The Trouble with Doing Good

Thinking about the topic of money, I realized there is a terrible hole in the way that our economic system is designed. In our society, it is generally required that one must earn a living. You need to pay for food, rent and other necessities. A source of income is simply something that you must have.

In general, to get money, you provide a good or service to another person and they trade you for money.

Suppose someone were to go out and do something good.  Like plant trees in a place where all of the biologists agreed that they were needed.

The trees would undoubted make the land richer.

Other people might be willing to give charity to the tree planter.  But that depends on so many factors.  What if the surround area had little money, or there were no people nearby?

In such a situation, it would be irrational for any person to become the tree planter.  It might still happen. People are good.  But it makes no sense economically.

Is there a way to provide the tree planter with money?

Money is ephemeral, it comes from nowhere.  The banking void from which money is brought into existence is no-place.

So could the tree planter be paid?  From nowhere in particular, with money that is suddenly said to exist?

I suspect that there could be a way for that to work.  For good work to be paid for by no one in particular.  I am not yet ready to write about how that could work.



Kyler

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I don't know how you'd sell to the public the idea that a guy planting trees is more worthy of getting money than some other guy. Suddenly you have the whole argument over who gets the money, and somehow the people with the most money already would be the ones with the deciding vote. You can't start rewarding good and expect it to stick without giving an overhaul to the whole capitalist system.