Money and work

We live in a world fashioned by a bunch of indebted Italian businessmen and the bankrupt princes and kings that claimed to rule them. Long ago money was money. Then in the 15th century money became an IOU. It has been that way ever since. When you look at a dollar you are looking at an IOU from the government. All it is is a piece of paper. In places like Florence so many IOU's were issued by princes and merchants that people took to collecting them and trading them. "I do not have a gold ducet but I have an IOU from Lorenzo D'Medici, and he is pretty rich so perhaps Don Carlo will accept Medici's IOU to me as payment?" And modern money was born.

Money is perhaps the grandest illusion in human history. The paper dollar is easy enough, if you think about it, to show its absurdity. Gold coins are another matter. If you saw a 12" high pile of 1 dollar bills and an equally high pile of gold coins you would instinctivley go for the gold. People talk about going back to the "gold standard" But what is gold? It is a shiny rock. It is has no more absolute value than dirt. It is a great electical conductor. When Jesus was asked what to do with the Roman coin he said to give to Caesar what is his and Gods what is gods. Lots of people have thought that meant you need to serve the state with obidience and pay your taxes. This is nonsense. Jesus was saying give the shiny rock to Caesar and your imortal soul to God.

We slave over the shiny rocks and paper IOUs. We have spent 500 years building a worldwide slave system. We have put ourselves in bondage willingly. If you can see the absurdity of not being able to eat or have a home because you lack shiny rocks or pieces of paper, then you are half way there. This is insanity spread so vast that it seems normal. Like the insane person who see themselves as normal, we suffer the illusions everyday. Wars are fought because of rocks and paper. And good people suffer for no other reason than they lack rocks and paper.

Marx was right in his assesment of things. However his solution was the hight of vainglory and shear stupidity since his solution did not cling to the fundemental reality of human nature. He, idiotically, felt that human nature could be molded by philosophy and politics. Sorry Karl, millions of years of kill or be killed trumps your utopian clap trap.

There has to be a way for us all to live and not be ground to death by the lack of rocks and paper. It is nuts. But like the drug addict or the insane, we cannot even fathom what life would be like without the rocks and paper. I don't know how things would work. Let me know if you do.