Don't Follow The Money

Now, if you come around here for your financial advice, money may not be your highest priority. I like you. Any time that I begin to spout off about wealth and poverty, I sound downright biblical. Oh, I sound like a lunatic, but there's some kinda' divine tone to all of it, too. 

We've got between seven and eight billion folks roaming the planet today. In 1950 there were about two and a half billion. Now, clearly, there's more wealth. There would have to be. Otherwise, none of us would have enough pocket change for the new iPhone. 

Do you suppose that we have mined enough extra gold and silver to justify all the extra money. Maybe we're just so much more productive that we've gotten richer. Nah. 

The economy is as real as the emperor's clothes. The powerful make up systems that divide "money" amongst us. Now, if the powerful keep it all, the rest of us won't have any means of buying what they have to sell. They can't support all of us in some feudal system so they need to dole out a portion of it in order to sell us their oil. Their coal. Their water.

Meantime, the powerful manufacture goods to sell us to take what's left after the rest of us buy food and pay rent. Did I mention that we're the ones actually doing the manufacturing and raising the crops for food? They pay for the process, of course, with the money that they print, backed by nothing but their imagination and good will.

Revolutions occur when the masses figure this out. They spring up here and there. Sometimes they work. Sometimes they don't. The powerful have militaries financed by the money they print. Occasionally the common people come up with a  gimmick. Cryptocurrencies saw the unwashed making up their own "money." Information became a commodity that was difficult for the old money to hoard. Marshall McLuhan and Stewart Brand and Bucky Fuller predicted it.

When it turned out that the elite couldn't figure out MySpace, they decided to control information through distribution. They sold the rights to the worldwide web. You want information? Pay us.

The good old boys are still worrying about cryptocurrencies but it appears that wild greed among the new rich might do it in as a concept before it threatens legitimate money.

Oh, they have tools. Religion. Patriotism. Misogyny. Fear. They use their power to withhold healthcare. Security.

All those stories about peace and truth and love; all those parables about camels and eyes of needles- turns out there's something to it all.

Come on rock'n'roll, save us again.