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It’s YOUR money.
Some
chant this phrase just around income-tax time to express their
indignation at having to “render unto Caesar the things which are
Caesar’s”, with Caesar in this instance being the United States
government. The really motivated see themselves as Caesar as in “we the
people” Caesar and the government a far, far distinct cousin like a
fumbling Spartacus charged with shoring up the defenses of hearth and
home. Still, there are others who chant the phrase as a sort of
soliloquy despairing the seemingly inherent wastefulness of government
spending, as in, “It’s YOUR money and you can do better with it
yourself”.
Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels, the iconoclastic patrons of socialism as a replacement for deity
based religions, would have greatly appreciated the significance of the
“it’s your money” sentiment. The 1848
Communist Manifesto,
aside from laying the theoretical foundation for a socialist
world-utopia, advanced the idea of “progress” as a societal organizing
principle, akin to evolution. At the time, in 1848, “evolution” was the
new mantra of the educationally enlightened—like “energy fields” are
today. So, if species can evolve from primitive to advanced, why not
entire social systems. Presto, bingo, the
Communist Manifesto
and socialism. Of course, as with any “evolutionary” regime—think Dr.
Frankenstein and his monster, or Adolph Hitler and his SS supermen—there
has to be a mad-mad-mad scientist who has figured out how to leap-frog
the evolutionary process. Hence, Soviet Russia founder Vladimir Ilyich
Lenin and his accelerating the evolution of capitalism to socialism by
what he called a
proletarian revolution
– the dictatorship of the
proletariat.
Marx and Engels would,
with an unfortunate degree of accuracy, use the “it’s
your money”
sentiment to illustrate the utter “primitiveness” of the ruling
bourgeoisie. The poor can’t afford a sentiment like “it’s
your money”
and the rich and super-rich aren’t naive enough to believe, let alone
act upon such a sentiment. Only the bourgeoisie , the middle-class, the
“town dwellers” would deign to think in such narrow-mined, pedestrian
terms as equating money with ownership. A beggar can own his bottle of
wine, a millionaire his four-thousand acre estate. Only a myopic
bourgeoisie would think he or she owns a couple-of-hundred bucks
whiffing through a bank account with his or her name momentarily
appended to them.
It’s his or her
money and they can do with it what they will.
If you own it, you
should be able to manage it. Money no exception. Money, as a bartered
commodity, can in fact be managed. The talking heads masquerading as
guardians of capitalism use the management cry as a footnote to the
It’s Your
Money cry.
They are bourgeoisie-impersonators at best. At worst, they are the best
of pure capitalism, having unearthed the secret of getting rich on the
backs of the ill informed.
It’s your money and
you can do with it what you will
is usually uttered to reinforce a distinction between Caesar and serf,
with the serf being anyone who is NOT me and my money. Here however the
ignorance exposed through such utterances not only brushes up against
the tenets of capitialism and socialism, it also comes dangerously close
to uprooting religious tribalism. Therein lies a tale.
Flat World In a
Round Universe
Thomas L. Friedman, in
his excellent book,
THE WORLD IS FLAT,
quotes Harvard University’s political theorist Michael J. Sandel: “Marx
was one of the first to glimpse the possibility of the world as a global
market, uncomplicated by national boundaries”. According to Friedman,
Sandel goes on to say that Friedman’s idea of a flat world was precisely
what Karl Marx envisioned as the evolutionary process of capitalism.
More to the point, Friedman’s excursion into the flat world of global
economic markets and the disappearance of nation-state boundaries brings
into sharp focus the question of the value of money.
It’s YOUR money.
Money represents
commodities of value. Economics 101.
If a beggar is offered
a choice between a peanut butter sandwich and two, crisp U. S. one
dollar bills, he takes the peanut butter sandwich. If a millionaire is
offered a four thousand acre estate or a couple of million dollars more,
he takes the four thousand acre estate. If a middle-class homeowner is
offered a better patch of roadway leading from the driveway of his
modest home and the road or paying a couple of hundred dollars less in
taxes a year, the homeowner takes the better patch of roadway. Economics
101.
Money has no intrinsic
value. The value of money , where it is used, is derived from an
underlying commodity. Underlying commodities in turn are things within
the community which may be bartered, exchanged, or traded. What things
can be bartered, exchanged or traded? You name it. But the most
important exchangeable commodity of course is time.
It’s YOUR time.
If Marx
and Engels are the icons of socialism, Adam Smith and his Wealth Of
Nations must be the icon of capitalism. The fundamental differences
between socialism and capitalism is a clash over the ownership and value
of time. To illustrate the conflict, we must turn to physics.
A thing
seemingly at rest and inert, withers and dies. The paradox of course is
that nothing is really at rest and nothing really dies. One form of
energy is exchanged for another. Inertia and death are manifestations of
an exchange of energies. Basically, the clock keeps ticking even when
you don’t hear the tock.
When we
superimpose this model of existence over an individual’s use or non-use
of time, we have an astounding fact. Socialism dictates that every
individual use time for the benefit of every other individual;
capitalism says that an individual may use their time anyway they deem
desirable. Simplistic? Yes. But the point is that both socialism and
capitalism recognize the commodity Time as the glue holding social
organizations together.
If a beggar is offered
a choice between a peanut butter sandwich and two, crisp U. S. one
dollar bills, he takes the peanut butter sandwich. Where did the peanut
butter sandwich come from? It certainly did not come out of thin air.
Someone milled the flour, made the bread, ground the peanuts. As soon as
the beggar took the peanut-butter sandwich, he incurred a debt. Should
he have taken the two, crisp U. S. one dollar bills?
If a millionaire is
offered a four thousand acre estate or a couple of million dollars more,
he takes the four thousand acre estate. With three-fourth of the earth
covered by water, land, even a measly four thousand acres, is of
infinite value determined by its finite existence. As soon as the
millionaire took the land, he incurred a debt, an obligation if you
will. Should he have taken the four million dollars instead?
If a
middle-class homeowner is offered a better patch of roadway leading from
the driveway of his modest home or paying a couple of hundred dollars
less in taxes a year, the homeowner takes the better patch of roadway.
The homeowner, having paid taxes to facilitate improving the road in
front of his home, has no farther obligation tittered to the
improvement. What's more, the middle-class homeowner, by facilitating
improvement of the little patch of road in front of his home, has
provided a benefit to other home owners on his little stretch of road;
he has provided a benefit to the cars, delivery trucks, and school buses
using his little patch of roadway to travel from point A to point B in
his little community. To raise the question of whether the homeowner
should have simply kept the money and not pay the taxes runs full-force,
avoidance impossible into Religion.
Own a piece of land,
you incur an obligation. Take a peanut butter sandwich from a charitable
hand, you incur an obligation. The middle-class homeowner squats on a
piece of land and, through the largess of others, has a roadway to get
from home to the heather lands. Obligations. Capitalism has an implied
warrant of doing for others what can not be done individually. Socialism
has an implicit warrant saying that you will do for others what can not
be done individually. Mainstream religions straddle the middle--Religionism:
if you don't do for others what they can not do individually, chances
are good you will end up in hell or some other undesirable
place—individually.
The underlying tenet of
all three “ism” is that Time is a commodity. Time is yours. You may
fritter it away on contemplation of the barren landscape of your navel
or build the next Giza Pyramid. Money's got nothing to do with it. And
that's the heresy.
Control the
Question, Control the Argument
At this early stage of
the Barack Obama administration, if nothing else is achieved
commensurate with the promise of what could be achieved, the question of
how our society allocates its resources has already risen from the
chatter of one “ism” versus another to the question of why we are an
organized society in the first place. Money, as in trillions trickling
through millions of bank accounts, retirement funds, and stock market
transactions, has very little to do with the real question. Not everyone
has “got it” yet. Certainly the Republican party hasn't got it yet. Even
the majority of the Democratic party hasn't got it yet. There may even
be a question of whether Barack Obama has really got it yet.
But it is the question on the table of history and it will be answered.
What is this generation of Americans going to do with its Time?
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