Money For A Change

Money makes the world go round. It's highly akin to sex because our net worths are our digital genitalia. We lie about the size of our bank accounts. And financially, I am endowed, so to speak. How can I not "like" money?

It is significantly easier to lend money than to collect it.

Some people like to think their credit limit is their personal wealth.

I am on the leading edge of happiness if I have the basic electronic desktop repertoire full of gadgets and the latest toys. And pretty much everything from my phone to my laptop is the newest and greatest.

Electronics and automobiles are the only places where materialism feels good. As someone prone to depression, I knew winning the lottery would never cure depression - but it would make spending money a lot more fun. But how can this be?

I know something has to do with how little I earned at times in my life when money should have meant the most. Conversely, I spent it fairly quickly if I had a wallet full of bills. Money just "was." And while the rest of the world seeks out crime, education, job searching, nepotism, politics, or jobs in the adult movie industry - all to better their odds in terms of receiving money - I never saw many promotions or raises. Money was always going into someone else's pockets. The paycheck I envisioned was always 20-30% less than my arithmetic had amounted to.

I could never trust my checks, I could never lend out money and have it all repaid in one lump sum; the world has a lot of problems with money, and the one rule I noticed early on was it was easier to lose it than to win it... and it was easier to lend it and never see it again. For people who wanted $100 at a critical moment when a friend was soaked with poverty-stricken perspiration, needing this money was akin to selling a kidney. The acting and charades were over as soon as I had lent the money. An economic Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. And payback was never the due date, nor was it for the full amount. In fact, when people look back at how desperate they had been at that moment, they laugh as if they are on some higher social rung now. But if you are, where's my damn money?

Since I have acquired all I need to survive, a nice laptop, all the peripherals, and all the toys, I am fairly "complete." I go window shopping, and I don't get erections anymore. I can live on the thing edge of nothing, and often my small bank account freezes over and I live within my means. (Truth be told: If I were to win the lottery, the only bucket list inventory I require is a 1987 Lamborghini Countach, but that is catering to a dream from the 15-year-old in me. And he's been waiting a long time for that dream to bear fruit. But after a few days, I'd sell it and get something more responsible.) Suffice it to say, if I had $10,000 to spend, I wouldn't have much I wanted to spend it on.

The rest of the world is somewhere between my boring financial status and the lowest caste kids in India wading through mountains of garbage looking for recyclables. There they are, the greedy, the I'll be damned, the "over my dead body", the "do up a budget" society, watch the third quarterly earnings, sell when it hits two dollars a share, "if we use cheaper materials, we'll make a killing," get rid of it before the lease is up, pay off your credit cards, "give us all your money and no one will be hurt," don't forget to tithe, Ethiopian King emails, penny stocks, Ponzi schemes, corporate bonuses, insider trading, gaslighting, taking 10$ from the till because nobody will miss it, "I can finally afford to be eccentric, but I don't know how", Christmas in Aspen, life insurance, one-percent-above-prime, inflation, GDP, duty, taxes, venture capital, the accountant will let you do this and this, a security complex for your possessions, a house and a home, a Sugar baby, a storage locker to hold the stuff that won't fit in your house, kids, people to look after your kids, things for your kids to own, and not only keeping up with the Joneses but surpassing them based on the size of their hottub. It can build walls, and it can take them down. Physical walls, emotional walls, any walls.

Money can actually get you almost anything you want. It might not be able to get you to Mars yet, or maybe you can't rent out the Mona Lisa for a party, but you can have someone killed, you can influence an election, you can get out of jail, or you can acquire anything with a price... and everything has a price. In fact, the insurance for letting the Mona Lisa out for an exhibit is $700,000 - the highest insurance you can get. Which proves the claim that you can put a price on priceless.

Money can buy you gold or titanium or antimatter. It can get you one cab or a fleet of taxis. It can buy you love in the form of a puppy or a chorus line of prostitutes. Money can get you the cleanest, best Cartel-grown drugs on the planet, or it can buy you a body reworked by plastic surgery. Money is the answer to so many questions.

I guess my problem is, why does money seem to be the motive for everything criminal? Why do so many people lie and cheat when money is involved? Why isn't the world like lending a cup of sugar and receiving a cup of sugar - instead of caches of firearms, drug-fuelled maniacs, and motorcycle gangs who'll do anything to appear wealthy?

Obviously, herein I can visualize a Venn diagram where money and evil share a large piece of each other. I went to donate $20 to the earthquakes in Turkey only to find out that the bonuses of the CEOs of the top charities were insanely overcompensated. My $20 wouldn't have gone to Turkey. It would have gone to a golf club membership for the managers. And people are unabashed when it comes to what they earn, as long as they can give the aura of having financial success.

If you don't pay a bill, debt, balance, or minimum payment, all hell breaks loose, and your credit score suffers a loss of face. If your credit card is rejected on a first date, it's likely the last. Having money means having options. Having no money means having new options. Crime is our biggest problem, you can buy yourself out of racism or sexism (in fact, nothing solves problems like money), but crime, that act of attempting to get rich by illegal means, is our biggest problem. How many court cases are there where someone only wants an apology? None, they all want fistfuls of cash.

I suspect the crimes we commit are what the devil watches when he binges on YouTube. We're so desperate, so stupid, so needy, so untrustworthy, so paranoid, and so courageous. We'll do anything to obtain money; we'll even sell pictures of our anuses.