Escaping Money's Grasp

Escaping Money’s Grasp

Every contemporary human behavior is now connected, in some way, to money. From the biological (washing one's hands, eating, exercise, etc.) to the psychological (therapy, entertainment, etc.) to even the relational (dating apps, meetup apps, etc.). In fact, most of us today live our childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood as a long preparation for our “real” life in the job market in order to make money. Behind every currency, however, it is quite apparent to everyone (even thirteen-year-old kids) that money’s value is inherently arbitrary and artificial. All currencies are “phantoms”. This essay will argue that despite money’s lack of value, it creates a system that places money above ourselves, and we are upholding that reality despite the harm it does for us. This essay will also explore a contemporary attempt to reclaim man’s superiority over money, and why that attempt does not fully succeed.

Money’s “non-value” can be revealed through a simple thought experiment: imagine you are the last person on Earth. In such a situation, what use or value would any currency be for you? The answer is an obvious “nothing”. Money is used only for exchange and with no one to exchange with, there is nothing to exchange! Food on the other hand is very useful for someone whether they are alone or not. Money’s non-value can even be revealed in the context of others: imagine being in a world where no one accepts your currency for any exchange. The value that your money has for you is now nothing as well! For money to be usable, one not only needs to be in the context of other people, those people have to actively accept your terms. In my interview with my thirteen-year-old brother Mateo, it was apparent even to him that gold, the most “apparently valuable” currency, was actually valued just because we all believe that it is, and plenty of other responses expressed the same sentiment.

Despite this common understanding, money remains a driving factor in our lives and has increasingly become a conduit of environmental and social power. Those with money are masters of their environments, while those without are the environments slaves. When natural disasters hit, it is the world’s poor that experience food shortages and the destruction of their homes and communities. The affluent have a completely different experience altogether.  For them, such a disaster is often a non-issue. If there is news that a disaster is immanent, often they can escape and not actually experience it at all. Damage to their property is miniscule and whatever damage there is, they can afford to repair. It’s clear that to have money is to not be coerced by one’s environment and this is not even to mention the social power a wealthy person has in which they can command others to do things on their terms.

Due to our active belief and acceptance of the power of money, this means that when we are confronted with the news of the poor having their lives ruined, we still actively affirm the mechanisms of money that have created this situation for them as legitimate. 2,500 people in the Bahamas are currently missing due to Hurricane Dorian though this was not inevitable (“Bahamas lists 2,500 missing”). It could have been stopped, but it wasn’t because to save those in danger would have undermined the perceived power and sovereignty of money. Our economic system is filled with examples like this, not to mention needless waste. The author and media critic Douglas Rushkoff explains in an interview two more examples where money is served at the expense of human beings: “In California, they’re tearing down houses as we speak because the houses are in foreclosure and they want to keep market values high. The US Department of Agriculture burns food every week in order to keep the values of food high even though there are people who are starving and people who need homes” (Rushkoff). Later on in the interview, Rushkoff says: “So now we’re supposed to create jobs for people to make useless stuff…: plastic crap that we’re going to throw away...so that we can justify letting them participate in the abundance.” (Rushkoff).

What Rushkoff keenly points out is that our monetary system doesn’t exist for us any longer, we exist FOR IT. The human being is no longer a unit of inherent value anymore. Instead, our value is conditional to whether we have money or not. How peculiar considering that money is actually the thing with no value! To give the hungry a share of our excess food is to deny money’s superiority over human beings. It goes contrary to the system we’ve built, and instead of changing our system, we stand back and let the hungry people starve. Money (our own creation) has become our sovereign, our God. It bestows dignity and value ON US. We meet money on its own terms. Professor Char Miller echoes this sentiment in his essay Blood Money where he writes about how contemporary Greeks have been affected by international banks no longer investing in their country: “Not just their way of life but their very existence could be extinguished, with very little sense that these were lives with sovereign value (Miller, 235). 

Money’s usurpation of human value has not gone unnoticed, however. An undercurrent of angst and aversion to the current system is rising. Universal basic income (UBI) has become a popular remedy to the monetary situation and push for this policy is led by 2020 democratic candidate Andrew Yang. Yang’s proposal is a “Freedom Dividend” where every American citizen is given $1000 a month by the government, no questions asked (“What Is Universal Basic Income?”). What’s more is that Yang is running on what he calls “Human Centered Capitalism”, where human interests are put first and not the markets: “We need to move to a new form of capitalism -- Human Capitalism -- that’s geared towards maximizing human well-being and fulfillment...The focus of our economy should be to maximize human welfare” (“Human-Centered Capitalism”). Yang’s proposals are direct responses to the “takeover” of money. I asked what people would do with $1000 a month and the responses ranged from paying a mortgage, starting up a hobby, and saving, though the most interesting response was from a woman named Lesley who lives in Italy. She said that she would try to find a place for herself that way she could study for exams without distractions, as well as pay for bills and food. She said that an extra $1000 would be very helpful and that her current financial situation makes it very hard for her to pay for school, eat, live in an apartment with her income.

UBI is exciting, but there is a subtle problem: we have still not escaped money’s grasp over us. UBI does not challenge the belief in money’s superiority. Money is still the “value-giver” because it is used as a way to “bring people up”. The theological assumption that people should have money in order to live and participate with everybody else remains unchallenged. A UBI policy states that everyone will have the legitimacy of money for being human, but it does not say that you have legitimacy BECAUSE you are human. What’s more is that this legitimacy is granted only if you are an 18 years or older American citizen. The starving in Africa will still not have the legitimacy for access to our abundance.

A UBI would parallel the transfer of sovereignty that occurred between the king and later the citizens of the state. Political power was once only something the king or queen could express, but later that power was “redistributed” to everyone by virtue of the fact that they were human beings. The question is whether or not our insistence on the superiority of money will continue to create incentives and mechanisms that undermine the dignity of man even in a world where everyone is ensured enough money to survive and participate in the marketplace.

References

“Bahamas Lists 2,500 Missing after Hurricane.” BBC News, 11 Sept. 2019. www.bbc.com, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-49666942.

“Human-Centered Capitalism.” Andrew Yang for President, https://www.yang2020.com/policies/human-capitalism/. Accessed 11 Sept. 2019.

Miller, Char Roone. “Blood Money: Death, Sacrifice, and Money in Plato’s Republic.” Political Theory, vol. 45, no. 2, Apr. 2017, pp. 216–39. SAGE Journals, doi:10.1177/0090591716664770.

Rushkoff, Douglas. “The Colossal Problem with Universal Basic Income | Douglas Rushkoff.” YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m25YLByFVRw&t=4s. Accessed 11 Sept. 2019.

“What Is Universal Basic Income?” Andrew Yang for President, https://www.yang2020.com/what-is-freedom-dividend-faq/. Accessed 11 Sept. 2019.