Like Money

Some time ago I picked up and read the Lapham's Quarterly about money. It is a collection of writings about money from different places and times and sources. Everything from scholarly articles to excerpts from plays. It caught my attention because money has always been one of those things I just took for granted - not really thought about (just the getting of it).

There were tow articles in the book that stood out in my mind. One extolled the virtues of money as the greatest of all things. Money, it said, was pure good because it represented work done and condensed. Portable work that could be exchanged for anything and therefore it was anything, endless possibility. Money was more efficient than barter and it was more efficient because it enabled the worker to focus on what they were good at and enjoyed and this too would be more efficient.

The second article expressed the view that money was a bad thing. Money is useless until you convert it into something useful and you could only do that if you could find someone willing to trade something useful for something useless. This leads to imbalances and waste. I think this one might have been written by a communist and it wasn't very convincing.

Anyway I've just started reading a new book called The Moneyless Man and in this book the author is going to recount his year of living with out money - the freeconomy he calls it. In the beginning he postulates on the imaginary money being spent in the world today and concludes for two new reasons why money is evil.

First he says money has separated the consumer from the resources being consumed. The idea is that if you made your own clothes you'd be a lot less quick to throw it out for a minor stain or rip or change of fashion. This would apply to everything - americans wouldn't throw out 40% of their food like they do today if each person produced their own food because you'd appreciate the work that went into it. In a way this possibly refers to the imbalances the communists were talking about.

The second evil of money is that it can be stored so easily. This too, he says, leads to over consumption. His line of reasoning seems to be that cutting down and selling off the whole forest converts it into the security of a full bank account. Without money the security would be in having a forest and using parts of it as it becomes needed. This is where the imaginary money becomes such a problem - because on a global scale how much longer is it before there is more money (spent credit) than resources to buy with it? If a loaf of bread costs $10 and you show up to the store with your $20 bill but the store doesn't have even one loaf to sell you...

So I'll let you know how it turns out.