Money

[AnonT]

There seem to be a lot of arguments on this forum about money and economics, with some people equating taxation to extortion or theft and others saying that money is there to meet our needs and nothing more. Well, I thought I'd share a bit of my personal philosophy on money.

So, anyway, what is money? There's obviously more to it than just pieces of paper and hunks of metal. There are also a lot more things for money to be spent on than there are ways to earn it, leading people to take a lot more time thinking about what money is used for than about where it comes from.

Okay, so, aside from the mint, where does money come from? At it's most basic level - before you consider theft, charity, or taxation - money is given from one person to another in exchange for goods or services. When someone grows food and gives that food to others, those people give them money in return. When someone builds a house and lets someone else stay in it, that person gives them money in return. Once the person growing the food has money, they may pay someone else to build them a house. Once the person who builds the house has the money, they spend some of it buying food. Each of them has more money after they've just done something for someone, and less after they've gotten something in return. So money, in its most basic form, is simply a representation of how much more you've given to or done for others than others have given you in return.

As long as we consider giving things to others and doing things for others to be good things, this means that money (when earned honestly) is a representation of how much more good a person has done than they have received. This would make honestly earned money a good thing.

Unfortunately, in any society, you have people who want to seem as though they're better than they really are. You have people who brag, people who lie, people who buy fancy cars to make up for the fact that they have short penises - and people who steal money in order to make it seem as though they've done more for others than others have done for them when, in reality, they haven't. People hate extortion, because it allows someone to get something from society that they never put in, while hurting an individual's or business' ability to give to the people who help them give.

So, I think most people would agree with me that dishonesty with money is a bad thing. But, what constitutes dishonesty with money? Well, theft and extortion, obviously. But, if we consider money to be a representation of how much more you've given to others than what you've received, a lot of other things fall under dishonesty as well. Paying your employees less than they deserve for the amount of work they give is dishonest. Now, a blanket minimum wage doesn't solve this problem - not all work is worth the same amount, and not all workers work as hard, so there's no reason that everyone should be guaranteed a certain amount when they may not work hard enough to deserve it. So, in addition, demanding more than you're worth is dishonest (this is a problem that often affects upper management - not that organization isn't helpful or isn't worthwhile, but that many CEOs and upper level executives don't care how good a job they do because they make enough in a year to live off of for years if they lose their job. For you Ayn Rand fans out there, James Taggart would be the archetype of someone who expects more than they're worth, it's not just a working class phenomenon).

Now, when it comes to punishing people who are dishonest with money, the first thing we need to remember is that the people they stole from, tricked out of their money, etc. have done more than they've received, and need to be paid back. Since they were without their money for a period of time, something akin to charging interest to the dishonest person should be instated. Personally, I say that a thief should be forced to pay back ten times what they stole - five times as much to the person they robbed, another five to pay the cost of finding them. If they can't pay it back, they should do forced labor until they earn enough to pay it back.

For a lower class thief stealing the money he needs to survive, this would mean a few months or years of labor, followed by freedom. For a CEO who fudges the books and steals hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, if he can't pay ten times that much back, that will mean spending the rest of his life doing labor - so, hopefully, plenty of liberals will subscribe to this school of thought. For those of you who don't think it's fair to make a person spend their entire life paying off that theft, think of what happens when a CEO steals millions from a company. How many $20,000/year jobs will end up being cut because that CEO robbed the company? How many people then lose their jobs, and end up with their lives being ruined by his actions? Simply spending the rest of his life paying it back is chump change compared to the hundreds of lives made harder by his actions.

So, what does everyone think?

[castille]

Money is just a neutral system we use to keep tally of our possessions.

If there was no money, we would just find other things to be corrupt with. Corruption ALWAYS exists in a large-scale human system. Maybe in some 100-people Amish village there isn't corruption, but try a city of 20 million people, and there will be corruption.

Even look at the Communist system - when Stalin stopped crime by shooting anyone who dared to "think" about crime, his officials were still corrupt.


No matter what system of economics, politics, or even society we use, as long as there is lots of people, there will be lots of crime. So move to an Amish village if you want to live a crime-free lifestyle.

[Leopard]

if anything, the amount of 'money' you earn is the 'value' of your labor to the free market. it does not represent any sort of moral code (the amount of good done, or even the amount of 'work' done). Fallacies occur when you separate the 'currency' part of 'money' from its underlying 'commodity' value. If you take any example back down to a barter level, one can easily see that 'money' in and of itself is purely a representation of labor, with the 'value' of that labor termed in the quantity of money.

</span><blockquote><span class="smallfont">Quote:</span><hr size="1" />Originally Posted by
So, I think most people would agree with me that dishonesty with money is a bad thing. But, what constitutes dishonesty with money? Well, theft and extortion, obviously. But, if we consider money to be a representation of how much more you've given to others than what you've received, a lot of other things fall under dishonesty as well. Paying your employees less than they deserve for the amount of work they give is dishonest. Now, a blanket minimum wage doesn't solve this problem - not all work is worth the same amount, and not all workers work as hard, so there's no reason that everyone should be guaranteed a certain amount when they may not work hard enough to deserve it. So, in addition, demanding more than you're worth is dishonest <hr size="1" /></blockquote><span class='postcolor'>

not so.

Paying your workers less then they AGREE to is dishonest - paying them exactly what they agree to is completely honest - no matter what an outside person thinks of the quantity of money involved. The amount of money to be paid for a service can only be determined by the participants of the transaction, and only then at the time of the transaction - not 2 months later or 5 months before. time influences not only the value of money but also time changes situations which may affect one's valuation of money to a great degree.

'demanding' more than you are worth is NOT dishonest since you cannot know exactly what you are worth until you have other participants agreeing with you. You are free to 'demand' that you are worth $100/hour but reality is that if you can only find someone to pay you $20/hour for your labor then THAT is what you are worth. The use of the word 'demand' here is quoted because its use makes it sound like the person is 'forcing' another to pay this 'demanded' amount - this is not legal, it is referred to as coercion or force. it would be more 'honest' to say that a person 'values' his labor at a certain amount, not 'demand', for he cannot force another to ceed to his demands without making the transaction illegal/immoral.

[Lava]

> For those of you who don't think it's fair to make a person spend their entire life paying off that theft, think of what happens when a CEO steals millions from a company. How many $20,000/year jobs will end up being cut because that CEO robbed the company? How many people then lose their jobs, and end up with their lives being ruined by his actions? Simply spending the rest of his life paying it back is chump change compared to the hundreds of lives made harder by his actions.


This seems to imply that the employer owes the employee never ending employment. And also that if you lose your job then someone else has ruined your life. I dont think either of these is in any way true. These are the vicimlike beliefs that many live with unfortunately.

The employee owes a weeks work, the employer owes a weeks wages. Thats it, thats the deal. If the employee never saves to get them through times of unemployment, silly them!

Of course that begs the question of what to do with the employee who doesnt manage to make and save enough to get by while they are no longer employed. Whatever the solution to that is, it is still not true that the employer owes it to them to employ them for life.


Regards, Lava!

[white rice]

Originally posted by AnonT, Now, when it comes to punishing people who are dishonest with money, the first thing we need to remember is that the people they stole from, tricked out of their money, etc. have done more than they've received, and need to be paid back. Since they were without their money for a period of time, something akin to charging interest to the dishonest person should be instated. Personally, I say that a thief should be forced to pay back ten times what they stole - five times as much to the person they robbed, another five to pay the cost of finding them. If they can't pay it back, they should do forced labor until they earn enough to pay it back. For a lower class thief stealing the money he needs to survive, this would mean a few months or years of labor, followed by freedom. For a CEO who fudges the books and steals hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, if he can't pay ten times that much back, that will mean spending the rest of his life doing labor - so, hopefully, plenty of liberals will subscribe to this school of thought. For those of you who don't think it's fair to make a person spend their entire life paying off that theft, think of what happens when a CEO steals millions from a company. How many $20,000/year jobs will end up being cut because that CEO robbed the company? How many people then lose their jobs, and end up with their lives being ruined by his actions? Simply spending the rest of his life paying it back is chump change compared to the hundreds of lives made harder by his actions. So, what does everyone think?

You assume that

1) We live in an egalitarian society that isn't influenced by money.
2) People who steal will eventually get caught.

You're only a cheater if you get caught, and if you do get caught, discover his buying price. If that's too high, discover the jury's and/or judge's. Get Johnny Cochran, or if all else fails get into politics and get your party's president to pardon you.

The more money you have, the less chances of being punished for something you've done. Only if you're blatantly wrong (Enron & WorldcomMCI), or you've messed with the wrong person or group that has more power (or money) than you (Martha Stewart's 10k insider info).

That's the way the world burns.

[SVMc]

(AnonT) So money, in its most basic form, is simply a representation of how much more you've given to or done for others than others have given you in return.

I wouldn’t say it is as simple as that. First money or currency (I may be mixing up terms if someone wants to clarify please feel free to do so) in my understanding originated because the barter system became too complicated to facilitate fast interstate trade, so money as a signifier of worth was developed. I would say that money in its most basic form is a symbol of how much you have in society not how much good you have done. It may also be a symbol of how many goods you have accumulated if we are using the word “goods” as in material goods and services.

That being said I would challenge the assertion that money is a symbol of how much “good” you have given other, because it is only a system of values. Various socio-economic variables over thousands of years have first created an imbalance in levels of equality to begin with and second set parameters that don’t consider all goods valuable. That does not mean that a good which is not monetarily valuable is not essential. For example the issues of child raising, generally viewed as important yet unpaid work for mothers (and increasingly fathers). There are discrepancies in salary between work done by women and that done by men. The most famous case in to my knowledge is Bell Canada which has secretaries (females) and clerks (males) who perform the exact same daily jobs and have the same level of seniority. Bell (a company which is a hundred years old) originally was able to justify this because it was assumed women would not need to support a family and would eventually leave their jobs to have a family, therefore they were not as “valuable” as workers. However, we now have dual income families, it is now supposed to be illegal to give different pay for work of equal value based on gender, sex, race etc… This becomes further problematic when you consider what are referred to as “pink” collar jobs compared to “blue” collar jobs. Often pink collar jobs require different yet equally difficult skills as blue collar, and often pink collar jobs ask for higher education credentials. However over all pink collar jobs pay less. These are some of the reasons I would disagree with the “good” assessment.

(Anon T) Paying your employees less than they deserve for the amount of work they give is dishonest. Now, a blanket minimum wage doesn't solve this problem - not all work is worth the same amount, and not all workers work as hard, so there's no reason that everyone should be guaranteed a certain amount when they may not work hard enough to deserve it.

Again I would agree with this in an egalitarian society. However I do not think this is possible at the current moment. Not that it is not desirable that we could have a society like this. We have an incredible problem with a surplus of labor and with the re-skilling phenomenon. It may be theoretically easy to say that if your job market has flooded driving down the wages then you should re-skill and find a new job. However for most people who have ever attempted this from the bottom up there are more stories of failure than success (they just aren’t featured as often). The cost of education re-skilling and support mechanisms aren’t in place for people to switch skill sets when one market becomes full. Theoretically if you are no longer in demand you use a Smithsonian idea of economics and cater to what the market is demanding, however what happens when you do not have the beginning capital to facilitate this? What happens where there are more job-hunters than jobs? If you think I’m exaggerating look outside of the USA.

Please don’t think I am summarily rejecting your idea, generally I agree however I think there are a few theoretical holes and that is what I have responded to. I really would like to know what your responses are to these questions. I think something very often ignored in these discussions is where can social conscious and economic reality connect to find real life solutions. After all I really believe both sides of the debate are interested in solutions.

[lessthan]

"money is what makes the world turn" that seems to be very true if you dont have money you can not do nearly as much as people with atleast some money. you would most likely not be able to afford alot if we were paid that much. we have got to stop exporting jobs because you want more money. i wish these top CEOs of fortune 100 companies that have moved their operations out of this country to pay the people of the country less than what they paid here, what the life of the people of the country they move to live like. i bet you they would probably pay much more maybe not as much. i do not see why they cant atleast pay the workers atleast 4$ i mean come on 30 cents for workn 1 day is horrendous. I wish that they would live in these countries on that income and tell me how many things they can do with it hell they would be a godsend to that country if their moving there jump starting their economy. am i right? or am i wrong?