The Abuse of Money

Whatever else we might like to believe about money, money is, before all else, a tool. Money is joy, money is pride, money is security. But first, it is a tool, like a hammer, or a saw. A tool with which humanity operates a large cooperative economy, cooperating in sharing and using a common tool, a medium of exchange. 

It is perhaps the most remarkable and wonderful tool ever invented by mankind.  Liberated from sluggish, cumbersome bartering, we can transfer payments, assets, goods and services all over the world at the click of a mouse, or in a dollar store by inserting a piece of plastic in a machine. You can give somebody a piece of paper or plastic and suddenly become the owner of a beautiful car or house.

People who use tools like hammers and saws always talk about respecting their tools, using them properly, using them with respect, taking good care of them. These people understand the value of tools, of work, and of money. As a culture, as a nation we abuse our greatest tool so unmercifually that it is a wonder it still functions at all. Indeed, anymore it barely does.

When people or groups of people become singlemindedly devoted to an abstract dogma like capitalism or socialism, monetary abuse is imminent. The unnecessary or unproductive use of any tool is abuse of that tool.

A frind of mine named Steve once owned a small construction company, which he named "HASCO". (half assed steve company). Steve was a fun guy, and he built houses. Once we were walking around a construction site whereat the house had just finished being framed. Steve had a nail gun in his hand, and every few steps he would playfully fire a gun into a random two by four. I tried it; it was fun. Sometimes its fun to misuse a tool.

By creating a society in which the distribution of money is so grotesquely unequal that distinct rich and poor classes replace the middle class, a society in which a few have all the hammers and the many have none; we are, all of us together, abusing our best tool.  In a society where the government steals from the trust funds entrusted to it by the poor working masses, unchecked monetary abuse proceeds without a whimper from the millions of theft victims.

The creation and production of adequate material wealth for all, and the reasonable distribution of that wealth using money as a method of transaction and transfer, should result in a society of unprecedented health and happiness. That it does not, or has not yet in human history, is the most glaring proof of the never ending forms of abuse to which we subject our most useful tool.

Bb

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