27 April
Day 27
Reviews - Money
“I didn’t find it as useful as everyone
said; that Assyrian for example, who passed through my village last month and gave
me a disc of gold in exchange for two of my most impressive sheep.
I have been unable to make use of this
since and it is simply an attractive adornment on the ledge above my fire.”
Shepherd, 47, Turkey, 4000 BC
2/10 – need to work the concept out
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“I, for one have never understood the actual
use of the stuff- I like the having, not the spending. I have hoarded a large quantity
given to me by grateful peasants and simply enshrined it in a room I call the
gold room to watch the way the sunlight catches each coin and marvel in my possessing
all of this. My lady wife seems to think I have a problem, but I could part
with any one of them, though I have found removing one does disturb the order and
the placing of the others and this worries me. I never dust. I want to have my
money buried with me, coddling me, keeping my coffin warm, weighing me down.”
Miser 1278
8/10 – for collecting
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“If it’s imaginary, yeah, and it is,
kind of, cos it’s just paper and we’re all just getting more paper and working
for paper and giving other paper for stuff, then it’s kind of like the world's
biggest con and the world’s biggest book with all the pages torn out and if you
took everything you had in terms of paper and put it into a pile and set it on
fire with lighter fuel and match, then it would keep you warm. So it's useful
for that as well, but not for long.”
Anon
5/10 -for the idea
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“It’s a Godsend. Not so long ago, I
was trying to decide the value of things as they related to each other. I was
trying to estimate the trade of ten red apples – a pig’s flank, a pot, a shoe
from an average shoemaker, the equivalencies are endless. And that’s just basic things. Stuff gets very complicated
when you zoom forward millennia or so. What's a song worth, or the viewing of a
film, in a theatre in the dark? What’s your hard work worth, what’s insurance to
be swapped for, what if I decide to put my dream on the market, what could you
give me for it? How many children equal a diamond? And, what’s a poem worth in terms
of bread?
Money is great, it’s a go between, it’s
a scale, it’s a lingua franca, pax romanis. It’s that good, even the Pope has a
bank. It controls the imagination, no more difficult translations, we have prices,
stickers now. I exchange goods for services and vice versa all the time. Gold,
paper, online, I love it.
Would recommend. “
BTW, what is a poem worth?”
Anon, would be philosopher, 2020
9/10
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“I like copper –
as it aged, it faded green
and gold shone
and silver
Paper was fat in the hand
like a good love letter
But I can’t get on
with all these airborne signals
And it’s hard to feel rich
in zeros and ones”
Anon
-bring back real money
1/10
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