Boy, the economy is stupid! Look, whom it rewards. Look whom it punishes. And it’s so damned unjust. A bank coughs and your life is infected with pneumonia.
By Detlef.
Homo sapiens is around for approximately 150.000 years. Money is around for a little more than 2000 years. Perhaps it’s a concept we have to get used to over time. I hope it won’t take us another 150.000 years.
I mean: nice try Marx – but that didn’t work.
By Detlef.
Truth comes from the means to define it.
By Detlef.I wrote this post about politicians while I was feeling helpless about politics.
It’s a bit whiny-voiced because the world is not the way I would like to have it. That hurts – but we are all grown-ups, aren’t we? Let’s see:
There will be elections in Germany this year and there is a well-known journalist who recommends to abstain from voting as a protest against the alternatives. I would hate to do so – but presently I have absolutely no idea who might be friend or foe, or even: least foe.
It’s not that I’m not informed – it’s that I’m informed too much. What I read on the web doesn’t inspire trust into any politician nor any party.
What I get from the candidates and their parties is political marketing: I read the first 3 sentences and think:
Do you have to sell politics like a washing agent?
And then I stop reading.
Yesterday I was informed that one of the banks that have to be bailed out by the state with taxpayer’s money is aggressively bidding for the house we are living in for rent. The owner doesn’t want to sell, they are nagging him about it anyway, bidding way above the market-price. The bank wants to kick out the long-term tenants, renovate the building and then resell the apartments. That’s not easy under German law, but it can be done. They do it all over Hamburg. It’s their business model.
And we enable them to do so with our money? To prevent the system as a whole from failing?
So here is another whiny-voiced post about politics.
By DetlefDo you understand the concept of “Money”? Do you understand why there is a global financial crisis right now? I don’t. Is it the money glut, the savings glut, consumerism, greedy managers, greedy everybody?
Like “Negation“, “Money” may be a concept the deeper strata of our selves can’t conceive. “Barter” my subconscious understands. I think even my dog computes “Give/Take”.
When I was a little kid, barely able to speak, I enjoyed to go shopping with my grandmother. It was the pre-supermarket age (yep, I’m that old). We went into the shop, got all those things, even sweets for me, gave a single piece of paper and still got a lot of silver and copper coins. Live was lovely! The shop was paradise.
What I couldn’t compute and what eventually made shopping with me very stressful for my Granny was this: “Why don’t we take more sweets?” In fact: “Why don’t we take all the sweets?” Perhaps we would get even more coins back if we took all sweets? The shop-lady seemed to enjoy that we took her things and her coins away. She was always extraordinary friendly.
Okay: My understanding of the concept of money has advanced during the years. Eventually poor Granny was successful in explaining what the friendly lady in the shop really was about: paper, coins, sweets, all that. Hmmm. Not so good, after all.
But when I learn now that you can run a bank-business into the ground, be bailed out by the taxpayer and still get a huge bonus for your “accomplishments”: then I think Granny was wrong and little Detlef was right.
Why don’t we all take all the sweets? What are we doing wrong?
Man at work. By Detlef.
In front of my window movers are loading their truck. My body aches as I watch them carrying cupboards, washing machines and other heavy equipment.
Is my work as unpleasant as their work? Fortunately not. Should it be? Should I work so long hours that these hours get as unpleasant and demanding as a mover’s job?
After all: you should work as hard as you can – shouldn’t you?
There is still this silly paradigm in my head:
The compensation (i.e. money [makes the world go O]) you receive for your work is reciprocal to the unpleasantness or the riskiness of your work. If you have fun at work there is probably something wrong. You are not working hard enough.
That’s one of the paradigms where probably the opposite is true.
Still: it sticks like glue.
Wow: a rhyme! Probably there is a song in this.
With my post about Brahman, Atman, Ego and the USS Enterprise I wanted by no means join the ranks of the ego-bashers who maintain that the ego is the sole source of all the human problems.
We need our egos bitterly to deal with everyday problems. We are gregarious animals, we have to organize our lives, our politics our finances in a rational way – we have no choice but to do so. We are in this together.
Here is another song out of my archives. I am astonished that I sang it in 2007 already. That’s when the current financial crisis started as “the credit crunch”. Remember?
Let’s all hook up our egos in a joint effort to end this crisis, learn some important lessons out of it and try to make this world a better place for all of us.
Wasn’t that what President Obama said? It’s so along ago, I don’t quite remember.
Money is a highly complex social invention. It’s the foundation of our lives. Without money there is no exchange of commodities, no supermarkets, no electricity, gas or water supply, no telecommunications, no civil society at all.
Should the financial markets collapse the vast majority of human beings in the developed countries bereft of infrastructure would die within weeks. Without payment, there would be no police – social infrastructure would crash as well.
What’s the foundation of the foundation of our lives? It’s trust.
I cannot trust a crook, I cannot trust a person or institution without any moral principles. And I cannot trust a pauper with money.
That’s why moral, integrity and dignity are the foundations of our life’s foundation. That’s why Obama’s statement “we have a deficit of trust” troubles me so much.
Can we trust a federal government with $1.2 trillion deficit? Yes we can. Yes we should – because we have to.
By Detlef
My laptop
is my new shop
I buy and sell 24/7
is this hell or heaven?
That’s it.
(Diabolical laughter)
Das kommt raus beim freien Assoziieren bei Twitter: Eine Gedankenfolge über das Geld. Wenn ich meine Gedanken fließen lasse, denke ich oft englisch. Why? – Because in my ears it sounds better than Deutsch. Und Französisch kann ich nicht genug um drin zu denken.
Geld ist nur eine Leerstelle unserer Träume. Aber trotzdem die Kardinaltugend?
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