Socialistic thoughts

Yesterday, after a particularly rough morning, I sat in the park and fumed over everything I hate about this world. And maybe I´m overgeneralizing, but right now it all seems to come back to money.

I hate money. First of all, it only has value because we say it does. If I work 40 hours a week and get my paycheck and deposit at the bank, chances are I´ll never even touch most of that money. It just floats out there in some mystical economic sense that I can´t ever grasp, and I write a check for rent and swipe my credit card for groceries and somewhere out there some binary numbers change and suddenly there´s less in my account. Even the money I do touch is just paper with a number on it. And then the next month comes and the same thing happens and in the long run, who really cares? Also, who decided that I have to pay for the right to live in my house, or to eat? Who gets to say that healthcare is a privilege, not a right, and that you should have to "afford" vaccinations or stitches? Why is it ok for the elite to accumulate 7 digit figures in their bank accounts while the poor scrounge for enough coins to buy rice?

Im not for a second going to pretend like this is one of the great evils that has cropped up in the last 50 years. I wasn´t around in 1950, but I´ll go out on a limb and say that even if "family values", whatever the hell that means, were stronger then, people still spent a good portion of their time worrying about finances. In world geography last semester we learned about ancient African civilizations that would trade off goats and chickens and their sources of livelihood for gold, and all I could think was "why?" Why would you rather have useless metal than food?

And then there comes the problem of how to deal with money if you do have it. When a 6 year old approaches me on the street and tells me he hasn´t eaten all day, maybe he´s telling the truth and maybe he just wants cash so he can go buy glue to huff. But how do you know the difference? At what point do you start holding back? When is hunger no longer an excuse for begging? Is it better to withhold a dollar so he´ll "learn a lesson" or are we supposed to give without thinking? And I know people always tell you to use discretion in giving money to people on the streets, and maybe that´s all well and good in the US where you know if that bum by your car is drunk or not, but it´s not really applicable in the majority of 3rd world countries.

I don´t know the solution. Honestly, I don´t think there is one. Communism has never worked, even in the most socialistic of countries there have always been the wealthy elite. Capitalism often screws the poor, the bartering system couldn´t even withstand the lure of gold in ancient Africa. And Christ himself promised that the poor would always be with us. I do know that money is almost always poorly handled and unevenly distributed, and that people who are far smarter than me have failed to fix the problem. It´s like you´re damned if you do and damned if you don´t.

Anyhow, after I sat on a bench by myself for over an hour and pondered the upsides to living in a commune or a cave, I went home and played with Marie Ester and Cristina, ate dinner with my host family and visited Marjan. And so help me, none of that cost a cent.