I was enjoying the hundreds of Facebook posts which have accumulated over the past weeks and I stumbled across one which caught my eye. It pictured a US $ bill next to a note of Monopoly money. The caption observed that the only difference between these two notes is your belief that one has more value than the other.
On reflection I think that it is not your belief in the relative value which is important but the belief of the person who is willing to accept it in exchange for something tangible or real. There is an awful lot of noise from people (usually those without money) about the injustice of the monetary system. There is an equal amount of noise from those with money about economic policies which dilute the value of their money.
A common explanation of the troubles within our economy is that we have moved away from the Gold Standard and as a result paper money has become pretty much worthless. The argument is that there is too much money and we should move to a unit of exchange that is by definition limited. I guess this is the point of the Monopoly money comparison on the Facebook page.
To attack the monetary system we have developed is a bit like
shooting the messenger. Money is not moral or immoral, money is not fair
or unfair, money is not a persecutor or a victim. To be honest money
couldn't care less where it rests, it does not have an opinion but it
does tend to like its own company! Money will flow to where money already is, I think
that is called the Law of Attraction and surprisingly this is, in part, the
problem.
Money itself is not the problem. The problem is that money holds a monopoly over the measure of value. As a result of this money has acquired its own value. To go back to the Monopoly money analogy, the belief has become reality. The $ bill does have more value than the Monopoly money and necessarily so, but it has developed a value beyond its role. The work of Stephen Belgin highlights this in his book New Money for a New World. He accurately describes money as a tool and our current issue is that we are only using one tool for the many different functions required of money. His analogy is trying to build a house with just a hammer. We are trying to build a society with an economic system equipped with just one tool.
Having just one measure of value is the problem underlying so many economies. The example which springs to mind is in the UK. If I put on my trader hat for a moment I have noticed that housebuilders in the UK look to be a good investment, which means if I want to accumulate more money I will buy shares in housebuilders and will be rewarded, with money as their perceived monetary value increases. Now the perverse thing about this system is that the reason housebuilders look like an attractive investment is that they have stopped building houses. In response to fear in the economy they have worked out that the way to increase their monetary value as a company is to stop doing what they are there to do.
The task we face is to build a system in which housebuilders are rewarded for building houses rather than the perceived monetary value of their business. One idea is to have a tax system which penalises the hoarding of assets or money whilst rewarding productive investment. A housebuilder gets taxed at 0% for profits on actual economic activity, but 105% on simple asset or monetary accumulation. The case for complementary currencies as proposed by Belgin is compelling as it is logical and a real possibilty as a solution to our perceived problems.
However, I would like to play with the possibility that it is not the system which is in question, but the consciousness which underlies it. Whatever solution is proposed if it is based on the principles of scarcity (the Gold Standard for example) the same perceived faults will emerge.
What it comes down to is that money is just a reflection of our state of consciousness, and at the moment we are operating from a place of lack and fear. We reward and covet accumulation above creation. I believe the cellular expression of this consciousness is obesity. Blaming money as the cause of our problems is similar to blaming food for obesity.
If we could perhaps ascribe one more role on the overstretched tool that money has become it would be that of messenger. Money does have a consciousness of its own and at the moment it is trying to tell us something. We are out of balance and living in fear. If we could look at some of our fundamental belief patterns around scarcity we might begin to understand the message that money is trying to give us.
Money just like everything else wants to be loved.
