Money And All That
Money, eh? The stuff is like an infection: once you’re infected then it’s impossible to extricate, and the less you have the more you want to ween yourself onto it. In some ways, money is like a drug which you can’t not take. And it’s worse than all the other drugs, too. It’s the backbone of all other drugs. Even if all the problems in the world disappeared then money would still exist. It’s here for good now, and all because someone once thought that their chicken was worth more than a skanky goat–
But it’s not all that bad, of course. Money solves problems, can be transferred digitally all over the world—much easier than you can send a goat by mail—and this re-distribution, a previously unheard of thing, now helps to create wealth where there was none, and global jobs which support many millions of families. This blog post talks about similar things, and you’ll also find other interesting things on the blog.
What’s the answer? Hmm, tricky. We could all go back to trading goats and chickens, but can you imagine how many goats we’d all have to own to do that, the land we’d need to house them, and the stink in the streets? Not only that but you’d inevitably need ‘goat-sitters’ to look after your goats while you went into work. You could take your goats with you, I suppose, but some businesses might have issues with that. And what about the buses and trains. I can’t imagine goats would make for a very nice commute on the tubes–