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It’s not unusual to feel like you don’t have enough money but how far would you get without any money at all? I’m not talking about being so poor that you literally have no cash, but about actively choosing to live without it.
It’s a crazy idea, but there are people doing it. Chief amongst them, probably, is Mark Boyle who authored the Moneyless Manifesto. Mark quite literally lives without any money and his lifestyle raises some interesting questions about what money is and how we think about it.
The president of Uruguay is another fellow who’s escaped the clutches of cash – but more about him later. Mark is a more extreme case and his lifestyle raises some interesting questions about what money is and the strange behaviours it produces from us.
In the Moneyless Manifesto Mark not only discusses the self-imposed grip that cash has on our lives, but also provides tips and tricks for anyone considering a money-free existence.
Of course, his book is also available for free online and is published under a Creative Commons license so that anyone can share it with their friends. He admits that selling a book would be hypocrisy and, well, it would bring him money. Which isn’t his thing, see.
So if you want to read the Moneyless Manifesto you can just click here and get it. Thanks Mark.
The 'Moneyless Man''s life turned out to be the opposite of what he thought it would when he started studying for a profession in finance.
"In my last year of my economics degree I came across a guy called Ghandi who scuppered my plans for world domination and wealth accumulation."
"Instead of going on to Wall Street and making a lot of cash I decided to start to raise awareness of the destructive and inevitable consequences of this tool we call money," he says.
This led Mark to an extreme lifestyle, designed to raise awareness, and to the invention of an alternative economy that Mark calls 'freeconomy' in which people do things for each other without expecting anything in return.
The interesting thing about money,as Mark points out, is that it’s largely imaginary stuff. It’s also a game we agree to play with one another.
Money itself isn’t based on much except a market’s willingness to use it and a regulator’s ability to manage it. Government’s declare a currency – what we call 'fiat' money – as legal tender for a respective country and then citizens use it.
There are no gold ingots in the bank to secure its value, as there were in the past with the Gold Standard. All we have now is the historical value of a currency and an agreement to use it. We can choose to use other things if we want to, unless we’re paying tax. No choices there. Not yet.
As Mark says in the introduction to his book, "We grown-ups strangely believe that money provides for us when it is actually Nature (which includes humans) that does so. That we must rely on money is simply another delusion, given power only by the fact that we collectively agree to believe in it.
Even Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, said that "all money is a matter of belief'. We believe in it because experience has taught us that we can get things in return for it, and every time we enact the various rituals (cheque signing, credit card purchasing) of this story, we strengthen that belief and its grip on our minds."
Is that grip loosening? Mark thinks so. He says that more and more people have been shocked into thinking about how money works post the 2008 economic downturn.
Another thing that has recently turned a spotlight on the concept of money is Bitcoin – the cryptographic online currency that’s taken the internet by storm.
I recently wrote something on Medium about why Bitcoin isn’t going to be going away any time soon and probably deserves more attention than it gets. Whether or not that turns out to be true, Bitcoin remains an interesting experiment and, at very least, has people thinking about what money is, where it comes from and why we feel like we have no control over it.
Perhaps this is a good time to introduce the president of Uruguay.
Meet José Mujica – known as the "world’s poorest president". Unlike other third-world leaders, *cough* José doesn’t have tons of bodyguards, a big black car and a palace. Not because he can’t afford all of those things, but because he chooses not to have them.
He gives almost all of his presidential salary to charities in his country and lives in a broken down house, more like a shack, on a farm where he and his wife grow their own food. He drives a banged-up old Volkswagen Beetle – called a ‘Fusca’ in Uruguay – and has two guards outside his property only because the government says he has to.
José doesn’t like being called "poor", however, and it isn’t fair to label him as such. In an interview with The Guardian he said that the label of poorest president wasn’t an accurate reflection of a lifestyle that he opted in to. His salary is pretty good as presidents go, but he chooses to give it away.
"I’m not the poorest president. The poorest is the one who needs a lot to live," he said.
"My lifestyle is a consequence of my wounds. I’m the son of my history. There have been years when I would have been happy just to have a mattress."
As a former guerrilla soldier and freedom fighter José probably has different standards from affluent consumers, but don’t write off his lifestyle to relativity. There’s method to his seeming madness and he has smart things to say about the world of finance.
"I’m just sick of the way things are. We’re in an age in which we can’t live without accepting the logic of the market," he told The Guardian.
"Contemporary politics is all about short-term pragmatism. We have abandoned religion and philosophy … What we have left is the automatisation of doing what the market tells us."
It’s a crazy idea, but there are people doing it. Chief amongst them, probably, is Mark Boyle who authored the Moneyless Manifesto. Mark quite literally lives without any money and his lifestyle raises some interesting questions about what money is and how we think about it.
The president of Uruguay is another fellow who’s escaped the clutches of cash – but more about him later. Mark is a more extreme case and his lifestyle raises some interesting questions about what money is and the strange behaviours it produces from us.
In the Moneyless Manifesto Mark not only discusses the self-imposed grip that cash has on our lives, but also provides tips and tricks for anyone considering a money-free existence.
Of course, his book is also available for free online and is published under a Creative Commons license so that anyone can share it with their friends. He admits that selling a book would be hypocrisy and, well, it would bring him money. Which isn’t his thing, see.
So if you want to read the Moneyless Manifesto you can just click here and get it. Thanks Mark.
The 'Moneyless Man''s life turned out to be the opposite of what he thought it would when he started studying for a profession in finance.
"In my last year of my economics degree I came across a guy called Ghandi who scuppered my plans for world domination and wealth accumulation."
"Instead of going on to Wall Street and making a lot of cash I decided to start to raise awareness of the destructive and inevitable consequences of this tool we call money," he says.
This led Mark to an extreme lifestyle, designed to raise awareness, and to the invention of an alternative economy that Mark calls 'freeconomy' in which people do things for each other without expecting anything in return.
The interesting thing about money,as Mark points out, is that it’s largely imaginary stuff. It’s also a game we agree to play with one another.
Money itself isn’t based on much except a market’s willingness to use it and a regulator’s ability to manage it. Government’s declare a currency – what we call 'fiat' money – as legal tender for a respective country and then citizens use it.
There are no gold ingots in the bank to secure its value, as there were in the past with the Gold Standard. All we have now is the historical value of a currency and an agreement to use it. We can choose to use other things if we want to, unless we’re paying tax. No choices there. Not yet.
As Mark says in the introduction to his book, "We grown-ups strangely believe that money provides for us when it is actually Nature (which includes humans) that does so. That we must rely on money is simply another delusion, given power only by the fact that we collectively agree to believe in it.
Even Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, said that "all money is a matter of belief'. We believe in it because experience has taught us that we can get things in return for it, and every time we enact the various rituals (cheque signing, credit card purchasing) of this story, we strengthen that belief and its grip on our minds."
Is that grip loosening? Mark thinks so. He says that more and more people have been shocked into thinking about how money works post the 2008 economic downturn.
Another thing that has recently turned a spotlight on the concept of money is Bitcoin – the cryptographic online currency that’s taken the internet by storm.
I recently wrote something on Medium about why Bitcoin isn’t going to be going away any time soon and probably deserves more attention than it gets. Whether or not that turns out to be true, Bitcoin remains an interesting experiment and, at very least, has people thinking about what money is, where it comes from and why we feel like we have no control over it.
Perhaps this is a good time to introduce the president of Uruguay.
Meet José Mujica – known as the "world’s poorest president". Unlike other third-world leaders, *cough* José doesn’t have tons of bodyguards, a big black car and a palace. Not because he can’t afford all of those things, but because he chooses not to have them.
He gives almost all of his presidential salary to charities in his country and lives in a broken down house, more like a shack, on a farm where he and his wife grow their own food. He drives a banged-up old Volkswagen Beetle – called a ‘Fusca’ in Uruguay – and has two guards outside his property only because the government says he has to.
José doesn’t like being called "poor", however, and it isn’t fair to label him as such. In an interview with The Guardian he said that the label of poorest president wasn’t an accurate reflection of a lifestyle that he opted in to. His salary is pretty good as presidents go, but he chooses to give it away.
"I’m not the poorest president. The poorest is the one who needs a lot to live," he said.
"My lifestyle is a consequence of my wounds. I’m the son of my history. There have been years when I would have been happy just to have a mattress."
As a former guerrilla soldier and freedom fighter José probably has different standards from affluent consumers, but don’t write off his lifestyle to relativity. There’s method to his seeming madness and he has smart things to say about the world of finance.
"I’m just sick of the way things are. We’re in an age in which we can’t live without accepting the logic of the market," he told The Guardian.
"Contemporary politics is all about short-term pragmatism. We have abandoned religion and philosophy … What we have left is the automatisation of doing what the market tells us."
Now there’s something to think about.
It all comes to down to power and, as Mark Boyle points out, much of the power that money has is there because we allow it.
It might feel like you are powerless in a world where things just happen to you, but if you spend enough time thinking about it, I’m sure you’ll find that at least some of your money situation – if not all of it – is something you did to yourself.
And if you did do it to yourself, you sure as hell can change it. I’m not suggesting getting rid of all your money, but maybe changing the relationship a bit. Might I also suggest a handy little app that could help with that.
Article by 22Seven.
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