John Jensen on tue 20 jan 04
Lee;
I don't think the money/time issue is as simple as you suggest. One
could be an ascetic, I guess, and have all the time in the world (but no
money or anything else); or one could be driven to earn money to the
point that one did nothing but some sort of meaningless work...with no
time for the richness of life. For most of us, we spend a most of our
time making just enough money to live on. If we had less money, it
wouldn't mean we had more time...we'd just have to work harder to get
by. Nor would more money mean we had less time. What is wanted is a
good balance of discretionary time and money. In my opinion this
balance is very difficult for many of us to achieve...in part because of
the unequal distribution of wealth in the economic system and in part
because of the structure of the culture. It is easy to say that if one
could spend less money on useless things one would have more money to
allocate to providing free time; but there is sharp curve which takes
those who want to drop down and puts them completely out. Homeless
people have lots of time; but for those homeless people who want to take
part in the economy, the cost is extremely high. If you aren't in the
mainstream, you are in a very high risk position.
I do agree that time is really the thing we should value most
highly...money just being a measure of our power to use that time in an
effective way vis-=E0-vis the society as a whole. =20
John Jensen, Mudbug Pottery
mudbug@toadhouse.com , http://www.toadhouse.com =20
Lee Love on wed 21 jan 04
John Jensen wrote:
> I do agree that time is really the thing we should value most
>highly...money just being a measure of our power to use that time in an
>effective way vis-=E0-vis the society as a whole. =20
>
> =20
>
Of course it isn't simple or totally black & white.. But if=20
you use time as the gold standard, to measure what you have to do to get =
the money, then you are not as likely to get unbalanced in the=20
acquisition of wealth for wealth's sake.
--
Lee in Mashiko http://mashiko.us
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