Money, Money, Money, Money... Is Money God/King now or is there more to it?

[Parasondox]

The evening of whatever day of the week it is, Hello Escapist

MONEY, oh how it can change a fate of certain situations within minutes. Raise a nation up from the sands and ashes and bring a whole country to it's knees. Certain religions, money is mean't to be "the root to all evil" but yet still one of the main focus points. If you have it, you are more "blessed", if you don't and want to be "blessed" you must give to that religious organisation. To get into power or higher position, money is often used to skip a few steps compared to those who work their butt off. Big companies use money to hide peoples away from the public and even governments but yet if the average person tried to do so, well prison and an extreme bad record will be name for life. Money is also used for a great amount of good. Helping a nation recover from a disaster, giving those who haven't got the chance to a better life, be encouraged through free programmes being paid for by charity or government.

The reason for the title is this, everywhere you go money is somehow involves in a certain talking point or situation that you may not even think twice at. Seems to me that money is what determines life and death because even planning for a family or planning a funeral for a pasting love one, it will cost more than several peoples yearly wage.

Is money a God/King now?

I would love to know your thoughts. Media, Governments, Religion, Culture and Lifestyle, how does money effect them and is it seen as a higher power and thank you for reading.

 

[Vegosiux]

The problem with money is that it's seen as a commodity/resource while not being either, and that our Western society has developed into one that's based on constant growth of consumption.

Or, as Douglas Adams has put it,

"This planet has ? or rather had ? a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much all of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy."

 

[Thaluikhain]

"Now"? Money has been vastly important since it existed.

Money is just another form of power/resource. OTOH, it's often seen as a positive thing to gather money for its own sake, which isn't the same of many resources.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

Or, as Douglas Adams has put it,

"This planet has ? or rather had ? a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much all of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy."

This may sound insane, but I've read that book 3 or 4 times, and only now did I make the connection that the little green pieces of paper were actually money. I thought he was talking about these green papers: http://www.parliament.uk/site-information/glossary/green-papers/

Duh! That quote makes a lot more sense now.

 

[lacktheknack]

I'll put it this way:

When the Bible says that you cannot serve two gods, guess which two were used as an example?

It wasn't "God and Zeus".

It wasn't "God and the Matriarch".

It wasn't even "God and Power".

It was "God and Money".

Money has been considered a "god" since biblical times, and only moreso now.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

Money and the massive greed humanity has to acquire it in order to obtain power over others has been around almost as long as organized government. While very few would directly call it their God, a lot of people respect its power more than any religious deity or text. I don't think this is a new thing at all. Chasing after money instead of romance and family life is here to stay.

Is there more now? Well, the scale of greed for money/power has grown in proportion to our understanding of the size of the Earth. Romans wanted to be rich enough to rule all of Europe indefinitely. Microsoft execs probably have wet dreams about having enough money to rule the entire computer industry. The specifics of the goals change but the general theme is the same. Stockpile money, rule over those with less.

 

[Tono Makt]

Humanity has had this problem in nearly every society since the beginning of humanity - that's where the joke about prostitution being the worlds oldest crime comes from. It's not a problem with money per se, because Money is an abstract concept which humanity has decided to use in order to measure and represent wealth, status and power. You trade your wealth, your status and your power for the wealth, status and power of others - money is simply the easiest way to do so in a way which is the most fair. It is a medium of exchange.

Here's what I mean, in an extremely simple example:

I am a Yam Farmer, and I break my hand. I go to the Doctor to treat my hand. The Doctor charges me 10 bushels of Yams. I get a cast for my hand. My neighbour is a Squash Farmer, and he breaks his hand. He goes to the Doctor to treat his hand, and the Doctor charges him 5 bushels of Squashes. My cart gets washed away in a flood, so I go to the Wainright to make a new cart for me. He charges me 4 bushels of Yams, and I get a new cart. My neighbour also loses his cart, and goes to the Wainright who charges him 5 bushels of Squash for a new cart.

Is this fair? At first, it was 10 bushels of Yams to 5 bushel of Squash. (10Y = 5S) Then it was 4 bushels of Yams to 5 bushels of Squash (4Y = 5S). Should the Doctor charge the Squash Farmer 12.5 bushels of Squash? Should the Wainright charge me 10 bushels of Yams? What if the Doctor hates Squash?

Enter Money, which turns the Squash, Yams, Medicine and Carts into the same Medium - "Money" - making it easier to compare and to know if the trades are fair or not. You can see if 10Y is equal to 5S, or if 4Y is equal to 4S, or if the answer is something quite different because there's a farrier in town who won't eat Squash or Yams, so won't even do business with me unless I pay her in Grapes!

That's what Money is. That's it, that's all. I might argue that without Money, the problems that are most easily seen in the pursuit of money would be lessened, but they would not disappear.

It is the other aspects that are attached to Money that are the root of the problem. People will always want the wealth - the material goods (food, weapons, transportation, shelter, decoration, etc.). People will always want the power - to do what they want to do and to force others to do what you want them to do. People will always want the Status - to be chief, to be President, to be Emperor, to be the Champion, etc. Other things that Money illuminates that I haven't mentioned (because Wealth, Power and Status isn't an exhaustive list, it's just the list I have boiled it down to, and there are probably others that can be added to this list.) will always be with us.

 

[Queen Michael]

First of all, like the above poster says people have always wanted wealth; money is just one form of that.

And concerning if money is the new God, well, it would be nice if people worshipped a God that existed, for a change.

 

[Abomination]

Money is just a different representation of wealth. It used to be gold/silver and before that it was the sum of all your stuff. Stuff was a way of measuring power. The more stuff someone has the more of it he can throw at the other guy who has less stuff. The more stuff someone has the more people he can convince to do things for him by giving them some of his stuff so they will have more stuff so they can convince people to do things for them.

Money is like a hammer. It can be both terrible and incredibly useful.

It's just as valuable as it always was... and it is just as valuable as it was before it existed.

 

[Feedmeketamine]

The world seems to be a mad scramble for resourses, which looks pretty stupid when we probably have enough food to feed the world over and give a free ipad to everyone should we so wish. Defense spending is the most retarded thing ive ever hard. If a country wants to nuke you, your nuked, If we could cut spending on that and spend it instead on benign scienfitic research such as GM crop and the like I dont think we should have any problems with famines or anything else like that, and we the developing world could soon catch up.

 

[Phrozenflame500]

Well, money is just representative of wealth and power: the wealth of the person who holds it and the power of the nation which issues it.

People have had wealth and power since the beginning of time, it's just before they traded in blood and now they trade in paper ones and zeros.

 

[deathbydeath]

I'm surprised nobody's brought this up yet (you disappoint me, Escapist):


Anyways, I basically second the good Doctor.

 

[Giest4life]

Money serves no function in and of itself. It is simply provides the most convenient medium for people to exchange goods and services, which is what people are really after in the end. Money is almost as big of a sociological imperative as language, and there is no more sense in blaming money than there is in blaming language itself.

 

[rednose1]

At first I was going to say it was a god, as large sources of money can be immensely powerful.
But then, large amounts of anything can be powerful.
One complaining person means jack squat, a million plus is a revolution.
Control one tiny creek, and no one cares. Control a huge waterway, and people do as you please.

So no, money isn't a god. It's merely potential in physical form.
That being said, I do like the Rothschild quote, "Give me control over a nation's currency, and I care not who writes it's laws."

 

[KOMega]

We do not worship money, we worship the producer who provides food and water.
We worship the builder who gives us shelter and convenience.
We worship the teacher who gives us knowledge.

We worship any who provides what we want and we give them an offering of marked paper.

But they too are worshipers too,
and they deliver unto us offerings of marked paper for what we possess of value to them in turn.


I also say this in the most deep and dramatic voice I have for extra effect.

 

[TWRule]

For some people, sure. No need to over-generalize.

Actually, I more often encounter people who like to spin a tale about how everyone is possessed by greed (except their morally superior selves, of course). This attitude is more often an obstacle to serious attempts to understand why the world is the way it is than not - in that respect, I'd say it's currently *more* destructive than actual obsession with money.

 

[TheIceQueen]

We do not worship money, we worship the producer who provides food and water.

I disagree. We have an entire political movement nowadays that espouses the belief that wealth is proof of your value as a person. The rich are assumed to be rich because it is believed only through hard work can you actually become rich. The poor are poor because the free market justly punishes anyone without skill or a drive to succeed. You don't get much more of an appeal to divine judgement than that. Even the Christian god has to wait until death to judge, but wealth provides an instant and (if many Republicans are to be believed) perfect measure of the quality of a person. How can something assumed to work on a faster turnaround than YHWH Himself not be said to be "worshipped"?

We worship the builder who gives us shelter and convenience.

Not in America we don't.

We worship the teacher who gives us knowledge.

Hahahahahah. Good one.

Indeed, and it's almost always been that way in America. The United States has this really annoying habit of taking something from science, religion, etc. etc. and perverting it into a twisted abomination. Case in point: evolution. Evolution hasn't ever been truly accepted in America and the name of Darwin will generally start a shouting match, but you know what Americans did love about evolution? Survival of the fittest. They took it and twisted it into social darwinism as a justification for their ultra-capitalist goals.

"If fit, thou art successful" turned into "if successful, thou art fit" and from that idea came those shouting for the feds to stay out of way of business and to let the lower classes suffer. After all, they're failure is purely because they weren't good enough, at least in the eyes of the social darwinist - many of which argued that giving to those in need would create a nation of weaklings.

Social darwinism is now seen as a sort of derogatory word now, but the attitudes and ideas of it live on even today after over a hundred years since it first became a huge movement, no matter the amount of progress we've made since then.

And that's my answer to this thread. Of course it's the king, at least in America (I cannot speak for Europe or Asia as my knowledge of both of those is severely limited if you don't count Japan). It's always been that way. Those who are wealthy are seen as the winners, the strongest, the fittest. There may be more backlash these days, supposedly, but it's still a dominant view and it'll be that way for a long, long time.

 

[Lieju]

Humanity has had this problem in nearly every society since the beginning of humanity - that's where the joke about prostitution being the worlds oldest crime comes from. It's not a problem with money per se, because Money is an abstract concept which humanity has decided to use in order to measure and represent wealth, status and power. You trade your wealth, your status and your power for the wealth, status and power of others - money is simply the easiest way to do so in a way which is the most fair. It is a medium of exchange.

It's older than humanity. Prostitution exists in animals, after all. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_among_animals

Any animals living in social groups will consider favours, and food and just cool stuff valuable.
A dog will threaten another dog that tries to take away 'it's' food or toy, and my ferret does her best to steal all my stuff, pile them in her nest and then swim in them like a little furry Scrooge McDuck.