Banks are Dumb and Abolish Money (1/2)
Banking is like super dumb. So we all know banks, right? They’re financial institutions dedicated to the management of money, those imaginary numbers, for consumers and businesses (and I suppose the government). Most people are affiliated with a bank of some kind, whether it’s a traditional private bank or a credit union or whatever else. So, I am an anti-financialist, I think finance as a concept, field, industry, whatever, is stupid for a few reasons that happen to align with why I hate banking in specific. So let’s explain.
I’m 18, turned an adult relatively recently, so I am having to get involved in banking more. Checking balances, using my card, transferring funds, etc. And can I just say, it is absolutely horrible. Well, okay, I enjoy the independence aspect to it: I have my own bank account that I can make purchases with; I don’t want to worry about my mom looking at my purchases (you know what I mean) so I actually buy the things I want. I feel all professional and adulty when I use banking jargon like “Yes, I would like to check my balance and transfer a set of funds from my domestic checking account to my international checking account”, but other than the feeling of autonomy and independence that I get from engaging with the bank system, I don’t like banks.
For starters, there are so many fees and they’ll all stupid. Like, overdraft fees, if you try to spend money you don’t have in your checking account, you can get slapped with a $35 overdraft fee, which to me seems so, pointless? Idk, I know the point is so that the bank can make money, but like, pfft, I’m not a fucking bank, I’m not a bank CEO or shareholder or board member, so why the fuck should that matter to me? I don’t care about the profit interests of banks, it’s not like I will ever see that money in my life. I care about me and my own convenience and life. If someone doesn’t have enough money in their checking for a purchase, just reject the purchase, like the fuck? Just say you can’t buy this thing you want, you don’t have to charge them for it, that’s so stupid.
Oh, and sometimes there are withdraw fees. Why? Why should I have to pay money to access my own money? Like what the fuck? What is the point? And don’t give me the “they need to make profit” line of defense, no the fuck they don’t, it is actually possible to run an organization without extracting endless lines of cash from it. You can just provide a fucking service and not have to always get something in return; life doesn’t have to be transactional ALL THE TIME. Life is not a bank, it shouldn’t be run like a set of cost and revenues functions or risk-benefit analyses, just fucking do what you are supposed to do.
The reason I hate banks is primarily because I think money as a concept is dumb. You have this imaginary number that separates you from the goods and services and whatever else that is produced in this world. It’s like a middleman you have to satisfy before you can access anything you need or want. You have to pay for housing, clothes, computers, chap stick, vacations, and literally everything. It’s annoying and it’s incredibly unhealthy.
Have we ever considered the long-term psychological consequences of having to turn every single desire you have into a risk-benefit analysis? Like, if I want to eat raspberry-filled chocolate, I have to weigh purchasing that over other things I might need to spend my money on. What if I need a repair for my bike? What if I need to pay for that train ticket? What if I want to eat out? What if I want that sex toy from Spencers? In our consumerist economy, that is a LOT of information you have to account for, and if you are poor like me, then you have to increase that processing ten-hundred-fold. And sure, the risk-benefit analysis becomes less arduous the richer you are, but most people aren’t rich and all people can’t be rich, by definition, so idk, is this really a psychologically sustainable way to organize consumption of goods and services?
I don’t think it is, especially since money is treated as a limited resource for everyday people, and as a limitless resource for governments, billionaires, and corporations. When you're not rich, your entire ability to access resources is limited by how much money you have. Why does it have to be limited? Why can’t I just eat the raspberry-flavored chocolate because I want to eat it and you are offering for it to be eaten? Why can’t I just grab the sex toy I want? Why do we have to limit ourselves for no good reason?
Oh, but people will tell you there are good reasons for money to exist. That we need money to exist. That there is no other way to organize a society. People talk about money like it’s as natural as the rising and setting of the sun, when in contrast to a literal celestial body, money is at the end of the day just a piece of paper (or I guess numbers on a screen). It has no inherent value to anyone; it is only valuable because we collectively consider it to be valuable. We already intuitively understand that, at least, I think we do. If I take my Euros to the local fish market in Madagascar and try to buy something, they will tell me to get lost! Because Euros aren’t considered to be valuable there. All this to say, money isn’t natural, it’s artificial; it is brought into this world by human choices and it can be brought out of this world with human choices.
One reason people talk about the necessity of money is because of scarcity, that if everything was free, we would run out of everything. Well, I hate to be the one to say it, but scarcity is a myth. Well, okay, technically there are limited amounts of everything, but that statement ignores context. If you live in a forest with 1 million apples and there are 5,000 people living in the forest, including you, that’s 200 apples per person. Is that meaningful scarcity? Relative to you and the population you are part of, do the apples even appear finite? How would you go about eating all of those in a day, or even a month, and what kind of person would eat 6 apples per day? Scarcity is relative to the population it affects, and only becomes meaningful when there are small levels of stuff in comparison to a large population that wants that stuff.
The mythology of scarcity ignores many key factors about the natural world. One, lots of resources are renewable. Water is renewable, air is renewable, energy is renewable (at least with solar, wind, and such), etc. You know what else is renewable? Biomass, so things like wood, plants, animals, food, agricultural products, cheeses, milk, etc. Renewable just means that it will naturally replenish itself so long as your consumption is horribly abusive and exploitative. And how can we ensure that our consumption is horribly abusive and exploitative? Adopting a zero waste paradigm, where we recycle, reuse, reduce shit, where we repair things that are broken, rot things into compost and soil, and refuse shit we don’t want.
Nature is cyclical. Resources are cyclical. Even things that aren’t considered renewable, like clay, sand, glass, gemstones, metals, ores, ARE actually renewable, they just take a long time to renew naturally. But goods themselves are renewable if you establish cycles of use. Take a bike that you own. It breaks so you repair it instead of buying a new bike which would use even more resources. It becomes irreparable so you melt the bike down and use the metal for something else, maybe a new bike or a kitchen appliance or a cup. Metal resources are cyclical, they can always be recycled and reused.
What if we made the most out of the resources we had instead of constantly destroying the natural environment to make more things? We have literal landfills full of resources, full of metals we can recycle, biomatter we can repurpose, items we can repair, etc. Waste is an illusion, created by capitalism to necessitate infinite production and consumption. Capitalism relies upon a linear waste model, where we produce shit, use shit, and discard shit, so we can buy the next shit. Anti-financialism relies upon a cyclical zero waste model, where we take shit, use shit, use shit for something else, and something else, and something else, and something else, forever, without us having to produce new resources for each “something else”.
We don’t need money to run our economy or limit scarcity. We can limit scarcity through responsible consumption and production, where we localize production, establish complex trade networks, adopt the 6 Rs of zero waste, and rot and recycle when all other options are exhausted. Where we share the shit we already have instead of hoarding it for ourselves, where we borrow things temporarily, like with a library, until we are done so the next person can use it. Where we turn the process of accessing goods into gift-giving, offering the fruits of our labour only so that people may benefit from it.
Second part here.
