4 ms·
I disagree with the blog post (although I agree with one of the points, that money are not a wealth storage mechanism). There are valid reasons to make savings
by asgard1024 13y ago
I disagree with the blog post (although I agree with one of the points, that money are not a wealth storage mechanism).
There are valid reasons to make savings - accumulate money (or any other liquid asset with high exchange value, not necessarily use value - like gold). According to many economists, this is not true; rationally, one should only invest (exchange money for something producing more money later) or consume (make yourself feel better).
The reason to make savings is to postpone the decision to invest or consume (which is irreversible, due to physical nature of the world), and by doing that, you may gain an edge over other people who are forced to make that decision earlier. In other words, you gain power over other people by saving money (which is kind of what Marx what saying about the goals of capitalist - to make more money, ultimately).
Let me give a couple of examples: A rich capitalist (having a lot of money on hand) can survive a strike of his employees forcing them to reduce their demands; temporarily outlive better competition; react to new challenges by investing into technology already proven elsewhere; temporarily reduce prices to drive competition out of the market, and so on. Although in these examples I talk about capitalists, this is true for anybody, but the effect is not so apparent.
Of course, the extent how much one can do that or how much it will help depends on the money distribution in society. You cannot save all the time, and not everybody can save at the same time - otherwise you get a deflation. Thus it's not a sure-fire way to gain power, because nothing is. The blog post calls it "personal freedom", but it's not just that; that's very individualistic view of what's going on.
And since there are valid reasons to accumulate money, they are not just a medium of exchange. Whether or not the result (power over other people) is "wealth" depends on personal taste, I guess.