If this is hard for you to believe then this tells me that you, like most people, have no understanding of economics.
Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money. ~Cree Indian Proverb
Have you seen that scene in Zombieland where they’re playing Monopoly with real money? The truth is that in the real world IT’S ALL MONOPOLY MONEY. Sure you have to have it to do well in the game, but that doesn’t change the fact that money isn’t real.
Money is little pieces of paper, and entries in a computer. It is not wealth. Besides the power we give it, money is completely useless. If you were stranded on a deserted island money would be of completely no use to you. Seen from the perspective of the real world, if all the money in the world were to suddenly disappear we could easily print it back up again.
So what is real wealth?
Cars, houses, roads, farms, factories, schools, are all examples of real wealth. These are all real things that give a real benefit to many different people. As long as our economy is focused on producing and maintaining these things then we will continue to be wealthy.
What caused the economic crisis was that our society became focused on creating things of no real value at all. We became focused on making numbers become larger numbers. The banks, the stock brokers, and everyone else had confused the issue of money and wealth.
“We don’t have enough money to …”
Once you understand the true nature of money, you understand the absurdity of the statement by our society that “We don’t have enough money to do XYZ”.
We don’t have enough money to solve world hunger
We don’t have enough money to clean up the environment
We don’t have enough money to provide healthcare for everyone
We don’t have enough money for good schools
Of course there is enough money. Whether our society, our governments and our corporations are set up in the proper way to allocate that money where it really needs to go is a different story. We have the money (and if we don’t have it we can print it) to solve all the major problems of the world. Yet we don’t do it. I believe this is not because of greed or selfishness, but merely because we don’t understand our own capabilities.
The future of society
It could very well be that the future of society itself depends on understanding the distinction between money and wealth. As our water systems dry up and become polluted, as our forests disappear, as our planet warms and our neighbors starve will we continue to try to endlessly grow corporate profits because “we don’t have enough money” to solve our real problems. Or will we wake up?
Money is simply a tool which we use that allows us to create REAL WEALTH. Where we, as a society choose to allocate our money will determine the future of society.
Do we spend it on teachers, or on unemployment and welfare checks?
Do we spend it on things which pollute the planet or on cleaning up the planet?
Do we spend it feeding cows or feeding people?
Do we squander it on lawsuits, commercials, and private jets, or do we spend it on things that really make our lives better?
You decide
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“I’d like to share a revelation that I’ve had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you’re not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You’re a plague and we are the cure.”
– Agent Smith from the movie The Matrix
population growth
Imagine
Imagine being transported to the surface of the moon and going back in time 1,000,000 years. You look over the horizon and see the little blue marble known as earth. Imagine that time for you was sped up and that every moment from 1,000,000 years ago until now passed by in the span of 10 minutes right before your eyes.
You see the continents slowly move. You see mountains spring up, and coastlines fall into the sea. You see volcanoes. You see ice ages. From here, at this speed, these things would appear to you like the birth, death, and metamorphosis of life itself on a planetary scale.
Then with just a few seconds to spare, you see something else, something never before seen on the face of the planet. It starts slowly, with a few small settlements. A few larger structures emerge: pyramids, temples, small cities. You see the world’s first empires spring up in Rome, India, and China. But the world is still vast, and the empires, as big as they are, are still nothing more than freckles on the face of the planet.
As the last seconds tick away something unexpected would happen. This new organism would begin to grow at a frightening rate. Small cities would turn into booming metropolises. Concrete and asphalt roads and highways would fan out and expand like the arteries and veins of a giant beast. Shipping lanes would open up across oceans, and even the skies would begin to fill with giant metal birds, servants of the beast.
What you would also see, if you had the power to, would be the great extraction of natural resources: oil, coal, precious metals. You would see the death of previously flourishing life on an unprecedented scale. You would see rivers diverted, mines extracted, and forests cleared. Everything, in the service of this new organism. You would see its waste excreted as toxic chemicals which seep into the oceans and earth, acid rain which falls from the sky, and fumes sent high into the atmosphere.
bacteria growth
In your mind and in your heart you would know this couldn’t continue – this devastating growth, this complete disregard for the symbiotic nature of all things. You would think that this new creature must learn how to live with and not live off of nature. Otherwise it would soon learn the hard way the key to survival as virus – don’t kill the host, especially if there’s only one host.
And here is where your vision would end, and where our future begins. It’s time for us to evolve or die, and that choice begins with you.
Dreamer.Me is a non-profit search engine. It’s a way for you to give to charity without spending any money or taking any time. 100% of our profits go to make the world a better place.
How economic theories shape almost every aspect of your life.
The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. – John Maynard Keynes (defunct economist)
You think you are in charge of your life, responsible for what you have and who you are, but the truth is that almost everything you have and are in this world is the result of the economic theory[s] subscribed to and practiced by the leaders of the world.
What you have
Take a look at your life. Take a look at what you have – your computer, your car, your clothes. Who made these things? And why is it that some people in the world have so much while others have nothing? Modern economic wisdom says that “we have what we deserve” – do you really believe this?
The truth is that every material possession you have was made by someone other than you. By what magnificent force do we all get up each and every day and work on stuff that only other people need? – Economics
Who you are
Take a look at who you are. Are you a teacher, a fast food server, a banker, a professional athlete, an artist or a musician? Most people define themselves by their occupation. Imagine Michael Jordan without a sports industry or Elvis without the music industry….
So what is it that decides how many people will be farmers, how many people will build homes, how many people can be athletes, and how many people sit at home doing nothing while there is still so much work to be done. - That’s right… Economics
The Power of an Economic Theory – an Example
In the 1980s, China, previously a 3rd world country, decided to change its economic system from a mainly communist system (an economic theory championed by Karl Marx where prices and commerce were decided by the government) to a capitalist based system (an economic theory championed by many including Adam Smith where prices and commerce are decided by the free market).
Since that time thousands of factories sprang to life out of nothing. Hundreds of millions of people who once scraped out meager existences farming for themselves and their families now produced goods and services that were traded across the world. The livings standards of BILLIONS of people were raised up dramatically in the span of just a single generation. People in China now have more than they’ve ever had, and are more than they ever were. China has gone from being a country of poor, uneducated farmers, to a country of novelists, wedding planners, engineers, entrepreneurs, athletes, and rock stars.
All of this, because a handful of government bureaucrats saw that their system wasn’t working , and so decided to try a different economic theory…
Modern Economics
The day is not far off when the economic problem will take the back seat where it belongs, and the arena of the heart and the head will be occupied or reoccupied, by our real problems — the problems of life and of human relations, of creation and behaviour and religion. – John Maynard Keynes (1945)
If you think I’m here to tell you that the free market and capitalism are the end all and be all of economic theory then you’re wrong. Like all theories, free-market capitalism is imperfect – it causes pollution and rewards greed, it causes us to manufacture food for cows while people starve, and it gives more and more to people who have too much at the expense people who have nothing. Worst of all, it degrades our environment and causes us to turn trillions of pounds of natural resources per year into trash.
A simple question
My question is this – If a newly adopted economic theory could change the lives billions of Chinese for the better - is there, or will there ever be another even better theory – that will one day change all of our lives in ways we can’t yet imagine?
Stay tuned…
Dreamer.Me is a non-profit search engine. It’s a way for you to give to charity without spending any money or taking any time. 100% of our profits go to make the world a better place.
The world’s total military expenditure in 2008 was $1.4 Trillion – this is 50 times larger than the total cost to eliminate world hunger.
The total cost of worldwide economic bailout was over $13 Trillion – roughly 500 times larger than the cost to eliminate world hunger.
The total amount estimated to be raised for Haiti is roughly $8 Billion – this is ¼ of the amount needed to ELIMINATE WORLD HUNGER.
Finally the most upsetting number of all. In 2007 Wall Street executives and traders paid themselves over $33 Billion in bonuses, more than the amount needed to end hunger for the over 1 Billion starving and malnourished people living on earth today.
What you can do
In 1963 President Kennedy said, “We have the means, we have the capacity to eliminate hunger from the face of the earth in our lifetime. We need only the will.”
50 YEARS LATER we still cannot find the will to do what is right.
I would ask each and every person who reads this to look at the “man (or woman) in the mirror” and ask yourself what kind of person you really are, and if you’re living in the kind of world that you want to live in – and if you’re not happy with the answer then do something to change it.
Dreamer.Me is a non-profit search engine. It’s a way for you to give to charity without spending any money or taking any time. 100% of our profits go to make the world a better place.
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It has been estimated in the earthquake in Haiti on January 12th, 2010 over 200,000 Haitians died. 