Two years ago I attended a ward where the first counselor was a multi-millionaire. He made his fortune through financial consulting. One Sunday he was asked to give a fireside to teach us some of the tricks of his trade.
One of the most important concepts I left with was the concept of money, and value.
He shared that once he was able to see things in terms of value, instead of money, he started to maintain a temporal wealth. This was interesting, I will return to this concept in a second..
Lately in my ponderings of poverty I was thinking about money, and how a culturally and economically disadvantaged individual might be able to make some.
I realized that money is a social creation, and is also socially dependent. If there is no other person to exchange money with, literally no other person, then what is the point of it? Money was created as a tool to enhance the bartering system. Two people with two objects of value would trade those objects if they agreed that the trade was equal: a loaf of bread for a chicken. Money was then introduced as a way of representing that value in order to assist trading amongst larger societies: a dollar = a loaf of bread, or a chicken, or a wooden bowl. With money the options open up.
As great as money is in representing potential value, it still isn't a perfect system. If there are 10 dollar bills in a society and one guy has 8 of them, everybody is going to feel poor. Are they really poor? Not really, they all still have things of value, but because they have grown accustom to money representing value they think they don't have any value because they don't have any money.
So the society decides to print more money to better represent the value that is out there. This is called inflation. Unfortunately, while that money is being printed a whole bunch of people go without bread and chickens for a while.
Doesn't this sound familiar? A lot of countries, a lot of them, are in situations where 10% of the people have 80% of the money. Which means a lot of people feel poor because they feel like they have nothing of value.. or money. And so they go without bread and chickens. But they still do have value.
So what is a person to do? Well, take it from a multi-millionaire, start bartering again, as much as you can until the system levels out. Sure bartering isn't as convenient as money, but when the money system goes lopsided, it might actually be more convenient.
Or in other words: Trade value for value.
If you have money, this is value, trade it for things you value.
If you have chickens, this is value, trade it for things you value.
I invite you to see what the value for value trade can do for you.
2 comments:
I like this idea! I've never thought about things that way before.
You're probably gonna end up saving the world someday. I'll make you a cape if you want one. But it's gonna cost you a chicken. ;]
Ok, I'll start raising one. Can you make it blue, or dark red? Thanks for your comment! :)
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