The Colour Of Money

Like it. Loathe it. Want it. Waste it. But you just cannot ignore it. What is with money that rumpled piece of printed paper in your wallet that the world bows to its power? The Secret lies in your own mind!

- Saurabh Bhattacharya & Anupama Bhattacharya

Let’s talk money! Mammon’s earthly incarnation. Satan’s weapon of temptation. Capitalism’s rightful expression. We are talking about a piece of paper, right? A scrap created from wooden goo that wouldn’t even fetch a glass of water if used for trade on the basis of its actual worth.

So what makes money tick? We love it, we condemn it. We go all out to get as much of it as we can, we then we berate it for being a temptation! We live with it and realise our dreams through it, yet are the first to say ‘money can’t but everything’. Why?

Perhaps it’s only fair that we begin with one of the few people who actually championed money and its philosophical and ethical worth.

Value for value

“Money,” wrote Ayn Rand, cult author and controversial propounder of objectivist philosophy, “is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value.”

The catchphrase is ‘value for value’. And, maybe, trust in a promise made on a piece of paper. In this sense, money or trade recognises the belief that nothing in the world is free. Whatever we wish to have, has to be earned. So, if A wants what B owns, or is in a position to give, then A has to give B something of equal worth. Rand believed that only those who did not want to trade would condemn money. Who wanted for free what others had created with their effort and capability. To this, N.K. Somani, CMD of Shree Vindhya Paper Mills, Mumbai adds that money has served as a medium of exchange after trying a variety of other items, which were found lacking.