What do you think of money?

I have a dislike/hate of money. It's a useful tool to use with how I see fit. At the same time, I despise it because sometimes it seems like money runs my life. I hate it at times because it feels like the root of all evil with how devisive it makes the world.

Money----NES

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp14xXwnwJA

:hippie: :headbang:

In fact, the more the better. :)

Otherwise, it's what we use to play the proverbial boardgame.

Needs more color.

Without money, we would have to use barter and that is a really, really clumbersome method.

So many times I've heard that winning the Lotto/Powerball is a curse. Try me. Curse me with a hundred million bucks, please!!!

I promise I will do good works.....LOts

It can. Otherwise, it is a tool that beats carrying around 6 pelts.

...Money cannot buy happiness, but it can make times of trouble\stress more bearable.

wish I can have zillions of dollars at my disposal.

give me that do goody-good bullshit :D

- when they played here i could hear them all the way from my house / didn't have to spend any money on that either heh...

Momentary Lapse of Reason Tour. Greatest show I've ever seen....

sitting here at home wasn't *quite* the same / heh... :)

- edited: argh this skippy sticky old keyboard i even have to edit my edits...

/idiocracy

And I've never, ever had any. Right now I don't have two nickels to rub together. I wish I could figure money out!

Hate it, but how to survive otherwise?

I have a blueprint for a replicator but it's hard getting the parts. :)

Maintained at such a scale, and at such an extent, that to escape it would require the use of it.

But for the rest of us theres never enough.

I love money, it just doesn't seem to love me back.

But you can keep 'em for the birds and bees.
Now gimme money (that's what I want)

if you don't die today.

I'm not sure whether you are discussing currency, wealth, or capital. Money, or currency, is merely a medium of exchange for labor, goods, and services. It also allows one to "collect" wealth to "time shift" its use.

If you want to really see something "run your life" try subsistence living. i.e. make/grow your own food, furniture, shelter, clothes, etc. I used to teach basic "camping" skills to boy scouts. One of the things I always had to teach them was that when back packing (or really most forms of camping) one had to start to "make camp" about 3 - 5 hours prior to dark in order to be done and ready for sleep. "Doing it all" takes alot of time and energy. "Money" allows us to share the burdens of living, and allows us to focus our energies on those things at which we excel. When the industrial revolution came around, people flooded the factory towns from the farms because in many ways it was an "easier" life than subsistence farming.

The only reason money seems to "run your life" is because you've tacitly agreed to participate in a system in which we all do some and "share" the results through the exchange of money. You can "do it all" yourself and avoid the vast majority of that if you want. I don't suggest it though. What you can do, and what you would do more often if you were subsistence living, is to think harder about the expenditure of money. "Do you really need that" can be translated as "how many hours of labor will this require?". You only have so many hours per day/month/year. It doesn't take long to realize that somethings might not be worth the number of hours required to "earn" them. This can be especially true of anything that requires a "monthly payment".

swatted with palm leaves by half naked hula girls. . .

cause money can't buy me love. Can't buy me love... oh. Everybody tells me so.
(But I guess it can rent it for awhile) :evilgrin:

love--like beer.

:beer:

People who never have enough of it have made it their master.

Skipping meals due to poverty is no damn fun. However, focusing on the money and not the food is a big mistake.

Money is just a tool. Stop personalizing it.

for various reasons (usually because they mistake money and the things it can buy for actual wealth.) I consider real wealth to be things than can sustain and enrich life and culture: Good tools, arable land, health care, books...

Lots of people think of Bling or toys as wealth, but I believe that's a mistaken view.

don't want much / still stuck in system sorta but to a lesser extent than average / 51 yrs. old never have had a credit card / only buy new clothes about once a decade or so / the car cost ten bucks / i've driven it about 4 miles so far this year...

I like it, I use it, I have a little. I keep it in a jar on top of my refrigerator. I'd like to put more in that jar.

sP

I worked for many years in exchange for money. I didn't loan that time to my employer, I sold it.

What I got in exchange was money. It makes sense to save it.

I've thought about starting an organization where every time you volunteered to help someone you would get credits for the hours you spent helping. Anything to help someone would qualify. It would be like a bank where you were given credit for the good deeds you did during your life.

It wouldn't be mandatory to give through such an organization, but if you contributed your time to help someone else in the organization then you could always rely on that organization to have members who can help you when you needed it most. Oftentimes I see people who need help, but they have no one to help them. If a 'Giving Organization' existed they could call and get help whenever they really needed it. Since the beginning of mankind, people have banded together to survive. This system would take us back to the same tribal methods used long ago, before the introduction of currency. In a lot of ways capitalism has stripped away a lot of the things that were of real value to societies.

How many times have you helped someone move? Or build or make something for someone? Or help someone when they were sick? Most of us do countless things for others during our lives. We do it without question. And we do it without regard for making money or a profit. Any time a person helps another it is a nobel cause. To get paid for it would cheapen and demean what you have done. Doing things for others from your heart is pure, and to taint it with money takes some of that purity away.

I've thought about an organization like this for years, but I know for it to work it would have to be a country-wide effort, or even a world-wide one. Since it's built upon giving and receiving, it would be similar to a barter system, but with no money being exchanged. Instead you would accumulate credits that could later be used when you needed help.

Capitalism is a pretty crummy system. It boils everything down to money. But money has no real value. People do. And the things people do for others have value and worth. To have a system like capitalism where everything and everyone revolves around money seems almost dirty to me. Capitalism rewards greed and selfishness. A system where helping others was your 'reward' seems to be a good way to side-step most of the negative aspects of capitalism. No participants in a system of giving would get rich, but they would get rewarded in ways that enrich their hearts and their spirits.

I know there are charities, churches and other social networks that do good works for others. But while their goals are admirable, their reaches into society are definitely limited. Not one of them have an all-encompassing role where helping others could be maximized.

If I proposed such a system to conservatives I would get savagely attacked. They would call me a communist, socialist and all the other 'ists' in their arsenal of hate-speech. But capitalism is obviously flawed and needs to be amended. Any system based on giving of one's time to help another wouldn't replace capitalism, but it could serve an alternative in many ways. And another benefit of such a system, everyone would be 'employed'.

Anyway, it's just a thought...

Know'm say'n?