Oct 18 2008
Money: Totally Over Rated
Money buys you things that enable you to live so that you can pursue whatever seems to interest and drive you in the context of the outline of your value system which may be the result of your upbringing, your experiences, your own mind, what you’ve read, who you’ve hung out with, what you’ve observed, and is most likely a conglomeration of all those things put together into one huge steaming pile of value. That’s obvious.
The next step is answering this question: does money have anything to do with the quality of an individual’s and/or a community’s existence. The answer is yes. However, this is where we may begin to disagree. Allow me to postulate that there is a very specific cut-off where money no longer has any contributing influence on your happiness and that cut-off point is extremely low on the money-o-meter. Here’s my postulation and feel free to scream when you hear it: once you have enough money to pay for food, shelter, clothing, and whatever it takes to transport you to your steady job — at that point you begin to sail into existence waters that are unaffected by cash income. In other words, once you have what you need happiness’ source in an individual’s life must come from somewhere that is nearly completely unrelated to the benjamins (that is, $100 bills in rap lingo).
Why? Because at the fundamental core of economic theory money exists to buy stuff and at the fundamental core of human existence stuff does not create nor add to an individual’s or a community’s happiness. Show me the happy, fulfilled, satisfied rich man and I will change my postulation accordingly.
