Money

[sixtyandaquarter]

Which is exactly a point I mean to convey.

People rarely give enough time or care to actually do so in a way that is actually productive, but rather do so to the lost hope and cause.  There are places and times to help those who are in need of help, but before you give your neighbor a cow to milk and eventually eat you should make sure first you have the milk your children need.

Too many people care about the voiced concerns of places far off.
Life doesn't matter to them as much as that soft and warm feeling, why?  Because they don't have to deal with it.  How many people across the states alone spend money to help so-and-so half way across the globe, and look on the guy begging for change around the corner in disgust, distaste, and dislike.

I'm willing to bet at least 90% of the people banting on about the cost of life and actually donate at least some rarely do so at their front doors.  It's not about life, or making the world a better place.  It's detachment and deciding to feel good.  Why bother actually helping when you can give $4 a week to a charity that you'll never have to deal with.

 

[Venetia]

I started with absolutely nothing. My family was poorer than poor. Half the time, I didn't know if I'd be sleeping in a car or on the street. But I made a life for myself, and through my own blood, sweat, and tears, I'm making something of myself. Society hasn't helped me one fucking bit, outside of public education (which I support with taxes). I have never asked for a handout, and I never expected it. If people can't make their own way in this country, good luck, so solly chollie, but fuck them.

And, for the record, I was not suggesting genocide. I was suggesting more support for birth control, which may also help the AIDS epidemic plaguing many 3rd-world nations. I have given money to those causes in the past. And I have donated to orphanages and to a Cancer Treatment center. Not much, but what I could afford, anyway. I agree that some people just have it shitty, and can't help it. But I have no pity for people who willfully continue to pop out children when they have nothing to provide for them. And I have no pity for people who came up in a civilized country and threw it all away by failing miserably at their own hands.

Humanity is important because we have no choice but to share this godforsaken rock with other people. However, were I given the magical choice to be blinked into an alternate dimension where I had everything I could ever ask for, and no one around except the people I love, hell fuckin' yeah I'd take the offer, in a split second. Even if I didn't have the people I love--I'd have to consider it for a while, though.

Of course this is all silly however, since money is meaningless when you have everything at your disposal already, and no people to withhold it from you.

 

[Dissonance]

Can you think of a system that would increase the quality of life in other areas of the world while keeping our own quality of life intact?  Guess what - it doesn't exist.  We are so rich BECAUSE they are poor, starving, and dying.  Helping them hurts us.

And you're okay with that?

Yes.

A lot of my clothing, electronics, and so forth are made by poor third worlders making shit wages.  A lot of the fruit I eat comes from the Caribbean where they might get paid a cent or two a day.  And I don't care one bit.

I would rather be in my place right now than in theirs.  Our world is full of users and the used, and if given a choice, I'd obviously choose 'user'.  There is no in between.  The hypothetical, almost magical world where everybody prospers and lives the good life does not exist, has never existed, and will never exist despite all of your efforts.  Welcome to reality.

I'd like people to consider a hypothetical situation:
You have a choice, all the money you want in a world with no people, no one to grow food, no one to make the things you want to buy, just a lot of useless paper with you by yourself, you're going to have to learn to survive, or you can be the most popular person in the world who will never have so much as a penny, when you go to restaurants the owner (a good friend of yours) lets you eat for free, when you go shopping stores give you clothes/cars/whatever for free because they like you so much and want the most popular person in the world to be seen with their stuff, you live at a friends place, because you're friends with everybody that means you live wherever you want, for free.

They're both ridiculous situations, but showing extremes of both sides might make people realise my point, as much as we need money we need people a whole lot more, money is just something people invented and it's only worth something as long as people say it is, people will always have worth and that can never change.

People (and i mean all six billion of them, not just people close to me) are what give money worth.  Money is obviously just paper, and if I were the only human being on the planet it would be quite worthless indeed.  Money is worth something because other people somewhere in some third world shithole are working tooth and nail to get ahold of it, because the current global culture demands money as a trading object to get resources to continue living.

Money only has worth through human suffering - As long as other humans exist and feel pain, it gives the money that I currently own more value than just the scrap of paper it physically is.  As human suffering decreases, so does the value of my money, and as the value of my money goes down, the less goods and services I can trade for it.

I see no problem with random people I don't know and will never know living a life of near-eternal suffering, because if they DIDN'T suffer, I would be suffering in their place.

So you're right to a point - other people ARE important to me, but they're only important insofar as they make my money worth something through exploitation of their unfortunate circumstances.

 

[iceplosion]

Wow...you have absolutely no idea how an economy works do you?

Money only has worth through human suffering - As long as other humans exist and feel pain, it gives the money that I currently own more value than just the scrap of paper it physically is.  As human suffering decreases, so does the value of my money, and as the value of my money goes down, the less goods and services I can trade for it.

Ok, first of all you have some of the most useless money in the western world, as far as "civilised" countries go the U.S is at the bottom of the financial ladder, the cause of this is in fact suffering (however this topic is not about pointless wars so that will not be discussed)
The ONLY thing that affects the value of money is availability, the less of it there is the more it is worth (provided the country maintains stable conditions)

I see no problem with random people I don't know and will never know living a life of near-eternal suffering, because if they DIDN'T suffer, I would be suffering in their place.

This kind of short sightedness is the reason your country is so poor.
It would actually be quite easy for us to maintain our lives and for other people to maintain theirs, most of these countries where people suffer have more money than the united states however their governments are corrupt and greedy and keep that money from them.

This kind of greed is destructive to the human race, but less me guess, you don't care because you'll be dead long before it's a real problem, right?

 

[Xaixis]

I think that it is somewhat necessary for both in my opinion.

Put it this way, you want to go to the movies with your friends but you don't have money, then money would be important, yet if you had money but no friends... you get my point.


...Wow that just utterly failed.

 

[decemberfox]

I think that the reason people obsess over money so much is because it is a representation of EVERYTHING you own (I'm not talking about stuff like relationships or emotions or whatever, I mean physical stuff). A house and car, food, education, recreation, insurance blah blah blah. People want all of those things, some more than others (food before eduction =]), and having money is having all of it. Having no money is having none of it.

@Dissonance
Everthing you say is totally true for today's world - but in 100 years, if everything goes well, our clothes-makers and fruit-growers can be paid nothing - because they'll be robots! When the 'used' can be manufactured in a factory and then work 24/7 and be paid in nothing but electricity, then everyone can be a 'user.' (and the robots will make higher quality goods too, hopefully).