A few years ago we had the good fortune to find ourselves in London, and my wife wanted to go to Harrod's, the famous department store. Once in there we wandered off in different directions, and I, having no particular destination in mind, wandered into the jewelry section. Now I do have a weakness for watches, mostly because I'm a tool and gadget guy, and there are now watches that can do everything but make toast. And they can be very beautiful objects as well.
Harrod's had some gorgeous stuff, but almost immediately I got hit with sticker shock. Knowing that I wouldn't be buying anything, I decided to find the most expensive watch in the place. I did. With the help of my trusty calculator, I soon figured out that it was selling for a cool million bucks. Okay, it was pretty. Lots of diamonds and such. But I started to wonder what anybody would want with a million-dollar watch.
I came up with two reasons: 1) it was beautiful, and 2) "because I can afford it and you can't". There it was: another example of how money informs our lives. Wealth is another way of saying, "I'm better than you.". In a world without money and where we're devoted to working do ensure that everybody has enough, such a watch might still exist, but the value would come from somewhere else, and its message would be different.
Things like diamonds that are scarce and beautiful would still be valued higher than, say, beautiful pieces of quartz, which are relatively plentiful and perhaps less prized as beautiful.
Now let's say that I've been able, in the absence of money, to persuade some people to undertake the nasty and dangerous business of mining diamonds, perhaps by making it a lot less nasty and dangerous, but that's another whole set of ideas, so I digressed. At any rate, I now have a quantity of beautiful diamonds and am now in the enviable position of choosing who would be best to receive them. Am I just going to stand on a street corner and hand them out to passers-by? There's nothing to stop me, but if I value them for their beauty and rarity, I'm probably not. I'm going to think about giving them to someone who can enhance their beauty. I'm going to be thinking about people like jewelry makers and watch makers. In fact, I'm probably going to try to get them into the hands of the best ones I know, people who do high-quality work. If I've still got a lot of ego, it'll be about bragging rights: "I'm a regular supplier of diamonds to Madam Whoever, the finest watch-maker in the area." How big the "area" is will be directly proportional to the size of my ego.
If I don't have such an ego, I'm stll going to be trying to get them to high-quality workers who will enhance their beauty so I and others can appreciate it.
So value doesn't disappear along with money, it's just that it's no longer hiding behind the smoke screen of money. It's out in the open pointing to its true sources, beauty and rarity. Surprised?
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Suppose President Beetlebaum held a press conference and said, "Here's the deal. We'll abolish the currency if each one of you will do the following: stay where you are and keep doing whatever work you're doing for the moment--that is unless you're in the financial sector. Those folks can take the week off, since you have nothing to do. If everybody continues to do their jobs, then everybody will be taken care of. If you need food, go to the store, and they'll give you what you need, but please take only what you need. If you work in a food store, your job becomes making sure that people can get what they need. And since there's no money, everything is free!
"If we all take care of each other, everything will work out. Please understand that no one is going to take anything away from you. You now own your house or apartment. Of course, your belongings are still yours."
So here you are, out of work and trained as a stockbroker. What do you do? Well, let's see. You don't have to work, but you have no worries about losing your house or anything else, for that matter. Here in your high-rise New York apartment, you've got a room that you use for your hobby, which is restoring old clocks. So you work on those for a couple of days and since you're not pressed for time, you finish one of the clocks. What to do with it? You can't sell it, so you have three choices: you can keep it, you can trade it for something, or you can give it away. For now, you can't decide. Then you remember your mentor, Sam, who runs a clock shop in Brooklyn, who has been generous with his time and taught you a lot. You decide to go see him and show him the clock.
So you get on the train with the clock and get off in Brooklyn down the street from the clock shop. When you walk in, the owner greets you from behind the desk. You notice that the shop is only about half-full of clocks. Sam says, "A lot of people have come in wanting clocks, so I've been giving them away, but some other folks have also been dropping off clocks. Some are for repair, but some are unwanted. In fact I've got so many that it'll take me a long time to fix them all. Do you want to help?" And you hang your clock in an empty space on Sam's wall.
Suddenly, you're doing what you've been wanting to do for years, what you thought you'd maybe do in retirement to supplement your Social Security. You thought you'd have to move out of New York, back to Poughkeepsie where it's cheaper to live. Now you're doing it with your mentor, living where you like, and having a lot of fun doing it. Your blood pressure drops forty points, and you stop taking that anti-anxiety medicine. Life just got a whole lot better!
"If we all take care of each other, everything will work out. Please understand that no one is going to take anything away from you. You now own your house or apartment. Of course, your belongings are still yours."
So here you are, out of work and trained as a stockbroker. What do you do? Well, let's see. You don't have to work, but you have no worries about losing your house or anything else, for that matter. Here in your high-rise New York apartment, you've got a room that you use for your hobby, which is restoring old clocks. So you work on those for a couple of days and since you're not pressed for time, you finish one of the clocks. What to do with it? You can't sell it, so you have three choices: you can keep it, you can trade it for something, or you can give it away. For now, you can't decide. Then you remember your mentor, Sam, who runs a clock shop in Brooklyn, who has been generous with his time and taught you a lot. You decide to go see him and show him the clock.
So you get on the train with the clock and get off in Brooklyn down the street from the clock shop. When you walk in, the owner greets you from behind the desk. You notice that the shop is only about half-full of clocks. Sam says, "A lot of people have come in wanting clocks, so I've been giving them away, but some other folks have also been dropping off clocks. Some are for repair, but some are unwanted. In fact I've got so many that it'll take me a long time to fix them all. Do you want to help?" And you hang your clock in an empty space on Sam's wall.
Suddenly, you're doing what you've been wanting to do for years, what you thought you'd maybe do in retirement to supplement your Social Security. You thought you'd have to move out of New York, back to Poughkeepsie where it's cheaper to live. Now you're doing it with your mentor, living where you like, and having a lot of fun doing it. Your blood pressure drops forty points, and you stop taking that anti-anxiety medicine. Life just got a whole lot better!
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