The Argument Against Money

I’m not here to tell you I have all the answers or even the answer to a better system than the money we do have, but I am here to tell you things aren’t working as intended (or maybe they are). Our need for money as a society matched with our quest for efficiency has turned most of the U.S. into a wet towel being rung harder and harder until not another drop comes out. It actually disgusts me to think about how ham handed business “tools” have been pushed and pushed until there is no humanity left in them. We made these things up. We can also let them go. We look at the costco founder saying “If you raise the price of the fucking hot dog, I will kill you. Figure it out” as a incredibly noble and generous stance because it is so rare for someone to think at all about consumers. The Idea of an inventor thinking of a new invention, we applaud them, and then we learn about it in history books 100 years from now is such an insane idea to me. Imagine Thomas Edison invents the lightbulb today. Amazon would give away their own bulbs for free until Edison could not continue his own business, then the price of a bulb would rise to $750 and we would have to put our lightbulbs on payment plans. They say our capitalist competition breeds innovation. I have never had less faith in that argument than I do now. The only innovation it breeds is slimier and slimier tactics to cut costs. Did you know that most of the time when companies have extra money due to less taxes being paid, due to our current administration, they use it to buy back their own stock, a practice that was not even legal before 1982 and viewed as market manipulation. That is the money that is supposed to “trickle down to you”. Did you know that currently in the U.S. there are nearly 2 million more people who are unemployed than there are available jobs. Every bootstrap argument made can be countered with such a simple stat at this point that I’m so tired of saying them. When the game is set up as “stock price go up win the game” we are all losing. Now I know you can say well just buy the stock then, and to you I say yes I know , I do, but not many even can, and the second you do the succubi are there to prey on the little money you do have, but that is for another post.

If we sat down to play a board game and I explained these rules to, you’d say “That is stupid. Lets play a better game”.

Lets play a better game.

-Eddie