A worth of a thing

A worth of a thing...

Upon further research into this subject of money, I have come across different stories. Wait a minute; I was researching survival sites and this topic came up in a story. Now that I think about it money and survival have been linked often. I will not quote the story but it went something like this.
The man was talking about barter items and he asked what a box of nails was worth. In certain circumstances that box of nails would be worth their weight in gold , since gold would not be worth much, neither would silver. Maybe a trade for a bottle of alcohol or 2 cigarettes or some fresh fish. In a barter trade it depends on what the other person is holding, how badly you need (want) it and what you are willing to give up. If society broke down to the point of no transport trucks were transporting goods and a smoker had no access to nicotine, they may very well trade the box of nails for the a couple of smokes. A person brewing and distilling their own hooch, would gladly trade a bottle of the stuff if they had a leaky roof that needed fixing. I person who caught a whole mess of fish would be willing to part with a couple and the holder of the box of nails could be starving. Does this mean that a bottle of booze = a couple of smokes = a couple of fish? No! Yet under the right circumstances they very well could be. This story illustrates that in a trade or exchange the worth of the item depends on the needs of the two parties trading, therefore the worth of an item is flexible. Money is the same way. Since it is a token of worth and it has no intrinsic value (except as a piece of paper or a bit of metal) it flexes from day to day depending on what millions of transactions say it is worth. That is the simplified version anyway.

Right now I am willing to trade several months of research and hundreds of hours of writing in the form of two books for what? One of my needs are arrows or crossbow bolts and BB's. Well, with the money/credit system in place and still functional, I can have my books available 24 hours a day at www.mjk-private-income.com. A person wanting that valuable information can trade money in the form of digital bits directly into my paypal account. I can turn around and use those bits to ask someone who makes arrows or BB's to send me some and I will transfer some of those bits into their account. Everybody ends up happy.

Till next time...

Michael J. Kaer

money in other cultures

I have had friends sending me websites to read once they found out I was writing a book about money. Some interesting things popped up. Definitions of money are split when they talk about money supply-based on "hard" metals (gold,silver) or on some other commodity or money that is just printed paper backed by law and the ability to pay taxes with it. Other people looked at it in terms of how many calories were spent in earning the money or how many hours of labour was needed for a common item(like a loaf of bread). Some of them are in line with my thinking on the matter, that it is a medium of exchange, tokenism, a bigger-better way to barter.

I say it does not matter what system is in place, if it is based on tobbaco, metal,oxen,goats,large round stones or bits of data in a computer. I guess it does matter to those who hold large amounts of the stuff, what it is based on, but not as far as my writing is concerned. I think if our society had a major downturn like I predict in my book "What Money Can't Buy"( available at www.MJK-private-income.com),the only true common trade good would be hemp. It is the only plant that has a use that anyone can use and the vast majority of people can grow some everywhere man lives (except maybe at the poles and even then it can be grown in special buildings).

For the purposes of this book it does not matter what the currency is as long as the trading of Ideas, Goods or Services are exchanged. It will be a repeated theme that money has no real substance; it is a creation of our minds, a figment of our imagination.

I end here for tonight, till next time...

Michael

Success breeds Success

I have joined several newsletters and forums that I write to often. One of them deals with one of my hobbies, making crafts. They had asked my to write a personal success story, which I was happy to do. I went on to explain how I started with nothing, just the items you would find in most kitchens and using used wax from burnt candles, I taught myself how to make candles. Of course I read a couple of books on the subject after I started , to refine my methods. I also told about giving away my first few as gifts and went on to selling them on ebay, up to the point where I am selling them on consignment, just concentrating on the fun of creating them rather than the hassle of selling them. I now must buy my wax in bulk, 100 pounds at a time, just to keep up with demand and keep my costs reasonable.

The reason that site wanted success stories is they know that success breeds success. If I can do it, anyone can do it. If you learn from your mistakes; wait a minute, I am getting ahead of myself. First you have to makes some mistakes in the first place to learn from. That means you have to get your hands dirty or in my case waxy, and try something in the first place. Once you have made some mistakes and found out information or experimented with ways to do it better, you can learn from that process and (here is the big secret)apply what you learned in other areas of your life. The more small successes you have the more they will grow to big successes.You can even count the failures and the mistakes as successes if you gain knowledge from them.

The other secret is --- Have fun!

What is the sense of making a ton of money if you are not going to have fun making it and have fun spending it. Money is there to provide joy and satisfaction. By it's very nature ( an idea, not something concrete) the joy and satisfaction will only be short term. It is the constant cycle that brings the joy back again and again. Remember money is not worth anything untill it is spent!

Feel free to sent your personal success stories to me and I can share them with others. Trust me- it will make you feel good.
That all for today, I have to get back to the serious work of having fun!!!
Michael

Success

Yesterday I had to log off to go to a meeting. One of the topics for discussion was "Success". I found it refreshing to hear from these people that they were not instantly equating money with success. It is known you need some of the stuff to be "successful" but the amounts were not a huge burden to attain.
One of the women was discussing how she was reading lots of self-help books in an attenpt to understand this topic. I turned her on to the names I mentioned in the last post and a few suggestions. I hope that helps.

Back to money-What is it?

It is actually a dream of sorts. We have a large bunch of tokens in the form of printed paper, coins, stocks and bonds and those bits of data on a computer, all over the world. They have a value in the place that issues them and they may or may not have value in other places. The values change on a daily rate. I can say 1$=one can of peaches, but that value is only for the location I am in. Can you see the problem of assigning a set value to money? Back in the day when money was backed by gold reserves, it had a (somewhat) fixed value. Now it is free floating, based on a prediction of what a country's net worth for that year may be. How certain is that?

I hope you get my point that money does not have a fixed value. Money only has value when it is being spent. sitting in a sock under the mattress, it is just a bunch of paper with ink on it and some pretty bits of pressed metal.Money is not "real" until it is used in a transaction.

Thus ends the lesson for today.

Michael J. Kaer, President of Kaer Enterprises (.com), www.mjk-private-income.com, www.2bitpixel.com, www.mikesworms.com and www.onthespotmassage.biz

Money - The Book

Do you know the names Leonard Orr, Sondra Ray or Jerry Gillies?
Yes? Great; you are half way home.
No? Google them right now (well you can wait till after you have read this blog).

A good place to start is with the term Rebirthing, also look up "The Prosperity Consciousness Consultation".

Why am I mentioning these people? Simple; they are rich and they know what money really is.

Lets start there. What is money? My definition is a M.O.E., a Medium of Exchange.

A trade or barter (an exchange) of a good, idea or service for another good, idea or service, needs a medium to keep track of the transaction. Barter in the past was just a trading of stuff back and forth. Sometime,somewhere they would make a mark in wood or clay to indicate the trade. Then someone got the idea to make tokens that represent the items be exchanged so you did not have to lug the stuff back and forth every day. The tokens we use today are in the form of paper money, coins and little bits of data saved in a computer somewhere.

What's with this title "Money - The Book"?

I am writing a book about money, what it is and what it is not and how you can get some of it for yourself. I will be combining booklets I have written in the past and expanding them with what I know now.

I have to log off now, I have a meeting to get to.

Michael J. Kaer, President of Kaer Enterprises (.com), www.mjk-private-income.com, www.2bitpixel.com, www.mikesworms.com and www.onthespotmassage.biz