and where it came from. He says that a man who loves money more than anything else falls in love with an abstraction, and it is a curious quality of man to be able to derive his happiness from abstractions.

One point of my reflection of money is that it is a means of resource distribution. A society is comprised of many individuals working in different capacities that cater to the respective needs and wants of one another. We need money to spend it for the acquisition of goods, and such expenditure is the means by which another human being who produced the goods that was bought acquires his money for the purchase of his own goods that was similarly produced by another individual.  And society is this mass web of human beings interconnected to each other in a certain manner of goods and services provision, with money being the intermediary means of transaction. A man acquires money insofar as he is able to provide a certain service or good in exchange for the money, which can be used for the commercial dealing with other third party individuals because ultimately, all these individuals are connected to one another in the mass web of commercial dealings that exists. By way of analogy, the barber who cuts the hair of a teacher might be someone who buys his food from a hawker who sends his child to be taught at school by the teacher. Money allows for this transactional quality whereby services provided by one individual to another need not be directly exchanged for a good in kind, but is paid for by way of providing services or goods to another societal individual whom the first societal individual is dependant upon for his or her service.

What then is to be thought of an economic system whereby one individual has overexceedingly so much more money than the rest, such that his accumulated wealth is able of covering his needs and reasonable wants a few times over with spare, while his fellow man wrangles in poverty? Isn’t this more of an indictment of a flawed economic or political system whereby resources are not going to those who need them most? Wouldn’t it be better if some of the wealth of the rich man goes to the poor man so that the poor man is able to afford some of the produces in society, rather than the rich man buying some of the goods the same times over and wasting perfectly good and usable goods? And shouldn’t it be conscience-pricking that there are rich individuals in society who parade upon their wealth as a show off their status symbol, when there are people who go hungry and live off a meager wage in society?

There are many reasons why someone becomes poor. I don’t believe that all of them are due to cases of laziness or financial mismanagement. Illnesses or misfortune may be one of them. I have read an article that makes the claims that a lot of homeless people suffer from mental illness that makes it difficult for them to work. Personally, I fear ever becoming ill to such an extent that I am incapable of working, and I have seen cases of such before when I help out at the meet-the-people session with the MP of my constituency. There are people in Singapore who rely on financial and welfare handouts in order to get by in life because the sole breadwinner in their family had been incapacitated with terrible illnesses. And I won’t deny that such circumstances in life may happen to me. Why, I have never felt such prospects more acutely than coming down with the terrible chronic tension headaches that has put me on medical leave of absence for up to a year and a half now. And to think that I was so happy and grateful when I first got into law school thinking that it is my ticket to the upper socioeconomic class in society It is therefore that I hope that those in relatively good fortune, upon reflecting their own susceptibility to misfortune, may not stinge or gripe should they be taxed a little more should such taxes be necessary for assisting individuals in really dire financial circumstances.

That said, I also acknowledge the negative prospects that a society that redistributes wealth might bring. The common label used to describe a society that wantonly distributes wealth is ‘welfarism’, and the alleged associated evils commonly cited are people becoming lazy or unproductive. But I think that such reasons might be overly-used by those in possession of wealth to not help those who in circumstances of genuine need. An economic system that puts the unfortunate in such a state of economic duress to the extent that they have to prostitute themselves or be exploited in order to obtain money for their basic needs is one that I would call inhumane and cruel, and I believe that this might indeed be the case for some countries. I hope not Singapore.