Another day, another dollar. A day late, a dollar short. Dollars to doughnuts.
A dollar is a unit in flux, but it’s a unit that represents our time, effort, and attention.
How much would you pay for a new car? WAIT! Before you answer, how would you rather pay for a new car?
- Clean 150,000 garbage cans
- Mow 1,000 acres of lawn
- Sew 100,000 buttons by hand
- Wash 75,000 dishes
Those were chosen completely at random, and on purpose. There is no attempt at equivalence here, there may be one of the above that is much easier for you to attain. And that’s the way it’s supposed to work. Fortunately, we live in a society where there is a common medium of currency, which makes the comparisons easier. Much easier than when we had to barter for goods.
Trade Talks
Life in a “five cows for an acre” society is not nearly as efficient. When there is a common ground, a coin of the realm, trade gets streamlined. You don’t waste valuable time (another commodity) choosing how to pay or what means of compensation you’ll accept. You do business, and you move on. In societies that lack stable currency, you’ll see underground markets emerge swiftly to fill the need. Prisons are full of people who’ve learned how to barter. So are nations with economic and military strife. Many look down on such situations as being uncivilized, but they may put their participants even closer to civility than we realize.
Dollars are abstract things, but when we become so familiar with them they take on very non-abstract qualities.
- Dollars can be counted
- Dollars can be measured
- Dollars can be compared over time
- Dollars can sit idle in my pocket
- Dollars can be buried
- Dollars can be put to work
- Dollars can be wasted
Most importantly, dollars can become so central to our thoughts and conversations that they get in the way of how we might compare other abstract notions — and once we have a strong vested interest in considering.
Freedom and Security
Money isn’t everything, and is not the measure of everything. Take Freedom and Security, for example. In an ideal world, we max out on both. But we don’t live in an ideal world, and that’s why we sometimes have to trade in one to “purchase” the other. Don’t want people to threaten or harm you? Then enact and enforce laws that infringe on the freedom of others to harm. Want to feel the freedom of riding without a helmet or a seatbelt. Enjoy it, knowing you have diminished your security by a very vague but very real amount.
Why did I start talking about dollars? Because in a world where there is always a medium of exchange, we don’t do a very good job calculating the exchange at face value. How much is Freedom worth? How much is Security worth? And how do we strike the best balance?
It’s easy to say that we ought “shop” for Security the same way we shop for Shoes. Look for a good fit, and shop around for the best value. After all, you’re going to do a lot of walking in them. Yet how often have we bought into a line of rhetoric or argument that overemphasizes one part of the balance? And how often do we ignore real tangible threats in proportion to bizarre and rare ones that enjoy news coverage?
Many of the contentious political issues of the day fall under the Freedom vs. Security paradigm.
- Social Security
- Health Care
- Tax Rates
- Homeland Security
- Torture
- Gitmo
- Patriot Act
Without really verbalizing it, most of the people who argue passionately are effectively saying the same thing: (issue) is/isn’t a good deal. We’re giving away too much A to get too little B.
Smart Shoppers
What do smart shoppers do? And can we apply those lessons to issues of liberty and survival? Of course we can – we just have to tap into that part of the brain that recognizes a barter situation, and can haggle for the best exchange.
Smart shoppers:
- research their purchases in advance
- compare vendors
- wait for the right time
- don’t buy more than they need
Have we traditionally gone about purchasing security? We wait until there is a terror attack or a financial panic, and we give away everything for a tiny morsel of safety.
And how have we traditionally gone about purchasing freedom? Some actually serve in the military, but for the most part we inherited it. Americans enjoy a windfall of freedom that we haven’t done squat to earn, so there is no real cost attached to it. The only parallel might be those fighting for financial freedom, but there again we’re back to dealing with Dollars again. Back to the tangible.
Is it any wonder we’ve done such a horrible job managing our Freedom and Security? We have an asset (Freedom) that we spend like Other People’s Money that will never run out, and we spend it on the most extravagant reassurances at the worst time and at the highest cost. We’re like the poor fools who only go to the grocery store when we’re starving; then wonder why we’re poor, fat, and have a pantry loaded with fluff.
Now consider: Everything that happens in government at any level is happening because of your effort. Your tax money made it possible for representatives and bureaucrats to make decisions about how you are exchanging your Freedom and Security – and often not to your benefit either way. Your gave up your freedom to engage in activities that allowed you to trade time for money. And the government took a portion of that money. Think about this next time you hear anything about Homeland Security, or a Bailout, a Tax Proposal, or any bill: Am I salivating at the deal? Or am I just so starved that I’ll swallow anything, no matter how harmful?
[tags]Ike Pigott, Occam’s RazR, Freedom , Security, Homeland Security, terrorism, government, economics[/tags]
