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Comment by nabla9 | Hacker News Reader

You don't need money to have have property and wealth or power over others generated by it.

You don't need money to have prices either. It's just convenient.

Money is just extremely convenient, it has no magical properties.

Money as a medium of exchange has no magical properties. But you need to think about what money represents - how it ties different people together. Some people make money, then spend it on their own subsistence. Others are able to use money to make more money.

If you can stop working for 8 years and not end up on the streets, then you're ultimately working for someone who _can_ stop working for 8 years. This is why less than 10 people own more collective wealth than the poor half of the world population. This is not even considering monopolies, corruption, state intervention, etc.

As for what we can do about it, I don't think redistributing wealth is a great idea. Instead I think we should encourage an entrepreneurial spirit, i.e. encourage people to do what so many in Silicon valley have done: start their own business in their garage. I suspect people find entrepreneurship to be worthwhile despite the risk because their work can translate to profits directly, and they're able to use e.g. LISP instead of Java, make an entire system instead of just writing the tests.

> Others are able to use money to make more money.

They don't make more money. They make more wealth.

You are confusing metaphorical use of world money as synonym of wealth to what actually happens.

I’m not sure what wealth is. Let’s use the term value i.e. when raw materials (eg ones and zeros) are transformed to a useful form (eg a computer program). The programmers at amazon create value and then use most of their wage on subsistence eg supporting their family. The board of directors buy, ultimately through a chain of command, workers who are able to make more value than they consume in wages (otherwise no one would hire her). They also use money for subsistence, but they consume part of their accumulated value on creating more value. The programmer takes risks in agreeing to work, because if he is layed off then he won’t be able to provide for her family. So how can the programmer also use value to create more value? Entrepreneurship, ie being paid based on the profits she generates, rather than what the board of directors is willing to let go of. Or perhaps investment, which ultimately means profiting off the value creating labour of others in a indirect way.

Wealth is what you own.

Jeff Bezos is not owning much money. Warren Buffet id not owning money. Neither is Bill Gates. Money is just one asset you can own and most people hold very little of it.

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