Money  

Money is an extremely powerful tool to be used and leveraged in order to amplify what you think is important. That is why we should not buy what is necessarily the easiest, but that which we wish to see more of.

It is a voting ballot, a voting ballot that in the end only matters if used to build relationships and happiness.

Spoken like a true networking fiend

In the past I’ve used money as a metric to prove how valuable I am and how good my ideas are, but I don’t necessarily believe in that anymore. Sometimes really bad ideas make a lot of money. However, good and bad ideas alike are valuable because people are willing to trade you their money in exchange for them. For example you will pay somewhere around $5 for nachos at the fair, and in contrast spend around a buck for the nachos you make with your friends as you watch a football game. The value is in the eye of the beholder, not necessarily the intrinsic value of the object. Make sense?

In the past, I’ve also used it as a form of friendship… think about it.

You have a friend that knows how to make chairs, you call him up, and you spend an afternoon together as you make a chair.

BAM!

In contrast, you don’t know anyone that can make chairs, so you pay some stranger to make a chair for you. However, he lives in China or Ethiopia or somewhere else in the world so he conveniently keeps that chair for you stored away at Ikea where you trade your money for that man’s services.

Viewing money as friendship didn’t work out to hot for me. It had a negative effect socially and added un-needed stress on relationships. Because I expected my friends to do things for free I ,in essence, robbed them of their earning potential and power to effectively get other things done. I was debilitating my friend’s influence in the world. Essentially robbing them of their voting power. Plus everyone thought I was cheep, and that’s just bad branding.

So friendship can be used as a form of money, but money cannot always buy friends. The relationships that families and friends create with each other are not for sale. Relationships of this sort that are of any value can be SUPPORTED through money on dinners, presents, and just the typical activities, but they can never be REPLACED through pure monetary means. This makes these relationships incredibly valuable, more so than any currency.

We should pursue value, and relationships with people are valuable.

*P.S. My view may be slightly slanted because I moved away from my hometown where I had great friends to a town where I don’t know anyone in pursuit of a job, career, and money for an awesome company.

But I think I’ve made a mistake.*

Notes some viewpoints and opinions are a reflection of others’ discussions including this one and the d'Anconia philosophy from Atlas Shrugged