Morning Thoughts: So Much Money, So Little Reason

I'm about as far as possible from being the first person to observe this, but this morning (and last night), I've been thinking about just how much money there is floating around in this world, and how frivolous many of its uses are. How much good could be done if it were distributed more equally. How much suffering averted or cured, how much goodness brought to pass. How much cultural enrichment added, how much spiritual and physical safety provided, how much hope offered. 

Not that I'm an expert, but I studied business and economics in college. I've paid attention to the world since then. I understand some of the systems that control this sort of thing. What I don't see is any good reason why those systems should be as they are. Plenty of bad reasons, but no good ones. 

Sometimes I fall into the trap of wanting money so I can make lots of charitable donations and help with people's problems, but that's really a selfish desire. I want it because it would make me feel good about helping, and also because of other people. What I truly want, or what I think I should want more fully, is for everyone to have enough, so those problems don't exist in the first place, without having to be the source of that help myself. 

I'm not a self-reliance nut. I think we desperately need to be interdependent. But there are lots of ways we would still need to rely on each other, even if we all had our monetary needs met. We have other needs that money can't fully address. More important needs. I wish that financial security was the norm. The baseline, so we didn't have to worry about these simple questions of physical safety and survival, or of having the resources to make the great contributions that lie within each of us. Then we could use that security as the foundation it should be, and build better things from there.