The Root of All Evil
*This is the incomplete version of this writing, visit my Twitter to read all of my thoughts — featured in Bitcoin Magazine
*This is the incomplete version of this writing, visit my Twitter to read all of my thoughts — featured in Bitcoin Magazine
To Start…
For my entire life, to the best of my memory, I can recall one persistent narrative:
“For the love of money is the root of all evil, therefore selfishness must be the seed.” — M.D. Birmingham, (which is a take on the quote from 1 Timothy 6:10).
In the most recent decade of my time among the living I have learned how this belief is wildly misguided. Allow me to defend my reasonings why.
The Ultimate Currency
In the grand scheme of things, money has played a massively important role in the development and progress of history. From the use of seashells as a “money,” to the gold coins of Rome, or the first fiat currency — the jiaozi of the Song Dynasty in China, to the U.S. Dollar today; money has played a pivotal role for humanity.
What money has done, what made it SO revolutionary, was that it allowed our species to give physical form to our time, and our energy.
Please, take the time to consider that thought.
Time.
The passage of time is one thing that we can never get back. Once it has been spent, there’s no refund. Time is the ultimate currency, forever passing without the ability to return to a prior moment. Ever passing, ever spent, ultimately and unequivocally finite.
Whether you go to work every day, or you have a hobby that allows you to make a profit from your efforts — you are monetizing your time, and your effort, that was invested into that job or hobby. That’s precisely what a wage, or salary, represents — the opportunity cost for your time. Every hour that you sacrifice to a job, you make a decision that the time you sacrifice is worth the monetary exchange you earn in return.
Let me make this clear. A wage is a trade, where you determine that your time is worth the amount you are being compensated for. Whether that amount seems low or high, that’s something you have to tackle as an individual. But, typically, individuals earn what their time is worth in accordance with multiple factors: skill/capability, specific knowledge, expertise, network connections, wisdom, etc. All of those qualifications represent an amount of time that was invested by the individual. Time, again, is the actual currency.
By giving our time an exchangeable vehicle in the form of money, or purchasing power, we made it possible for our species to exchange our own time for the time of another’s. Where you may spend hours of your day to produce a tool to be used, let’s say an axe, you may then sell this axe to another for money, where you then go and use that money to purchase bread — which would have required effort on your part to produce yourself (not to mention the time and energy required to spend learning, failing, and refining the process to produce said good).
Love For Money
So, I propose a… philosophical, maybe even spiritual question:
If money is “the root of all evil,” but money is simply a representation of our time, what does that make of us and our use of time?
Money is not the root of all evil. Money is a tool, just like the axe. A tool is purely neutral, it has no philosophical or moral allegiance.
Therefore, if money is neutral, then the root of evil has to lie elsewhere. Not within the vehicle with which we give our desires physical realization.
Appreciating money is to appreciate time. Rather, the appreciation of efficient time expenditure. Saving money is to park your expended time for a larger purchase at a later date, or to allocate funds in case of an unforeseeable expenditure or emergency. Whereas investing money is to sacrifice immediate gratification of a purchase and to risk providing funds to another individual/group, allowing them to use your money (ergo; time) to act out their plans or business, in exchange for a greater return on your initial investment in the future.
Money is not evil.
Money is time.
What matters is how we choose to spend it.