This is what happens when you leave humans in charge.

*straightens soap box*

The good thing about this blog is that no-one ever reads it. One day, years in the future when my bones are bleached in the sun after my mysterious base-jumping accident, someone surfing the internet (probably from mars or somewhere, the earth will be a radioactive ball of dust by then) will stumble across my humble little blog and the world will realise that I, alone, probably, knew how to sort all that shite out that was wrong with the world before the nukes fell and the survivors ate each other.

Today - Money.

So. Society, as it is, is made up of millions of people. Seriously, there are loads of them. Each of these people has a few basic needs. These don't include PS3's, Ugg Boots, Nandos or broadband (Although broadband is a "human right" in Finland. Jesus. In that case, Sky violates my human rights by being shit.) But, there are bazillions of us, and many of us, myself included, are far too lazy and squeamish to gut a chicken before each meal, so in order to grow, society had to come up with several solutions to basic problems. One of these solutions was money. Payment for services and goods provided by other people, which can then be used by them for other services and goods. A way of quantifying people's skills. Brilliant. So now we have money. What will we do with it?

Banks were a great idea. No, really. They have allowed civilised society to grow and flourish. Before banks, people were clonking each other over the head for corn and shiny beads, while kings had to hoard big massive roomfulls of treasure and employ dragons to sit on it to stop hobbits from making off with it. Then banks came along and said "Hey! Give us all your money. We'll keep it safe, and we'll even add to it. A little." They started using the combined wealth of communities to help those communities grow, and all was well in he land. Sort of. Glossing over a few massive gaps there, as humans are basically grasping, selfish sexual organs on legs, but you get the basic jist.

Fast forward a few hundred years to modern society. While the country groans under increasing petrol prices (that's for another blog) bankers are handing themselves huge bonuses. And why not, you may ask? Look at all that "lifting society from the gutter" shite I was just harping on about, surely they deserve it? Well, no. Just a wee while ago, banks had to be handed a massive payout to stop them from collapsing, because if they collapse, western society collapses. I was overdrawn by about a tenner for a few days a while back and got charged over £200 because a company kept trying to withdraw a direct debit. Have the banks paid back the handout they got from us yet?

That's not the point, though. When you start thinking of greedy bankers, you automatically start thinking about how else that money could be spent. Back to those basic needs. We've got police forces, fire services, ambulance services. Nurses, Doctors. Soldiers. The list goes on and on. Difficult, often dangerous jobs. Jobs that take guts (I wouldn't do them, I didn't say I was any better than the rest of us), and jobs that are definitely necessary to all our well-being, because people are shit and need protecting from each other. Jobs that are constantly being cut because the country can't "afford" them. How many bankers can the country "afford"? Without revenue from banks, though, we couldn't afford any of that, you say? So watching back-slapping potato-brained city boys live the high life is a necessary evil? Surely not.

Surely one of the goals of any society should be to advance. In the beginning, the person with the biggest stick wins. Then, it became the person wih the biggest group of people with the biggest sticks. Then, the people who could pay the people with the biggest sticks. Nowadays, the big stick has become the big wallet. *at this point, I deleted a massive, whiny bit where I went on in very serious tones about how people are starving while bankers quaff champagne. It was all very moody and serious and not very nice at all. So then. On to my solution!*

Money is at the root of all of this stuff. Folk bluster and argue about the cost of sorting out the economy. The cost of ending world hunger. The cost of curing disease. Here's a thought..... years ago, a pound was worth loads more than it is today. What if we said, for a laugh, that we're changing how much a pound is worth. It's now, from this second on, worth the equivalent of a thousand pounds. If you had a thousand pounds, congratulations! You now have the equivalent wealth of a millionaire! You're not a millionaire, of course..... you only have a thousand pounds. Millionaires on the other hand.... wow! You can practically afford to buy the whole world, now!

It's a bonkers idea, isn't it. It would never work. Why, though..... have a wee think just a bit farther in. What is this mystical "money" stuff? I know what you just said to yourself. I do! "Bits of paper that relate to gold in the bank". Nope. Quite apart from the gold in the bank being nothing more than shiny metal anyway, that bit of paper isn't based on how much gold there is. Banks have been allowed to print money that isn't actually based on anything for a long, long time. And "The Credit Crunch"..... did the money run out? Did the mystical well where the money is harvested suddenly go dry? Of course not. Money's just paper. Gold's just shiny metal. The numbers in the accounting machines didn't add up. And society trembled at it's core.

Thinking about how much we could have achieved if we weren't bound by paper and shiny metal makes you feel sick. All the things that humanity hasn't got to yet because we can't "afford" it. There are children starving out there. Starving. To death. While mountains of grain sit unused. Because the grain has to be "paid" for by bits of paper and shiny metal. Planting it and harvesting it has to be paid for. And transporting it has to be paid for. And distributing it has to be paid for. With shiny metal. And paper. If we did decide, as a planet, to increase the value of each bit of paper by a thousand fold, surely all of these problems would instantly be solved? And if the value of money could be changed so drastically, then what would be the necessity of having it at all? Just give the starving people the food that they need? Give the cancer patient the drugs they couldn't afford to develop because of costs.

But who will pay for it all? And with what? How much paper and shiny metal is each of us worth, I wonder. And all of those poor bankers and millionaires.... if paper and shiny metal lost it's "value", then how would they be any better than anyone else? Well that won't do at all, will it? And as it's people who have loads of shiny metal and paper who make the rules to this big old game, they aren't gonna change them any time soon. There's the root of it.

Money and banks are partly responsible for lifting human society out of subsistence living and putting us on a path to greater things. But if society now, with all it's great thinkers, can't come up with something better than shiny metal and paper to strive towards, then we're no farther along than battering each other over the heads with sticks.

I know. It's mental. The thought of a society able to better itself without financial gain. Mental. Imagine it, though.

Japanese society had an economy based on rice. Now that makes sense. You can eat rice. Gold? Ptchah.