Who Does Money Belong To?

I was having a conversation with a friend the other day and he wondered if it were possible to become wealthy and still be moral. He felt that whatever he earned was his business and he’d have no problem sleeping at night, so long as nothing really egregious happened along the way. I countered that it depended on how he made the money if one could remain moralistic and wealthy. We went back and forth a bit, with me throwing wrenches into his ethically acceptable business practices and him countering. Ultimately, we came to the conclusion that a person’s perspective on wealth depended largely on who that person thought owned the money to begin with.

Confused? Yeah. I probably could have explained that better. Let me try this.

Is money an abstract phenomenon, a thing that is simply floating around the air, and whoever grabs it becomes the owner? Or is there a larger connection between the people and the money that represents them?

In America, we are taught that money is a few things: it’s a reward for hard work, it’s a necessity for life, and it’s an instrument of power. It has both a nebulous quality and a physical manifestation. Much of our banking is done virtually. “Money” is a number on your iPhone or a series of zeros and ones hidden deep within a computing code. No longer are we carrying around gold nuggets or seashells or clay coins. When I buy beer, all I have to do is wave my phone at something, and presto — I’ve “paid” for it. But we also still have paper money and coins, as antiquated as that seems. Our penny, for instance, was originally made from copper (that’s why it’s got that nice orange-brown look to it). But as copper gained value, it was slowly changed over to zinc. So if you happen to find any pennies dated pre-1982, save them. They’re worth more than $.01.

As we’ve transitioned to electronic currency (crypto or otherwise) our relationship to money has changed. No longer are people stuffing bills inside of mattresses or bringing paychecks to the bank for deposit. Instead, they’re getting it directly deposited or using photo deposits. My bank accounts didn’t even require me to go anywhere. It was entirely virtual. Things were not always so simple.

The earliest instances of money come from about 5000 years ago. Stamped metal coins made from silver and gold popped up about 2500 years ago. The system has always been roughly the same. The coin represents a physical commodity (a barrel of grain) as a placeholder. So rather than walk around with whatever goods you had, you could exchange coins that people could then use to get other stuff. It’s not a bad system and you can see the value in it. As long as most people agreed to what the value of the currency was, the system worked nicely.

But in that shared belief lies the rub.

Like all “shared fictions” we have in society, they only work if the vast majority of people believe in them. This accounts for everything large and small — from the existence of god(s) to the proper way to stand in an elevator, our society hinges upon shared fictions to help us cooperate and make sense of the world. When the people no longer agree about the value of a currency, the fiction crumbles. After World War One, for example, hyperinflation struck Germany hard. People had to carry around stacks of money in wheelbarrows just to buy a loaf of bread. In many instances, money was one of the cheapest things you could have. People burned banknotes instead of wood to stay warm. Women made dresses and clothes from it because it was cheaper than using it to buy materials. See:

This seems counterintuitive. How can money, the thing you use to buy stuff, be worth less than the stuff you are buying? It happens when the shared fiction of currency breaks down and people lose confidence in the system. It makes sense if you think about it. You don’t want the thing that represents money to have any real value otherwise it would be too expensive to make. This is why we don’t make coins from silver or gold or copper anymore. A coin’s value cannot come from what it is made from but rather what it represents. In a sense, the physical currency MUST be worthless, or as close to worthless as possible. That way, people have no choice but to believe in the fictional system of money.

But along with this shared fiction comes a kind of social responsibility. The reasons for the hyperinflation that struck the Weimar Republic are complex and varied. One of the main causes was the government printing more money than usual to pay off debt. Instead of taxing its citizens, which had endured a horrific war, Germany simply printed money to pay its creditors. By adding currency to the system without increasing the number of goods for sale, this, in essence, quickly devalued the worth of those goods, forcing retailers to raise prices at an ever-increasing rate. A loaf of bread, for instance, cost 4 marks in 1921 in Berlin. By 1922 it had risen to 163 marks. A year later, a loaf of bread cost 201,000,000,000 marks. Seems bad!

For a shared fiction to succeed, everyone must believe in it. Most of our society is built upon them. Imagine trying to drive a car without everyone knowing the same set of rules? It would be chaos. Would it be nice to be able to blow through red lights and speed around town without any regard for traffic signs? Sure. Until you smashed into someone else doing the same thing and you both died. In exchange for order and safety, we sacrifice a little bit of freedom. We all buy into the notion that there is a “correct” way to drive so nobody gets hurt. Well, not nobody. 16,000+ people died last year (2020) from auto accidents. So clearly, there are still people shirking their responsibilities behind the wheel.

You can apply a measure of social responsibility to virtually any other shared fiction, including money. Yet, whenever people talk about money it is often within the context of it being disconnected from society or as something that stands alone. Rich people are only rich because we allow them to be. If the majority of Americans decided tomorrow that we were adopting a new currency with no conversion from the dollar available, rich folks would find themselves with nothing.

Notice I said rich and not wealthy. I won’t get into it too much here but the difference between wealthy and rich goes beyond money. Rich people have money and not much else. Wealthy people have property, possessions, and also a lot of money. Wealth is a nice word for hoarding. Wealthy people convert the shared fiction of money into tangible things that themselves have a variable value. $100 million for a Picasso painting might not be a great investment. But four blocks of real estate in Manhattan likely is. The more hoarding that takes place the fewer goods there are on the market for everyone else to buy. Scarcity increases and as we learned from Germany in the 1920s, this is not a good thing.

This all brings me back to my original question: who does money belong to? Is it this separate thing that a person can collect throughout their lives with no responsibility? Or is it an important fiber that weaves our social constructs together? I tend to think it’s the latter.

You can see why the people in power would like us to think that money is a nebulous thing that lives in the aether of existence, and only those smart enough or wise enough or bold enough to collect it end up wealthy. It alleviates them of any sense of guilt or responsibility when it comes to impoverished people. They aren’t poor because of hoarding and unfair practices. They’re poor because they didn’t do enough.

One example my friend and I discussed was Jeff Bezos, the occasionally wealthiest man in the world. On one hand, you can say that his insane wealth is “deserved”. He saw an opportunity in the marketplace (online book sales) and took advantage of it. Over two decades he slowly expanded his shopping empire. His cleverness and ability to see where the needs of consumers were heading allowed him to accumulate riches beyond imagination. The dude could spend $1,000,000 a day and STILL make millions.

On the other hand, you could say that Jeff killed local bookstores (both chains and independently-owned) and then used that power to force publishers to undervalue their products. He then used the troves of data about his customers to undermine any other competing sellers within the Amazon “marketplace”. He then used the size of his operation to force local communities into giving him sweetheart deals to open distribution centers under the guise of providing jobs. Did these jobs pay a livable wage? No, of course not. Did I also mention that Amazon paid ZERO DOLLARS in federal taxes? Why… it’s almost as if there’s a bit of cheating going on.

I do not think a person can become a billionaire and remain moral. In order to hoard that amount of wealth, I think there has to be a total abandonment of any social responsibilities that come with having so much money. There is some combination of the following: your workers are not paid adequately; the raw materials for your product cause environmental harm; you actively deny competitors from the marketplace via legislative measures or monopolistic practices; you manipulate markets to ensure status, or you deliberately stifle innovation to prevent industry growth.

Money is not a fruit that grows on a tree and only the clever monkeys have figured out how to pick it. It is a social construct that belongs to all of us. And I think it’s time we start acting like that’s the case. Wealthy people in America need to start being held accountable for their hoarding. We need to tax them as much as we can and pass laws that require them to take care of their employees. It would be nice if they did this on their own. But clearly, that is never going to be the case. It is the government’s job to incentivize companies to do more for their workers and society in general, rather than the current structure where businesses are encouraged to do less for everything but their own bottom lines.

America belongs to all of us, rich or poor, and we have an obligation to not only help each other but to make sure the laws that govern our shared fictions have our best interests at heart. If not, we risk sliding into a multitude of tragedies (hyperinflation, mass poverty, etc.). We do not have to kowtow to the false notion that money is separate from the society that allows it to exist. Instead, we have to stand firm that our system of money and economics benefits ALL OF US. Not just the wealthy. Otherwise, we might have to turn to more desperate solutions: