Money Book Post Three, The Interview with Wangari Muta Maathai

The interview with Wangari Muta Maathai is fascinating. I like the idea of green belt movement. It remembers me a quote from Chinese. Teaching other how to fish is better than giving them fish. The way Mr. Maathai is a testimony of this idea of teaching. What he did is very useful for people in Kenya rather than just giving them food and aid.

It is hard for me to understand how to connect the environmental problem with civil and world peace at first. From this interview, I actually learned lots from her. Protecting the environment for sustainable development is essential. Moreover, sustainability will change how people are living by providing them jobs and food. When people’s life are secured with food and job, the conflict will be minimalized, which means maybe the war will be over. There is several sense of war. One is a war for countries regard of national interest, which some natural interests are natural resources. One is the war for the right, which she leads woman work together and create a better world. Another one is a war for poverty, which is how their movement brings people economic benefit. The last one is a war against the environmental problem.

It is an idea of a triple bottom line: economy, society, and the environment. From my perspective, I think the ultimate result for the triple bottom line is harmony, which people with people, country with country, and human with natural and so on. The harmony can serve the fundamental force for civil rights, world peace. 

Money Book Post 2 Chapter 3

This chapter is talking about people and countries are willing to sacrifice of human and natural resources in order to generate money because they think money represent wealth. However, they did not recognize except money; there are something else can be made into wealth such as water. We need to increase our awareness of the injustice and corruption of current money system which has over-consumption and over-production. Not only money can improve our life quality but also growing food, making clothes, and educating children can make people wealth which most of the people ignore. Therefore, money is not the most important part of our life, and we should care more about the human and natural resources.

The money is a double side sword, which brings benefit to people and it also harms individuals in the other way. The edge of the sword depends on how people distribute and manage the money. The traditional economic system is using money as account for values and acts as a way of exchanging product and services. At first, the conventional system seems works. When we dig deeper into this system, we can found out in order to achieve the flow and position of money; people use greed way to achieve the values without concerns of society and environments. The system brings fortune to some people. In the same time, the majority of people are in debt or losing it because they control the way how the money flows and represents. The center of this system is debts and interests. The relationship between the lender and borrower seems to make the economy prosperous. Later on, the system seems lost its value since rich people are defining the economic life; and people started aware of the injustice of this system. In order to avoid corruption and injustice, people began to use fair trade and new economy system through complementary currency. Lastly, the most efficient way to solve the current economic system is that people need to know the capacity of money can do and what they can do to create social finance system towards the just economy. 

Money Book Review Chapter 3

This section mainly takes about the value of money. It is very hard for me to read. One of the reasons is the vocabulary very complicated; another reasons is the lack of knowledge of cohesive meaning throughout the writing. Fortunately, I understand it after lots of attempts. There are two values of the money. One is gold-backed currency, which uses gold to measure its value. Another is the “Greenback” money which is a fiat money without any measurement of its actual value. This the one we use today, the dollars. Back in the 1890s, there was a strong distrust towards bankers and government. This was the beginning of "greenbacks", a fiat currency issued to help pay for Civil War expenses and were blessed as legal tender.  At first, the government can issue fiat money without limits.  Therefore, the value of Greenback need people's consent on its values. For example, the US government issues dollar bill, which is trustworthy globally. 

People trust US government issues valuable currency, which can be used in the trade. People were assured that the bill that they got can be exchanged with an equivalent one with the same value. Then the author introduces us the idea of quantity and quality embedded in the value of the fiat currency. For the issuance and supply of currency, consumers tends to desire more quantity currency since this gives them more purchasing power, but when the currency devaluates, they will prefer qualitative currency where it supports rising value. In somehow, he also explains the metaphor “barrels” used in describing the value of money in someone’s writing. 

Response to Money Book Chapter 12

This section is so weird for me. They talk about artists. From my guess, this may have something about the value of art with a value of money. Or it may have something with the popularity of the money and issue of counterfeiting the currency. With an introduction of Roy Lichtenstein, the author introduces us the idea of the pop art movement in the America. The core idea of the pop art movement is pop, which can refer to the thing people like. For example, people like the money; people are using dollar bill frequently. The using of money as an art help people experience more in their daily activities, which is movement from the making invisible become visible to pop art.

Later, the authors introduced us Andy Warhol, who is also leading artist in a pop art movement. What he did are replication and re-organized position. There is also an image of artwork done by Mr. Warhol, which is a replication of dollar bills. It is made from print-making to form some kind of the idea of freedom. The freedom of making the money and the organizing it. In this part, the authors give us some knowledge of free capitalism by Milton Friedman. It emphasizes the idea of the free market which as I know is raised by Adam Smith. Let us go back to 1960s, the WW2 just ended, President Roosevelt have lots of action on governmental controls since the idea of free market fails. However, due the recovery of the economy, people still seek the idea of freedom. Therefore, the pop art may also reflect the notion of the free from government control. At the end of this section, it is about the relationship between free economy and pop art. He talks about the power of money as well as the power of art to spread an idea.