No Money For The Rich

With the credit crisis and the plunge in the stock markets, people are starting to reassess their money. I shall repeat again, I don't get how money works, but I have been writing about that enough already. However, I do believe I found what my personal goal should be. I should reach a level of comfort which allows me to go around without needing a single dollar of euro.

If everybody just gives me stuff (like drinks, food, concert tickets), let's me through (customs, trains, planes) I don't need a single buck to my name. I'm sure that's how Paris Hilton and Kim Kardshian do it. People just give them designer dresses to wear, let's them in the hippest clubs, and travel them anywhere they want. Strangely they are rich beyond believe, but without really needing to.

I'm sure people will give me lots of stuff, if I'm just nice or of value to them. But usually only after I've been best friends with them for ten years or so. Now I don't have time to get those relationships with the grocer, the hairdresser, the Circuit City guy, the Abercrombie chick and the KLM stewardess. And to be honest, I don't have the reputation that gets me a relationship based on adoration from the start.

So that's why cash is necessary. Cash allows me to skip building relationships for goods and services. That also goes for me. I get some money, and I do you a service. But if I know you well, I'm more inclined in giving you stuff, or taking you somewhere for free. All this goes back to a measure of relationships and trust. The more people trust each other, the less money is necessary.

This is what went wrong in the financial market. People have lost trust in each other, making it much more expensive to get things around, up to the point where no transactions can be completed anymore.

It will be sometime before we build enough trust again, so that normal transactions can be performed. Usually it takes a psychological barrier to get to that level. Something like New Years. That's also the moment where I think things will start to get better, sometime next year.