I'll try to clear up what the question "is money just?" means. Imagine the monetary system is the ultimate expression of justice. In fact, money is infinitely just. That is to say, it wields the sword, holds the scale, and is blindfolded.

As someone gains merit, they receive exactly what they deserve. No more, and no less. In consequence, if someone receives no money, for work from an employer or for a basic living stipend from a government or for any other reason, they simply do not deserve it. Similarly, if someone has their money taken from them, they likewise deserved that fate.

Is this true of money?

If not, then three questions: 1) can justice be quantified in this way? 2) Should it be? And 3) If it were, would we be describing a free society?

I am reminded of this.

After all, as he said.
Money is the best lawyer.

It is not true of money within our current system. The reason for this is that there is a rogue power called a government which has a monopoly on force and can pretty much penalize or reward anyone it wants. You can lobby this government to, say, raise taxes on your competitors and lower taxes on you. Or you can just get it to pump money into your commodity so as to lower its cost and make you more competitive. This happens so often they have a name for it, they call it a subsidy. Another thing this government can do is to create so many ridiculous regulations in regards to a business that one needs a fleet of corporate lawyers to operate in that sector. This has been done in many diverse areas, notably in healthcare which is why there are no family run nursing-homes and all are operated by callous corporations who treat their patients like they do everyone else, namely a gritty unknown substance one has just scrapped off the sole of one's boot.

Because the ability to lobby and bribe the government is contingent on money it means that once you have amassed capitol you can make it very hard on the competition which has yet to build such wealth. This is the reason large governments who have their hands thrust far up the recesses of the economy's @$$ foster monopolies and it is the reason we live on a planet owned by these monopolies.

Before anyone gets political, let me say that both parties are part of this system. The Republicans will tell you they want to deregulate things but they really only want to deregulate their capital gains and stock investments which reward fat cats for sitting on their inherited wealth. Likewise Democrats will tell you they want to regulate things and tax big business to keep the evil corporations in their place, but those corporations all have the legal power to skirt both taxes and regulations while innovative start-ups are crippled from birth by such laws.

I do suspect that money would actually reward innovation in a free market where the government exists to keep competition fair and not to weight it in one person's favor or another. After all, who really wants to pay for fail. In an open system of free competition money would naturally flow from fail to win and if it didn't people would FINALLY only have themselves to blame.

Money Is intresting and difficult subject to discuss....of course I have to agree with Brain

As I like some of Dwit's philosophical postulates, I will add a little text here. The format is a question and answer exchange for the purpose of clarity and sharing with the thread. It is not to shred out Dwit's addition to the Discussion & Debate sub-forum.


"Is Money Just?"
No. Money possesses no cognition capable of recognizing such a concept.

"Should it be?"
This question presumes that money lacks some thing which Humanity might wish that it possessed. What thing could that be, I wonder?

"If money were just, would we be describing a free society?"
Presuming that money were just would presume that money itself was capable of detecting the difference between justice and injustice. For those who were just, money would detect this and naturally flow toward them because of the intrinsic values of that character. For those who were not just, money would naturally depart from them to the extent that their inner spirit either possessed injustice or made not-just choices.

Even if wealth were able to detect the internal moral compass of a human being, presuming the existence of free will ( which is a completely different thread ), the postulate does not restrict a Human being's basic ability to survive and grow in some capacity. Money can not be eaten.

Put another way, "Presuming that justice exists presumes that some being exists to adjudicate that justice."


For fun, here also is a question for Dwit and the thread, "If Money were just, and was attracted to beings who were just, how would this affect an economy? What would happen if the money did not want to leave the people who were just?"

Tea - I suppose I should have differentiated between money as an institution (the monetary system), and money as a physical thing. I am currently trying to figure out a coherent theory, so some level of absurdity as I think things through is to be expected. Money is bizarre. How did subsistence farmers get convinced into tying their livelihood to wages?

Scumbag_Brain - At some level, a livable wage is a right. If the trickle-down effect does not occur, which I do not believe it does, then it is necessary for a government to enforce some form of welfare. Even failures -- people who, for one reason or another, are not equipped for competition in a free market -- deserve basic necessities.

dealing with it wrote:I suppose I should have differentiated between money as an institution (the monetary system), and money as a physical thing.

Ah, yes, perhaps. It was an interesting postulate, though!

dealing with it wrote:How did subsistence farmers get convinced into tying their livelihood to wages?

In the United States of America? The same way everyone else was fooled. The president of that day of yore convinced Congress to steal the gold of the citizens and hide it away where they could not reach. Even today, gold ore in any large sum is illegal in the hands of a private citizen.

Adding to that, however...

...the swath of variables to succinctly answer this question is quite wide, but for a succinct answer there are two foundational reasons. Both are technology. The first is the refrigerator. Before the refrigerator was the ice box and before the ice box was the ice house. The other answer, at least in the United States of America, is train travel.

Combining refrigeration and trains, and massive produce moving trucks also, altered the paradigm of how much food the country could produce at any one time. It would change the paradigm of any country, really. Suddenly, the shelf life of food was quadrupled without the necessity of canning. Large sums of food could be shipped over vast distances and provide greater, consistent, profits.

Without the heavy weight of gold more produce could be shipped and exchanged with less use of fuel for transporting the payment. These changes, incongruous as they might be, all pressed forward to bring us to the point where any culture as a whole could ask, "How did this happen," if that culture experienced the changes above.

dealing with it wrote:At some level, a livable wage is a right.

There is no provision in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights for this claim. It is this very falsehood that drives a Capitalist society into an Aristocracy.

Put another way, "People have the right to live and be part of the Common Good. They have the right to work, but not to be payed."

@Dealing_With_It Expecting wealth to trickle down from the financiers and bankers who run our economy is like expecting rain to fall out of a blue sky. Trickle down only works if the wealth is concentrated among inventors, engineers, and innovators (in other words the people who actually generate wealth not just steal it). Our wealth is concentrated in scammers of one variety or another because of the situation described above. Get government out of the economy and the scammers have to swim on their own strength. Once they all drown, trickle down should work, because engineers and inventors actually need to build shit.

As for the issue of livable wages, I'm not particularly concerned with social programs. Republicans like to whine about how massive the welfare budget is but placing it next to the military budget or the amount of money Wallstreet steals from taxpayers is like placing a chihuahua hair next to a 2x4. Don't get me wrong I definitely am not a fan of the nanny state (I'd rather take money given out as checks and use it to build schools and hospitals which kills multiple birds with the same stone), but this is a small issue compared to the larger one of our entire democratic system being a farce.

Hmm, I support the welfare state. I really can't think of an alternative when it comes to certain types of disabilities, and I'd call it able privelege to think that building hospitals is a solution. What is someone with a untreatable but non-fatal handicap supposed to do? Live in hospitals? That's what I mean when I say livable wage.

But then, I do have a limit. I have a friend in the States who is convinced that the "work-or-die" mentality in America is the flat-out slavery of poor people to rich people, and that the solution is that anyone should be able to simply opt-out of working, and be provided with rudimentary necessities. He says that, like so many things, the amount of work handed out in the first world is unsustainable. I'm not sure if I agree with that.

For fun, then, let us assume that Dwit's friend's assumption is correct. That the Work-Or-Die function is slavery. What then is a federally sanctioned well-fare system? Where does this wealth come from to feed, house, and inoculate the masses who refuse to labor? Why, it comes from citizens humble and willing to pay their taxes, of course!

The more numerous and grand the federal programs of any nation exist the more wealth must be drawn to fuel those programs. Well-fare, education, private grants, and environmental lobbying simply wastes the results of those who have toiled. Instead, taxing the citizens less would put wealth into the hands of the citizens themselves and allow them to meet the needs of ailing and private citizens without governmental necessity or interference. Doing this would neither decrease nor increase the amount of money available to help any ailing citizen. However, most local citizens and authorities are much more knowledgeable about whom needs help, where, and why, much better than any government body would.

Formally: No, money is not just. Only a being capable of perceiving justice can be just. Therefore, it is only possible for money to be used justly, but not because of the system which disseminates it.

@Dealing_with_It Meh welfare is a wedge issue. It's function is to keep the electorate divided between the poor and the poor who think they're going to be rich one day. Speaking as an American, we need to consider whether we need a military base in every freaking country on the planet before cancelling foodstamps. Priorities.