Chapter 1

I’ve been struggling with this question for quite a while now and figure writing about it is the best way for me to develop my thoughts. How is it that people of all colors and from all kinds of places can earn their living and buy the food, clothing and shelter necessary to survive? Where do they get the money? Why is someone willing to pay them and where does he/she get their money.

There are many parts of the question that are clear enough to me. A minor mines minerals and sells them. By digging in the dirt on a spot of land rich in resources he has gained something of value for his work. Even this situations leaves many questions unanswered. How did he get that property? Why is someone willing to pay him money for that mineral and where does that person get their money.

I suppose we need to get back to an elementary form. A potato farmer in Missouri in 1830 has acquired a plot of land next to a creek and is going to grow his crop. He is lucky enough to be living in a time and place where land is plentiful and strife rare. His mother gives him a sack of potatoes for his first planting and a supply of food to get him through the next few months. He cuts down trees and builds a log cabin with his own two hands. He prepares the fields and plants his potatoes. The creek and rain supply sufficient water for his plants.

Harvest time comes along and he brings his harvest to market. He keeps enough potatoes for next year’s planting, trades a few sacks for some tools and new shoes and various foodstuffs. Some potatoes he sells and receives currency with which he can later buy things in stores. This type of society can go on for quite a while and is easy enough to understand. We will not yet get into the problematic question of land ownership.

Money makes the whole thing somewhat more confusing. The buyer of the said sack of potatoes received his money from a money lender. This person has come upon fair amounts of money and lends her money to various needy customers. Of course she charges interest and in this way exponentially gains money. The lenders also must present collateral for the money they receive. The potato buyer, for instance, signs a document saying that if he fails to pay back the loan and the interest within a certain period he will forfeit some property or services to the money lender. In some cases the loaner may in fact be happy if the loan is defaulted upon. The penalty may be much more valuable than the interest.

So this little trick allows individuals who have been lucky enough to gain a certain amount of dispensable income to gain a lot of money without having actually produced a thing. Yes, they are providing a service and helping people in need and they do undergo a certain risk. Their ability, however, to make money on their money and to increase their wealth at an exponential rate is one key to understanding the initial question of “who pays the farmer”.

There is another aspect of this simplified society that needs to be addressed. Without the water in the creek, the trees in the forest, the light energy from the sun and the energy production in the cells of the potato leaf, the farmer wouldn’t have a chance. Without getting to judgmental, I’d say there is no moral problem with the farmer exploiting as much sun as he wants. The sun is going to be with us for quite a while and utilizing it’s power has no negative consequences I’m aware of.

The farmer is, in fact, taking cold-blooded advantage of the natural process of photosynthesis and cell respiration. All a certain farmer has to do is plant some wheat in a field an voiala, in no time he’s got a whole bunch of grain that he can sell to someone. Nature does all the work for him. The leaf absorbs carbon dioxide from the air and the roots suck up water from the soil. The sun shines on the leaves, injecting the plant with live-giving energy and powering the creation of glucose. The plant cell then converts the sugar to ATP, the fuel which powers the cell’s machinery.
This process is not that different in an animal cell and since the farmer most likely is exploiting some poor old ox, we should shortly discuss it here. An animal unfortunately can’t live off of sun, water and CO2. Animals have to eat the glucose, better known as carbohydrates, in order to power their cells. The plant, mentioned above, stored up a bunch of glucose and by eating it, the animal consumes the vital sugar. The glucose is transferred through the bloodstream to cells throughout the body. These cells go on to convert the sugar into that miraculous molecule ATP. ATP is used in many stages as a energy carrier.

What about the water from the creek or the wood from the trees? Can the farmer exploit these resources at his will? Do they belong to him? What does property ownership mean and what duties does it entail?

I personally would argue that a human cannot actually own the water running across his or her property. The soil, the trees and the plants, too, are not really theirs. The farmer did not create the tree with his own fingers. If he did buy the property with all the resources on it, the previous seller did not, in my opinion, have the right to sell it.

That is another, more philosophical discussion, though. In order to simplify the matter, let’s assume that the farmer can exploit the water, soil and plants on his property as he pleases. That brings us back to the conclusion that this simple farming society with its barter system and basic currency exchange is easy enough to understand.

So when do things get confusing? How modern society works is just not clear to me. How do so many millions of people manage to receive sufficient food and shelter in order to survive? Where does all the money come from? How is value created and qualified? Karl Marx wrote a lot about this topic. I’d probably find the answers to most of my questions by reading and/or re-reading his work. I want to work through it on my own, though.

I work, for example, in the service sector creating educational software for school kids. My boss pays me a monthly salary so that I can pay my bills. Where does the money come from? Since most of the work we do is for the educational market, we could basically say that my salary comes from the general tax fund. For the most part, tax money comes from the working population of a given country. This is a rather circular situation. I am paid with tax money. I and all other paid employees pay taxes. So the working population is paying me and I’m part of the working population. I, therefore, am paying myself.

Someone needs to be creating something of value that can be sold. Someone needs to be producing something that wasn’t there before and that helps other people survive. Where does this value come from? One source was addressed above - natural resources. Land owner X sells the trees on his property and gets money for it. Mine owner Y sells the bauxite found in his mine and gets money for it. They are creating (some might say stealing) something of value and making it available to the general public (or to those wealthy enough to buy it).

A farmer can also plant and harvest a potato with the assistance of his bare hands (and the afore-mentioned natural resources) and sell it. The potato was not available before and can now be used to help a person nourish herself. A worker in a factory can, in a large team, create a motor and this motor can later be sold. Without the labor of that individual, the motor would not be available (at least before the age of robots). A worker in a factory can help create something of value. This new object of value can be sold and the worker can feed her family with the money she earns.

So where does that take us? We have natural resources that can be exploited, sold and utilized to help feed and house people. We have labor that can be exerted to create something of value. Is that, however, sufficient to feed in excess of five billion people on this planet?

Am I wrong to think that it’s simply nature and physical, chemical and biological processes that provide life and keep life going? While humans have figured out lots of ways to concoct new types of foods, expedite agricultural production and create a global transportation system, without the water from the creek or the pulp from the tree we’d have no chance. So nature provides us with the ingredients for life and we humans figure out new and innovative ways of exploiting them in order to increase our numbers and longevity.

I don’t know if that was the conclusion I was looking for when I started this article. It is a cynical perspective to think that all our activities are just distractions measured against the basic mechanisms of life on Earth. Look at where so much energy is directed in our modern day society: the tax system, federal bureaucracy, the military, the automobile industry. So much of the work that’s done and the money spent on it is an end in and of itself.

Of course, modern day society is extremely complex and we can’t just wave a magic wand and all of a sudden the power elite will say “let’s eliminate all the waste and the luxury and focus on eliminating hunger, poverty and war”.
Is it correct, however, to conclude that our survival in essence depends upon the availability of certain natural resources (light and the energy it provides, oxygen, carbon, water and edible plants and animals being the most important) and the continued functioning of basic biological, chemical and physical systems? Without these things we’d be doomed and all the rest is just icing on the cake. The farmer is directly involved in getting food on my plate. What use do all the millions of other activities we undertake on this planet have? Many are designed to make our lives more comfortable or longer. Many are designed to make or lives much shorter - like creating war machines. Millions of activities are created in order to administer other activities. Of course there also has to be someone who records those who are administering and controlling other’s activities. Let us not forget those thousands of good, moral citizens whose lives are dedicated to making sure other people and their activities remain within the social norm.

This is getting to be pretty cynical and so I had better come to an end. If this is all true, I do wonder how we manage to have so much excess and luxury that so many people actually get paid for doing something that in no direct way aids in their own survival. I myself, working in the service sector, am a good example. Should I go start digging up my garden and plant potatoes?

I suppose that’s really not the answer. What would we do with all those potatoes if everyone started growing ‘em in their backyard? I’d say I can keep developing educational software to help kids grow up to be intelligent, caring individuals.