Proof that money is worthless

What makes riches precious? Something inherent to it or the fact that you think it is precious? Money has no inherent value to it, not even gold. All money has worth attributed to it by the mind and nothing us. Money has value because of faith, not functionality (unless you use it for firewood or jewelery, even then it makes for poor firewood and jewelery is superficial as well).

I can stop right there, but I'll go on.

If you were to stand in front of ten thousand people and give all your money away, you would be broke before you reached half your audience. But if you spoke words to that same audience you could share your thoughts equally among the entire crowd for a much longer period of time. Thus, words have more worth than money, and since words are just sounds and syllables, what does that say about money? It must be worth even less.

The more money you have, the more that can be stolen from you, whereas if you had no money you have nothing to be stolen. To put it another way, if you were to walk a dangerous neighborhood at night you would either need a bodyguard to protect your money or if you had no money you would not need to guard anything. If something is dangerous we want less of it not more, no one wants more cancer or more disease, but peoples view of money is so perverse that despite knowing how dangerous it is, they still want more of it. So rather than saying money has no value, it actually has a negative value.

If you have a million dollars in a vault, what difference is this compared to someone who has one dollar in a vault? Money only has value when brought into circulation, and for what? Goods and services, thus money is merely a means to a product, by itself it has no value.

People want money, but really they should say they want things money can buy, but money is only practical when you can't produce what you want to buy, so rather than helping you to be self sufficient, money is a dependent that acts as a crutch in preventing you from producing goods from your own work. So if we view crutches as something bad, how can money be good?

People want money because they think it is a measure of success, but if the above is true, what does that say about their measure of success?

Money has worth and that value is based on what people are willing to give you for your money.

An example of the value of money:

You can stand in front of ten thousand people and talk. Some might get your message, others won't. Some will intentionally distort your words to suit their purposes. Regardless, unless this is ten thousand people who already support you, even the most eloquent words and cunning dialogue will only be partially effective.

You can offer that same ten thousand people a monetary reward in exchange for an action. The more money you have the more drastic or prolonged that action or series of actions will be. Many more of the ten thousand will accept your offer, because we all need coffee and cigarettes.

Sadly, money is winning the fight. Words could make a come back, but they would require actions to back them up.


Great OP. =]

reply to post by TinkerHaus


People are willing to value money through an act of faith. If you ate an apple it will give your body sustenance regardless of what people are willing to give you for it. Real Goods have value to them, and nothing has greater Good than your will. Which is why money can appear to have value, because the will is stong. But how is this any different than believing in gods or superheroes? If money has no inherent value, but people give it value, what's stopping someone from giving value to a rock?

If someone has a prejudice against you they will reject your words and your words will thus have no value, but equally so if someone rejected your money, say the German Reichsmark, it would also have no value. So both things being equal, it is easier to share words than money.

Only a small group of people could share money with ten thousand people, but any poor person can share words of wisdom and require no action in return. And if money is worthless but it is used to make people do things, it is nothing but a trick and scam, as no one would do something if they knew their half of the bargain was nothing.

Its not a matter of words vs. money, since they are both creations of humanity, so the real war is man vs. himself. Humanity can win that battle whenever it stops beating itself up. If truth and logic were properly employed, the fed could print an infinite amount of money but good men would view it as a cancer even if they could get some goods in return.

If someone could grow tobacco and someone else could only buy cigarettes, who is better off?

Thanks for the encouragement, I thought it needed to be said.

reply to post by Lord Jules




When you talk about words, what you are really talking about are ideas. When you talk about money, you are really talking about power.

Money, if it is a made up thing, is the manifestation of a powerful idea, and it has value because so many people accept this idea. Just like Jesus - just like Buddha. Money is just as powerful as an idea or words, because it is the manifestation of an idea, or words.

As you said, religion is an intangible human construct too, but it also has great value. Religion always has and always will be a major influence in the direction of civilization. Even today religion exerts political pressure on governments, and drives the minds of people toward the justification of killing each other en masse in dogmatic persecution and war. This all happens because of words, ideas, feelings.. Nothing tangible or 'real.'

I agree with you that the value of money is based on the faith of that money. The Reichsmark lost it's value because the government that secured the faith behind the currency failed and burned in deserved agony. An economy can crumble just like a skyscraper can be demolished. Just like someone's faith could be shattered, or solidified.

Money can be and often is the difference between life and death. That is real power.

Regardless of how many people have the amount of money required to sway the decisions of others, the power exists. That is why you need to accept that money has power and play within the rules of the game before you can ever get to a point where money really doesn't matter. Until you're there, money is almost everything. I'm not saying it's right, I'm just saying that's the way it is.

If the fed, or any other authority were to issue an infinite amount of money, it would lose it's value. People don't value things that are ultra common. In order for money to be valuable, it needs to be somewhat scarce. Gold is valuable because it is rare. Diamonds aren't really rare, but they are artificially rare, so they are valuable too. Tires don't grow on trees, so they are rare. They are worth money.

Money is kind of the lubricant that keeps society moving. What we need is DEBT FREE money, not no money. No money means you have to carry beans and potatoes and cattle and gold everywhere you go. Money can be small and fit in your pocket.

reply to post by TinkerHaus


Not just words but words of wisdom, and that has destroyed my lust for money. Has it destroyed everyones lust for money? No, but why should it when it is every individual's responsibility to free their own mind? Can an apple cure all the world's hunger? No, but it still has individual value. Can my words save everyone? No, but it can save me. Can truth save everyone? Yes. Why doesn't it? Because there is individual responsibility and through ignorance they do not have the intelligence to use truth to save themselves. But you can't blame truth for this only the individual. The education system is largely responsible but not solely responsible. If I can reach these conclusions based on the facts anyone can. Why don't they? Because they ignore it. Rather than this being a rigorous debate, we (me and you) are philosophizing by ourselves on this thread while others are busying themselves with talking about what Obama has said. I'm not envious, I'm merely pointing out how easy it is to ignore such truths, using this thread on ats as a microcosm for how the world ignores
the truth. Again, I'm not trying to herd people to this thread, I'm merely pointing out how obviously people ignore what is right in front of them, choosing to ignore rather than refute or accept.

I applaud your effort to actually engage as opposed to ignore. May my words benefit you more so than if I gave you a fiver for smokes.

I agree debt free money would be better than debt money as it has less of a negative value, but it would still be valueless. I'm not talking about what is better for the collective economy but what is good for the individual, whch in turn is good for the collection of individuals if universally true, which truth and logic is universally true because it frees the mind from false reality. I made up this thread but I did not make up the idea behind this thread, proving that the idea is real and not simply my imagination. So all ideas are similar, they can be constructed differenyly but if true are universal concepts and not simply made up imaginations.

money is worthless to me, im a grand in debt to the bank but I give out dmt trips to people for free.

reply to post by Lord Jules


I agree.

If you sit back, and take a good look at the big picture, money is paper and gold is a shiny metal.
Love is an example of something worth something, if not priceless.

reply to post by Alexander the Great

If you sit back,
and take a good look at the big picture,
money is paper and gold is a shiny metal.
Love is an example of something worth something,
if not priceless.

-Annonymous. circa A.D. 2012.

I only wish they taught this kind of poetry in high school.

reply to post by Lord Jules

Not so fast.

Your opening argument is dead on. Money is only valuable because we confer value on it. But the same is true of absolutely anything – even true love. Nothing in the world is valuable in and of itself, but anything can have a value assigned to it. That is why so many things – stone axes, bronze ingots, cowrie shells, cows, gold, paper and energy flowing through wires, to give only a few examples – all can be and have been used as money.

In Capital, Karl Marx proposed a 'labour theory of value', in which everything was supposed to be valued by how much labour it took to produce it. This included the labour involved in upstream processes like mining the raw materials and transporting them to the factory. It's a nice idea and seems to lead to a fairer world, but in practice it just doesn't work, because people couldn't care less how much labour it took to make something, they value goods according to their desirability and availability.

Oddly enough, Marx's labour theory of value is uncritically embraced by gold-standard enthusiasts and other believers in intrinsic value. Such folk believe that things have a real, computable (though possibly variable) value based on their scarcity and the difficulty of producing them. The fallacy of this is easily demonstrated. Gold is scarce and expensive to extract, but that it not what gives it value; its value is what makes it worth extracting. Where does the value come from? Its scarcity? But there is far more gold already in the world than is needed for any practical purpose. It is certainly in great demand as jewellery and as an investment, but there is no world jewellery shortage as far as I know, and the investment value of gold or anything else must depend finally on its notional value – the amount people are willing to pay for it.

So your principal argument is sound and watertight, but does not prove that money has no value.

Indeed, it is clear at first glance that the statement is a fallacy. Money obviously does have value. That's why people spend their precious time and strength earning it, why they beg, borrow and steal it, why they daydream of having a billion or even a million (small change these days) dollars. Your suggestion that money can have negative value because it attracts muggers is wrong; obviously your money has value to the mugger, or he wouldn't bother to mug you. Besides, our liabilities are always valuable to us in some way; we would not carry them if they weren't.

You are also incorrect when you say that people really only want what money can buy. In a coldly rational world this would perhaps be true, but not in the human world of hopes and fears and desires. Money, whose fungibility makes it a container for all our desires, has come to be desired in and of itself. From Topol singing 'If I Were A Rich Man' in Fiddler on the Roof to the matrimonial advertisements in Indian newspapers that specify the sum that will be given away as dowry along with the bride, money itself has the power to make men's mouths water.

The question of how it obtains the value it has is a very interesting one. The obvious answer, that it is valued for what it can buy, is merely circular, since what money can buy is valued in terms of money. Communists and mercantilists have both tried to break this circle and failed. The trouble seems to be that we can't work out on what basis the value of money is computed until we have established what money actually is. Have you ever asked yourself that question? It is very hard to answer.

What's stopping someone from giving value to a rock?

A rock? You mean like the Ka'aba, or Michaelangelo's David, or the silver mountain of Potosi?

reply to post by Lord Jules


I am with you Brother, Hence my name here on ATS Money is just an illusion like pretty much everything else to keep you busy fighting or other ridiculous things that doesn't really matter anyway. Money is the new God of modern man in some ways... Truly pathetic.

If money is worthless, I challenge you all to go without it.

Quit your jobs, withdraw all your money from the bank (if you have any) and BURN IT.

Then stop accepting ANY handouts that cost money. That means not living under a roof that costs money. That means not eating anything that cost money. That means giving your clothes and possessions away. That means not accepting the breakfast offered to you by a kind stranger who sees you are homeless, cold and hungry.

You complain about money, yet here you are using a machine that cost BILLIONS AND BILLIONS of dollars and COUNTLESS HOURS of manpower to develop and deliver to the CONSUMER world. Like it or not you are a consumer and part of the problem you rally against. I cannot take a person seriously who claims that money is worthless while simultaneously reaping the rewards of MONEY.

Your words may have power, but not if you don't follow your own ideas. Prove money is worthless by refusing to use it.

Let me know how that works out for you.


I have some ideas as to how you could live without money. You could try to produce some commodity (but how are you going to start without capital?) and trade for everything. This means long hours producing your commodity, and even longer hours making thousands of individual trades for things like toothpaste, toilet paper, hairspray, your INTERNET and COMPUTER, etc. Let me know how this works out for you - in the mean time I'll be earning MONEY and SAVING IT so I can buy more houses.

I appreciate the respectful back and forth as well, and I respect your view and wish it were true. Money might be a human construct but it is still powerful and it will ALWAYS exist. As long as people need to trade goods and services money will be there.

If we accept this fact we can then start discussing the best way to implement money. People hate money not because it is inherently evil, but because the system we have built is faulty and serves to make those who issue and regulate the money incredibly powerful. We don't need to get rid of money (read: shoot ourselves in the foot and cripple civilization) what we need is money that works for the common person.

if u dont have free things to spend while existing constant, then u would spend urself, so u cant realize urself as being truly existing

it is funny how u keep willing to use things that work in order to prove that things should not work, while u keep bringing out some retarded plans that cant be even refered to any objective theory as what all must die to become that

what is worthless is u being well, bc all the worth is to u and noone else

money is only a relative reality of that, while u the speaker or thinker or willer is exclusively that

u will never admit that not being well is not being negative, on the contrary being zero is the perfect fact for what it means being free clearly
u keep jumping on being well as the normal thing to be while it states ur worthless fact of being free not existing

It's really interesting that I found this article today, about a guy who hasn't spent or earned a penny in 12 years.

He lives in some caves in the desert, in my home state.

lifeinc.today.msnbc.msn.com...

In 2000, Suelo had $30 dollars to his name. He left the money in a phone booth and never looked back. Since then, Suelo has lived on public lands, foraging in dumpsters and canyons for food. He welcomes the generosity of others.

This is what you are arguing for. I'm sorry to say it but I must point out that it's hypocritical for you to condemn money while you simultaneously enjoy the myriad of things it has brought you.

money as free thing that circulate is the most true thing, where there is money there is constant betterment objective, money for sure never destroy realities on the contrary while it adds to it smthg surprisingly from up

if people brains could b useful as money then everyone would recognize the true worth of money

but hypocrits are all evil livings meaning to judge objective values as inferior only to possess it all, so to live anonymous by procuration free through killing constantly what exist forbidding it to live