14 octubre 2006

Money is not the answer

The worst thing you can possibly do is to throw money at a problem. If you give someone who is angry money, they will go out and buy a gun to kill people. if you give someone who is sad, they might drink. Hungry people need food, not money. Sick people need treatment, not money. Children need a childhood, not money. There are many problems that can be solved without money being the answer.

Poor people for example, need more than just a handout. Assuming the poor become rich through an expedient upward mobility in their economy it becomes easy for them to enthrall themselves among their new acquisition power, and forget about the problems that affected you when you were poor. Having that sense of everyday-battle taken away, some are left without any choice but to consume material goods. In this paradigm, the only choices left are those of which things one desires to consume. But the problem isn't about the buyers. It's about the sellers. It's about what they want and how they are going to get it.

If you can a way to get people to buy a good or a service for their every need, then eventually there will be very few producers with a lot of power.

Since the free market is a social contract, all its disputes should be handled by society, and not the State, which may have its own interests. If companies can make consumers agree to a contract, then consumers should, by the same right, be able to demand that a producer conform to its interests.

Disputes should not be handled by the State. States are prone to corruption by the sellers, since they could bribe or influence officials to pass laws protecting their enterprise. Consolidation of power, between business and government is undesirable because it shows that the State, which is supposed to be the people, can be corrupted by money and power. On the other hand, if a State distributes, not money, but power equally among people and for-profit organizations, then an equilibrium is created, since anyone can become a producer of a product. Initiative is key. Without it, a society becomes complacent, lazy and ignorant. Then, many buyers can be told what to purchase through an increasingly powerful handful of for-profit organizations.