Nov 24: World Money Day?

Not really. It’s only a web site.  But humanity needs such a day to examine our assumptions about money and its proper role in maximizing human freedom and security on this increasingly troubled planet.

Supposedly money makes the world go around!   But really, it’s natural forces.  Money is a human made concept and supposedly the source of all evil when greed becomes more valued than human needs or the environment.  What say you?

Other souls have attempted and succeeded at examining money and its changing value.   Here are some of their observations and recommendations.

The most current?  Money Day should replace Black Friday. This annual Friday physical consumption spending celebration should immediately follow the greatest American food consumption day, Thanksgiving.  

The most depressing?  If you make more than $30,000 a year you are in the top 1% of humanity in economic wealth.

One of the oldest:    I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again, I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Jesus Christ  (if he said it twice maybe he really meant it?)

Wisest and open to interpretation:   “Time is money”. Benjamin Franklin. 

Best thing about money!  Time is life and money saves both.    If we are lucky, we may survive about 70 to 100 laps around the sun.  Each and every day of that 365-day lap approximately 11,000 children under the age of five will die from easily preventable malnutrition and infectious diseases.  UNICEF once estimated that for every $100 invested in effective development programs one child’s life is saved and ten others avoid the lifelong suffering from a mental or physical disability.   

In 2016 UNICEF predicted that without increased funding for effective health related development programs “Almost 70 million children may die before reaching their fifth birthdays – 3.6 million in 2030 alone, the deadline year for the Sustainable Development Goals.”    And, “six core investment packages for 74 high-mortality countries would cost about US$30 billion in additional annual spending (2 per cent above current levels) to cover maternal and newborn health, child health, immunization, family planning, HIV/AIDS and malaria, with nutrition as a crosscutting theme.   Between 2013 and 2035, this investment would avert an estimated 147 million child deaths, 32 million stillborn deaths and 5 million maternal deaths.   Some cost comparisons:  Last year NIH invested nearly $37 billion annually in medical research for the American people.  Illegal Immigration Costs California $30.3 Billion A Year. A 2016 Fact Check estimated that $30 billion is spent annually on 500,000 Indigenous people in Australia; and Gallup estimated that millennial turnover costs the U.S. economy at $30.5 billion annually (millennials show less willingness to stay in their current jobs); and Americans Spend $30 Billion a Year Out-of-Pocket on Complementary Health Approaches.  This year illegal Immigration’s ‘Hidden Tax,’ Cost America about $30 Billion. 

Wise investments:   “Obesity in children is growing out of control. A big part of this is economic. Fake foods are more affordable. It's enticing people to eat more because they think they're saving money when they're really just buying heart disease.” Jillian Michaels

Monetary Policy: The impossible trinity or trilemma is a simple money rule with deep global implications. 

...never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. " - Arundhati Roy

People want the free flow of currency., currency stability, and independent currency policy.  But they can only have two.  (Hint: Stability and independence are illusions.  Pick wisely!).  Profound insight:  This trilemma applies to everything!  If we want to maximize our freedom and security, we need to abandon the government concept of independence.  All of the world’s natural and human made systems and structures are interdependent.  If one insists on independence in any system or structure they must be prepared to sacrifice either freedom or security, or both.

“There is no risk-free path for monetary policy.” Jerome Powell

“When monetary policy destroys the currency, it always destroys the middle class.” Ron Paul

“Money can buy you a fine dog, but only love can make him wag his tail.”  Kinky Friedman

What can money buy?  Life!  But it can’t buy love.

“A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don't need it.” Bob Hope

MicroCredit:  Is lending very small loans to impoverished borrowers who typically lack collateral, steady employment, or a verifiable credit history.  It is designed to support entrepreneurship and alleviate poverty. Many recipients are illiterate, and therefore unable to complete paperwork required to get conventional loans. As of 2009 an estimated 74 million people held microloans that totaled US$38 billion.  Grameen Bank reports that repayment success rates are between 95 and 98 percent. 

The best money investments for the future of humanity:

First:  Achieving the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.  Why? It will give us the best chance of making it through the next 15 years without us destroying ourselves or AI doing it for us.

Second:  Continue investing resources to actually achieve sustainable liberty and justice for all globally, and sustainable technologies that will enable us to relocate our species to other planets indefinitely.   “In the long run a single planet species will not survive. ” Director of NASA, Feb 23, 2006. 

The most interesting insights: (these are not exact quotes but instead represent general concepts as best that my mind can recall from hearing them speak.)

Bucky Fuller:  Money was created as a convenient means of exchange for goods and services.  And profit was originally an indicator that you were providing what was needed.  Somewhere along the line the value of profit became more important than providing what was needed.  And advertising was invented create wants.  Today profit it the end game of economics.  Not providing what is needed.  That would require a value system that put a high sustainable quality of human life above the human wants to immediately look good and feel good.  Then being good and/or doing good had little if any immediate monetary value.

"We may now care for each Earthian individual at a sustainable billionaire's level of affluence while living exclusively on less than 1 percent of our planet's daily energy income from our cosmically designed nuclear reactor, the Sun, optimally located 92 million safe miles away from us."   Buckminster Fuller

Lynn Twist:   ‘Spending money like voting.  Your money votes for more of whatever you buy.’  

Joan Holmes:  ‘If you want to know what your values are, look at your check book.’

Free money:  Kleptocrat's thefts, laundered drug money, and millionaire tax free deposit total approximated $32 trillion of illicit money that they've stashed for themselves in offshore accounts.  Freezing and seizing this money for investment in human capital where most needed should be the highest priority of every government and white hat hacker in the world.  AI could be most helpful in finding, securing, and most effectively distributing these ill gotten gains if corrupt governments stand in the way.

If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.  –  William Somerset Maugham, Strictly Personal [1941]