What is the value of money?

Strange question will you say because you need money to live in our society. To better understand why you should think about it, let's imagine a shipwreck victim, with 200 million $ and 10 kilogrames of gold but nothing else, reaching an island where there is nobody and nothing to eat or drink. At the beginning he might think "Wow am I rich!!" But after a few hours trying to find something to eat or drink he would start thinking in a different way. Anyway it would not be long before he would realize that money can not be eaten nor drunk. He would die fairly quickly. How is this possible if money is the real wealth ?

Now imagine an other shipwreck victim reaching the same type of island, not with money, but with tools, a device to desalinate seawater, all you need to fish, a solar cooker, even seeds for growing vegetables... He would well survive a very long time without money!

Thus, what is money? Just a way to buy things ! But if there is nothing to buy? Or if the guy who produces the real thing does not want your piece of paper? Money is only a promise to be able to get something in return. If there is no product or if producers don't believe in your money, it is worth nothing anymore.

If you want to try something less dangerous, just go to some little country, come back with some paper money from that country and try to change those notes in your bank in your own country. Most probably the banker will not accept it.

Useful products an services are the real wealth. Money is only a way created by our society to access those products and services. As money is made of paper notes, numbers written in a computer,  how are those notes or numbers created and by whom?

Since creating money is the same as creating an access right to products and services, understanding who controls this process may be most interesting!
When you try to find an answer to this question you will soon discover that a privileged few enjoy this right thanks to their direct or indirect control of the central banks while a few more people also enjoy this scheme because they get money from those who are creating it since they are working to keep the system going on. But you will also find that money is a very subtle way to force people to work for those creating it. In fact, in an economy where you need money to live, people who don't have the power to create money have to exchange their work for money. Thus money is a way to exercice power, the power to make people work for you. In a society based upon money, the real power is in the hands of those who control the central banks, not necessarily the politicians.

What is the effect of increasing the amount of money without increasing the amount of goods or useful services in the real world ? It increases automatically the amount of goods that people who get this money can access (people in the financial World) but at the same time reduces the amount of goods that can be used by people in the other part of the economy, (the real economy). The consequence of this is the winding down of the industry and a spiral of deindustrialization.

All this is obvious will you tell me? Then why do most western citizens,  politicians included, try to get more and more money instead of developing the real wealth which is the industry, technology, agriculture, education, health services ? Worse, why do they follow a path which leads inevitably to less production, cut down education which is the basis for technology and industry while at the same time increasing the power of the financial world, of speculation ?

Western governments' policies are meaningless if you consider the development of a country as the aim of the policy. It is just the result of people in the financial world having taken over western nations and thinking only about their short term personal interests. But this is a self-destruction option, a "financial cancer". To try to understand today's society through capitalism or communism, left or right, is of no use, better study psychoanalysis or, even better, socio-psychoanalysis and the impact of people's behaviour on the society!

CIESINT   Published on 2015-12-13   Read by 10506

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