Mammonism

In the beginning there is no money, people barter. I fish, you farm, and she weaves. We each exchange our product for the products of others. As this becomes a common practice, issues of fair trade arise and standard exchange ratios between various products are gradually established. For example, two pounds of fish can be exchanged for one foot of cloth or three pounds of wheat. But such direct barter is inconvenient. You may want my fish, but I do not want your wheat but her cloth, and she wants your wheat, not my fish. How do we do the transactions? Thus, money as a medium of exchange comes in handy. With money, trade becomes easier.

Initially money is things that people all desire, such as salt and cattle. People first convert their products into such commonly desired goods, then use these commonly desired goods to exchange for other products. A pound of salt can buy a foot of cloth, two pounds of fish, or three pounds of wheat, because the average labor employed in producing these quantities of product is equivalent. Precious metals such as gold and silver eventually become the most common form of money because these rare metals have high values, are easy to carry and store, and can be conveniently cut into pieces to accurately measure the values of other products.

People soon discovered that this way of exchange is still cumbersome. Since money is only used to measure or represent the values of products, itself doesn't have to be a materiel good. A piece of paper can do the same job and is much easier to carry. Thus money changes form from tangible goods to paper bills. It then becomes apparent that even paper money is unnecessary, as transactions can be done electronically. Thus money changes form again from paper bills to digital money - electronic numbers that are stored on computers or mobile devices. These electronic numbers now become the life ambition of the modern people.

In the beginning there is no accumulation of wealth because agricultural products cannot be stored in large number. Trade is only for daily consumption. But with money that is changed. Money can be accumulated indefinitely and passed on to future generations. It can also be used to loan and invest to generate returns. With money I can buy wheat from you and sell it to her at a higher price, and buy textiles from her and sell them to you at a higher price to make profits. Some people even find that they can make money without producing or owning anything, just serving as a middleman or broker. Thus trade is no longer for daily consumption. It became simply a means of accumulating wealth. More and more smart people left manufacturing and entered trading and finance to make money by reselling other people's products and by using financial tools, such as printing money, lending, issuing stocks, speculating, selling insurance, etc. Some economic theories, such as mercantilism, financialism, and neoliberalism, argue that the economy should be driven entirely by market forces, promoting trade and finance as the easiest way to build wealth. This results in the transformation of a production-oriented economy into a trade-oriented or finance-oriented economy. This phenomenon, known as deindustrialization, poses a threat to a country's security, because manipulating finance and using printed money to buy foreign goods cannot defeat the enemy. In crises of war and embargo by hostile forces, victory can only be won by a country's real production capacity.

Making money through trade is a tricky business. Strictly speaking there is no fair trade, or else it becomes unprofitable. One can only gain from the loss of others. For example, employers make money by taking advantage of the employees whose labor generate much greater values than the minimum wage they are paid. Wall Street exploits retail investors' money, using dubious formulas and financial derivatives to make money at the expense of ordinary investors and borrowers. The insurance company exploit people's sense of security. Since low risky people greatly outnumber high risky people, the insurance company can make money by selling an empty promise. Jealous of the insurance company, the drug company increases the price of their product 5000%, according to a recent report. Hospitals make their money in the same way. I went to a hospital for a small skin condition. They sent me to see a family doctor. This family doctor sent me to the lab, and then sent me to a dermatologist. The dermatologist diagnosed it as eczema without the need to see the test result. The prescribed cream cost me $30 and the eczema was cured. But the hospital bill is $800, which is partially paid for by the insurance. The insurance company shifts the cost to the clients by raising premiums and reducing coverages. Health insurance once covers everything, now you have to buy separate insurances for teeth, eyes, ears and drugs. House insurance once covers everything, now you have to buy separate insurances for fire, flood, tornado and earthquake.

This way, while the nation's physical wealth does not increase, some people can make a lot of money through unfair trade. This practice undermines the fundamental principle in trade. The essence of trade is the exchange of labor. A fair exchange reflects the equivalent amounts of labor involved in producing the products. Since the exchange ratios of all products are proportional, the increase in price of one product will trigger a chain reaction of inflation. As a result, houses, cars, groceries, utilities, services, all become more and more expensive, and the government has to raise taxes just to keep even if nothing else. The victims are the ordinary working people. In today's America, 63% of people are unable to pay a $500 surprise bill, but a small number of tycoons benefiting from this unfair system that they have created have accumulated tremendous wealth that reached astronomical figures.

Greed knows no limit and most crimes, caught or not caught, are motivated by money. Noble causes intended to benefit the public, such as journalism, education and medicine, now all become means of making money, and money respects no morality. Clever opportunists who found ingenious ways to take advantage of others become the winners. Honest working people become the losers. As a result, people lost both confidence in fairness and motivation in production, fostering moral decay and opportunism. A worker once could feed the whole family, not anymore because the prices become so outrageous that women also have to work in order to maintain the same standard of living. Feminists may call it women's rights and equal opportunities. In fact it is the enslavement of women. As a woman lamented, "More and more women work extremely hard to make money now. Society provides women with less and less security. Security used to mean a commitment, a clasped hand when cross the street, now it becomes the money in your pocket and a fully charged cell phone... We all yearn to marry a man, only to find ourselves turned into men."

When a society measures success by electronic numbers, permits a handful of oligarchs to accumulate unlimited wealth, allows the rich to influence legislation and policy making with their money, provides them with legal loopholes and preferential treatments, and treats them as model citizens, it is bound that people all want to get rich quickly, that corruption breeds and crimes grow, that the privileged few become winners and the disadvantaged majority become losers, that inequality and injustice increase, that society becomes more and more divided and polarized, that natural resources are depleted and the environment destroyed, that the state is turned into a cartel controlled by capital and the special interests, and that politicians become more and more unscrupulous and shameless.

Capitalism, with its greed and profit-seeking nature, initially may stimulate the growth of an economy, but will inevitably lead to its hollowing out, corruption and failure. When an economy makes profit rather than production its top priority, when it's willing to sacrifice quality for profit, as Boeing did, when most of its manufacturing moved to low-cost countries, when its main components are no longer farmers and industrial workers but merchants, bankers, consultants and lawyers, when its GDP comes primarily from the service and financial sectors rather than production, its failure is not far away. Capitalism is the cancer of the modern world, which dehumanizes people and turns them into slaves to money. When mankind invented money, nobody thought it would lead to the alienation of humanity. How to awaken mankind from this insanity is one of the most intractable problems facing modern philosophers, economists, sociologists, law makers, and politicians. (See America Is in Big Truoble.)