I say our attitude should be to get rid of it. Replace trading and ownership with sharing and usership. You can see the difference in values that underlie both of these philosophies. Competition is the value that capitalism is based on whereas cooperation is the value that a resource based economy is based on. In a resource based economy money is irrelevant. I say anything that hinders creativity, freedom and civil behavior should be looked down upon and we should work towards changing those things.
"What is the best philosophical attitude towards money...?
...the unequal distribution of wealth and our obligations to both the situational (disaster victims) and the endemic poor?"
Without money, one cannot survive very comfortably. I say earn what you can without stepping on others necks, keep and use what you need, give away what you can, and be as philanthropic as possible. I don’t think there is a magic number or percentage that one should or must give but each person must do what they know in their heart is the right thing for them at the time.
Okay, now yahoo has blocked my making further comments.
Best Guesser: why restate the whole question and then state the obvious? This is not an answer it is filler.
I hoped someone would mention Carlyle and the cash-nexus and how a money economy dehumanizes labor, but I am happy at least a few stated an opinion and didn't just throw the question back at me and whine.
Money is demoralizing, but it is a social lubricant. Bearing these ideas in mind affects how your model towards poverty succeeds/operates. Help becomes a hand-me down and beggars the needy twice. But we are not about to change that any time soon.
I think the best philosophical attitude towards money would be one that recognizes the complexity of societal structure and where the "individual" sits in the context of society. There is much conflict between individuality and society. The right for an individual to "own" being recognized by a society complicates the matter of what is "deserved" or "earned" or "guaranteed". I don't think black and white solutions that oversimplify things work well for this. Whether it is to say that government should own everything and limit individual ownership, or that the free market alone should solely determine who "has" and how much they should have. Ideally government and free market should work in conjunction to see that everyone has an opportunity to work, and if they work hard they will live comfortably. But also that people are not limited to how much they can earn or the means of which they earn it. There is not a neat and clean solution, so we should not attempt to solve it "cleanly".
It was Americans who invented the phrase "make money" because they were the first to see on a philosophical level what John Locke called the "labor theory of capital". In other words, money doesn't grow without work, and while many capitalists never did any hard labor, they knew how to get things done by putting other men to work, thereby increasing the labor market, the labor force, expanding the number of people who had money to spend, and thereby made the GNP larger. The GNP is one of the measurements government uses to print more money--which benefits everyone if they don't print too much (inflation).
So we need the free market--something China finally figured out.
As for "our obligations to both the situational (disaster victims) and the endemic poor," let me say that before Hurricane Katrina, the largest per-capita amount of philanthropy was before the advent of the income tax, after which it fell enormously.
But people want to help. The government is in the best position to clean up after hurricanes and things, but for the most part I think it should be private citizens and corporations who provide assistance to individuals, such as Budweiser and others bottling clean water and giving it away free, or doctors traveling to stricken area, and the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, and Goodwill and others who are in the best position to help because they don't TAX people to do it.
The only real source of wealth is the fertility of the planet. Money is part of a circle of human exchange and it can be a healthy thing when it reflects our human dependence upon that fertility, and facilitates our ability to avail ourselves thereof. But, like so many other human institutions, money is subject to abuse. If you need a name for this thought, look up the physiocrats, or Henry George's comments about credit and interest. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.10...
first off money as far as i am aware does not exists anymore the paper we was around is Legal Tender or a promissory not and also MONEY just means to pay with something of value IE coins,Notes,Food etc.
If you wish to learn about this and make your own philosophical attitude i think this would be best for you
search (WHITE RABBIT TRUST) on YouTube the guy is an ex banker and tells you every thing you need to know enjoi
Here is my philosophy regarding money.......
Ownership of Money is the greatest illusions of all.
It isn't mine until I actually use it for some purpose, because it may get spoilt or lost meanwhile.
It isn't mine the moment I have spent it for some purpose as I have to transfer it out in order to get what I want to buy with it.
The best example is when a Bank is closed out, more than half of what it claims to own disappears in thin air.
Having said that, let me quickly add that life is all about hopes and illusions anyway.
not a capitalist system with a central bank charging debt for nothing to everyone ( literally enslaving majority of people ) and iresponsible of and too laws.
it REALLY is about time people waked up. End of storey. a socialist approach within a democratic capitalist framework but but not inflated or bloated to levels of gross imbalance. A relative pay structure it is not rocket science and it could work easily.
It's a tool like a hammer. It can be put to use or used to solve a problem.
...the unequal distribution of wealth and our obligations to both the situational (disaster victims) and the endemic poor?
It is a mutually agreed method of exchanging values between people.
Drop the idea of philosophizing anything. Experience materialism instead. Never have philosophic outlook.
One should be able to make enough to take care of ones needs(entitled) and show thanks when you make enough to have some things that you want by helping others who are less fortunate
Cash
Gas
Grass
or
A$$.
Nobody rides for free!
It REALLY is about time people "waked" up to writing gooder sentences!
Buy weed
we won't take money with us after death...
better to have some than to have non
Share it or burn it.
