Common Cents.

"Money often costs too much." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

It's natural to need money, that's just the way the world economy works. But there was a time, believe it or not, when there was no money as we now think of it. Everyone, even royalty that shat in golden outhouses, lived on barter alone.

There must have been a chicken-and-the egg moment in the history of money. After all, just because someone invented it didn't mean the hoi polloi automatically had to accept it in lieu of goats or rutabagas or, I dunno, a quickie behind the Sphinx. It probably started with something abstract, like a shell, but was quickly replaced with something hand-made. Think jewelry as money.Think wampum.

A gold or silver coin, no doubt bearing the face of the local potentate, had to have helped convince a wary public that maybe this system just might work... at least until the counterfeiters arrived. The more crafty of tradesmen would use miniature scales to ensure quality. But what do you do with foreign coins when there wasn't a bank on every street corner? Yikes!

Anyway, so here were are. In a society almost wholly dependent on imaginary money, or credit. We could probably get along okay with barter but public monies are so much easier to control, and tax, with something tangibly recordable like cash and credit. Small wonder the gray market is so frowned upon.

Which is too bad, because the big problem with money is that there are people who will do literally anything to get it, regardless of the consequences, and I don't mean steal it. These titans of accounting consider the accumulation of wealth trancendent over everything, even common decency. That sums up the type of individual that profited working for AIG. They knew what they were doing, that it was unethical, short-sighted and possibly illegal, but didn't care. The entire world could go to economic shit as long as they got their bonus.

It's one thing to make an honest buck. It's another thing to want to take a sucker to the bank no matter how old or poor or ignorant. I've literally seen this mentality at work. It makes me weep.

These same people include the ones who start wars just to make a profit on every bullet, tank, battleship, fighter jet or drop of blood.

It's clear that the accumulation of money, for the sake of the accumulation of money, is a mental problem, a disease, not dissimilar to those who start fires for fun. But since money's not going away that's why we need all the regulation we can get. If you don't understand that, Mr. Smaller Government, then you're part of the problem.

=mike=