Roommate Rants: Money Talk

And the rant continues...

Money...In today's world, it is the driving force of life. It's an absolute...You need it. You must have it...Some people desire it, some people loath it. My roommate favors the latter. He absolutely despises money.

I am convinced he is a living John Lennon for all the time that he preaches about the subject. He believes it shouldn't exist...that humanity was not meant to spend endless amounts of time trying to earn the extra dollar in order to survive or even get what you want.

So, now that you have a little bit of the background (although there's a whole lot more to this story...hell, I could probably write a short book on this particular subject, but for now, I will spare you the details).

So anyway, my roommate works in the restaurant business as a server/waiter (or slave to 'every walk in life' as he would put it). He leaves work after a long, hard day of the normal 'bs' that goes along with the job…arguing with the cooks, hating the management, having to close when he doesn't want to...so pretty much he is having a bad day which happens to be the case everyday!

So, he walks into the room and says to me with a straight face, "You know that whole money shit that I keep talking to you about?"

I nod, half listening...

He continues, looking somewhat pissed off, "Let's burn it."

My response, "What?" (He had my full attention)

He nods with conviction. "Yeah, man. I'm sick of it! Money is worthless! I hate having to work for it every 'gd' day. It's a waste of life. Let's burn all the money to the ground!"

I shrug, thinking it's just another blah rant but I throw him a bone. "All right, and how do you suppose you're gonna to do that?"

And he says, "I'm going to go down to the U.S. treasury and burn every last dollar. God, I'm sick of this f-ing shit! Tell that to your precious hubpages! Write a hub about that!" (And so I did...haha)

I laugh, now he is just going ballistic! And I ask, "Ahhh...All right...lets say you burn all the money in the world...what then?"

He says, "You burn all the money and then no one will have to worry about it. We start fresh. Our purpose will be focused on the good of mankind."

I nod with a hint of a sarcastic tone. "Bold...what are we Star Trek all of a sudden? Where money doesn't exist?"

"Why not." He says. "Why not."

Crazy, innovative, not really original...we've heard it before with John Lennon's Imagine...but he does bring up an interesting point. What if money didn't exist? Would we be less civilized? Certainly some would theorize that such a global economic meltdown would cause the most powerful nations to falter into a third world type society...with nothing to prosper, leaving behind technology and endless amounts of inconveniences...and they are probably right. Unless for some miraculous reason greed and power become insignificant as well. If we just lived for 'the brotherhood of man' imagine what we could accomplish. In a way, money causes poverty...money causes pain, both directly and indirectly. Money is the reason why the U.S. cannot provide healthcare and education to every single American. Money is the reason why we as humans cannot explore the depths of space or even our own planet! Money is the reason the world has not switched to alternate energy sources over fossil fuels. Money, money, money! Can we live without it?