Learning That Money Is Only A State Of mind, The hard Way

ON NOVEMBER 8, 2016, the government of India announced that Indian currency was henceforth null and void, worthless. Since ninety percent of all transactions in India are in cash, this came as quite a shock to nearly a billion people. The move was made in an attempt to combat the country's massive financial corruption, which includes counterfeiting. People were given two months to exchange the old currency for the new. Panic ensued. Lines were long, days long. Suicides spiked, needlessly, tragically. Long term effects on the Indian economy are not yet discernible, but will be soon. In an Arthur C. Clarke novel, aliens land in the Sahara desert, and establish an outpost. They are content to subsist on insect protein and stagnant Saharan water. They have already turned their home planet into a radioactive wasteland, and the unclean water of the Sahara is ambrosia to them. Humanity resents their intrusion, attacks, and is easily repelled. The aliens are bemused at the feeble human assault with warplanes, missiles, and tanks. Then the United Nations demands monetary compensation for the occupied land, but the extraterrestrials have never heard of "money". When informed that payment in gold will suffice, the aliens filter the entire Mediterranean Sea and harvest its gold content, atom by atom. The total amounts to considerable tonnage of the precious metal. When the sudden infusion of this large quantity of gold into Earth's economic system destabilizes the global economy by sending the price of gold plummeting, the U.N. decides to refuse payment. Confused, the aliens shrug their shoulders, or their equivalent, and return the stuff to the Mediterranean....India has now discovered what the extraterrestrials already knew, and most humans have not yet realized; that money is imaginary, money is a state of mind, if a pleasant one. It is purely symbolic, with no inherent value. Metal is metal, paper is paper. Money is a state of mind. Were we to one day realize that, we might begin to use it more judiciously.