“It’s not the money, it’s just all the stuff.” – The Jerk
What do Musk and Edison have in common? They both got rich off of Tesla.
Wednesday is normally a day where we talk about wealth, economics, money, currency, and the state of the economy. But, it’s nearly Christmas, so I thought I’d take this time to give a different take on wealth. And no, it’s not Joe Biden appearing in a Marvel® movie where his superpower is to make vast amounts of wealth disappear, because he can do that on, oh, every Tuesday.
Don’t get me wrong. I love prices. Prices are a great way to allocate things in such a way that the most people win. I have my pile of cash and get to buy (within that limit) the things that make me the most happy. Does everyone want a really cool sports car? No, some people don’t want them at all.
Personally, I’d love to have a cool sports car, but I’d much rather not have a mortgage. So, I make choices. And then cry silently in my pillow at night because I’m dead inside because I decided I didn’t get that Mustang®.
Othello always would visit Sauron through the Moor Door.
Regardless, choices mean that I’m in control. I mean, if I chose to study theology and then move to Colorado after I graduated? My choices mean I could become a high priest. I am free to choose and try to optimize my life based on my resources, talents, and luck.
Combine that with a system of (more or less) private property, and the system allows for the sum of millions of individual actions as people try to maximize their happiness. This provides incentives to work to buy steak. Or starve. But owning property provides incentives to create wealth. So, in striving to get enough money to buy a Lambo® and a vapid trophy wife in a functional economy, a businessman works to create the most joy for his customers.
Boom. People who have never met, and will never meet, work together to create a complex economy. This economy translates information based on prices, and is fueled by incentives, and private property.
And yet . . .
What’s the fastest thing in the universe? Nic Cage accepting a movie role.
As much as I love this system, I have to mention again, this system exists to serve men. It does not exist for men to serve it. There is a richer experience of life than only the pursuit of profit.
Also, this system is one that optimizes without regard to morality or virtue. On more than one occasion I have heard a Wall Street billionaire exclaim, “this isn’t Boy (or Boy-Girl, or Trans, in 2021, I guess) Scouts®.”
That was a direct rejection of morality and virtue.
The result of that type of thinking?
If it’s legal and can pull money out of someone’s pocket, Wall Street will do it. If heroin were legal for sale, Wall Street would be looking to invest in the e-Heroin® mobile App. They’d sell underage . . . well, you get the picture. Heck, Wall Street would sell ghosts as supernatural slaves if they thought it wouldn’t come back to haunt them.
When money is their god, they will do anything to get it. Wall Street will do anything legal. The black market, we know, will do anything illegal, as long as they get paid. Wall Street and the black market have essentially the same morals. And, like Satan, Wall Street just has better lawyers and lobbyists.
If there is a fault in the system, that is it.
I hear Charlie Brown was suspended from school. Some kid was allergic to Peanuts™.
And Christmas is one of the best times to point that out. Christmas is a holiday that has been morphed over time into one that, if we were to go by commercials alone, was based only on the mass consumption of stuff.
I won’t go into the deep history of Christmas. It’s long and more complicated than the math that Nancy Pelosi uses to charge her vodka back to taxpayers. But the short version is that the Winter Solstice was a great place to put a festival if you were going to convince the Germans and the Vikings that this new Christianity thing would work out okay for them. To make it work, Christmas had to be a party.
And it was. And it is. Over time, though, the party aspect of Christmas changed to a focus on family and generosity, which seems to be well matched to the holiday’s stated purpose. The meaning of Christmas then, is giving, not getting.
Certainly, there’s a certain magic in the eyes of a young child being surprised when the gifts under the tree far exceed anything she could imagine. The delight in a boy’s eyes when he sees the BB gun that will probably shoot his eye out?
Priceless.
I pitched a movie to Alec. He shot it down.
That’s the magic of the giving. The Mrs. and I, however, are old enough that we like the peace and family aspect of Christmas far more than the “stuff” aspect. I’ve given her the same gift for Christmas for the last five years (hint: it’s expensive scotch). She enjoys it. The Mrs. generally gets me something small. I like the keychain fob that she got me a year ago, “Be careful, handsome, I love you” better than something large, or an expensive scotch I won’t drink because it’s too expensive.
This year, The Boy and Pugsley have also (I think!) surpassed the greed aspect of Christmas. It’s not so much about the gifts they get. Heck, it’s not so much about the gifts they give, either. It’s about waking up on Christmas Eve, getting together and sharing the few gifts we have for each other, having a nice dinner, and then . . . relaxing together.
Together. And for me, that’s the biggest gift.
It’s that spirit that makes me look forward to Christmas. We’ve long been a “Christmas Eve” gift giving family, because it defuses the emotions associated with gift giving and leads to a very quiet and family-based Christmas Day. Plus no one wants to get up early if the presents are all already opened.
That’s the opposite, really, of the advertising that pelts us on a regular basis. The ads are all based on more and bigger. Time to give your loved one a $75,473 car with a big red bow, because nothing says love more than massive consumption.
Die Hard is not a Christmas movie. It’s a Christmas Eve movie.
Just like in most of our lives, we have choices. We can live the choice and have the Christmas that the media wants to sell us which is a holiday based almost entirely on creating the most economic activity possible.
Or? We can enjoy our family, and choose to place emphasis on giving, and choose to understand that the Nativity itself was the greatest gift that could be given. Even if you aren’t a Christian, understanding the promise of redemption in that gift of a child to mankind is one of supreme optimism.
That optimism is based firmly not in economics, since it promises exactly zero economic prosperity. No, this gift is not money – it was a gift based on virtue and morality.
I love prices, and incentives, and the creation of wealth. But there are things that are more important than money. You know, things like all the stuff . . . .