It is rare in our lives when we can go a day without having some kind of
interaction with money, or some situation or image that reminds us of money.
Most people who have a little money to spare, investment it somewhere. But, what
is this money, when invested, being used for? Some, as economist Wolfgang
Kessler tells us, do not care and others do not care to know.
Over the last few decades, this type of financial ignorance has permitted grave
consequences where money, while being used to create new jobs, simultaneously
finances child labour, weapons sales or ecologically unsound ventures.
The removal of restrictions
on capital, ‘closed door deals’, the automation of stock markets which move
billions of dollars worldwide at the click of a mouse, has “transformed money
from a simple means of payment - to a profit earning end in and of itself.”
“The global money market is no longer at the service of people, but people are
at the service of money,” says Kessler. To return money to honest trade – not
‘free trade’ – a trade linked to social achievement, is to return the function
of money as a service to the people, thereby fulfilling a purpose that is more
just and sustainable.
This type of trade allows those most in need to benefit and also to contribute in improving their local and even the global situation. Money is a tool that each person can choose to wield in an ethical fashion.
This type of vision of money
is not new, but it is more sustainable and natural, qualities with which we
would do well to infuse into each of our endeavours.
