Vladisvok Destino's thoughts: Value of paper

Hope you all liked the title, in case you're wondering this isn't a "save the trees" or a "omg global warming" post, we're going to be discussing a specific type of paper, the type with pound signs on it, money.

One thing I've wondered for quite a while is why so much value is placed in money? What is the cost of producing it, the cost of the paper, the ink, the machine to put the two together? Now are you honestly telling me that it costs more to produce £20 notes than £5 notes, even if it does, does it really cost £20 to make a £20 note? Or is it that we as a society assign value to what is in reality a worthless piece of paper? And so the question becomes, if the only value that the piece of paper has is that which we assign to it, what happens when a person assigns a different value to it than the world in general accepts should be given to it?

Something I have realised over the years is that the currency your world is based on means nothing to me, at least, what one would call my "disposable" income, means nothing. I have enough money to pay my bills, to buy what I need, so why should any remaining money above that threshold be of value to me? Especially when I have friends who may have more use for the money than I do? Yet what I find is that people in your world find this trail of thought to be wrong somehow, that for some reason this money should have some more value to me than it does.

I'm sure many of you may have in some small way been guilty of this, paid for a can of drink for a friend? Maybe they didn't have the money for a trip to the cinema and so you bought the ticket for them? But what if it was a larger amount, how much would you spend on a friend before you considered it too much? Ten pounds? Twenty? Fifty? One Hundred? I ask because it seems to me that I've never actually found the limit, which as those of you who know me will probably realise is a really interesting thing to me.

A friend is playing a game and can get some bonuses each month if $20 is donated on her behalf, so I donate it, I hear that a friend is having trouble over a deposit, my immediate thought is "well fine, I'll give you the money", someone I know is looking at buying a house and is having issues over a couple of grand, my immediate thought is "give me a week or two and I can organise that," yet in the world we seem to live in, this sort of thought process and behaviour would be seen to be wrong, why is that?



Millionaires and celebrities can sometimes give large amounts of money to people and for this they are praised, so is the objection that people hold one of the percentage of your funds that you are offering? Is it more acceptable for a millionaire to give someone £1,000 than for someone who has £2,000 to give half of that away? This may be considered a logical view to take, except that the money would surely mean more from someone who had less to offer? The millionaire can easily afford the £1,000 and much more, but surely if someone is willing to give you half the money they have then it means more? Or could it be that the problem is more the connotation of taking the money? In my example the celebrity would probably donate money to "charity", perhaps people see the attempt to give you money as treating you like a charity case? But then again, friends help eachother every day, so why should it be different just because money is involved, especially if the money does not hold the value that people seem to attribute to it?

Perhaps the issue is that humanity is not generally a trusting race? For someone to have given you that much money there must be some kind of catch, do they expect something in return? But surely, if it is a friend offering you the money, you should be able to trust them enough to take the money, otherwise why are they your friend?

Maybe this is just one of those things that I will never understand about your species? Yes that seems more likely. Yes I think we'll go with "you people are odd for placing far too much value in (to quote a famous Douglas Adams series) small green pieces of paper." Remember people, it only has the value which you allow it to have...

Quote of the day
Todays QoTD is brought to you by Steven Weinberg:
"Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion.”
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