by Shannon Lisa

Created on: February 07, 2008

In my opinion it isn't necessarily money itself that is the root of all evil, it is rather the love of that money that is at the root. I do believe though, that this old adage rings true for the most part. Ever since I was a young child, even when my mother told me I just 'didn't understand' the value of a dollar, I never quite understood money.

Native Americans didn't use money...they traded goods for services. Now, today people argue that money represents goods and services, so it is the same thing. But it is very far from it. In actuality, money is not necessary at all, it is just paper and metal. Goods and services cannot actually be replaced with paper and metal...those things themselves are goods. People need paper and metal in their everyday lives that isn't in the form of money.

If you were to take all of the money in the world, and all of the printers it is made on...and you were to burn it all to the ground causing there to be not even one shred of evidence that money ever existed; electricity would still flow, gas would still come out of the pump, buildings would still be standing, crops would still grow, phones would still work, planes would still fly, satellites would stay in the sky and not fall out of it, people would still be able to use the Internet, and eat dinner....the only difference would be they would be doing it without money.

Now the reason people believe they need money is because many people believe that humans cannot practice self control. Some people believe that most everyone WANTS more than they need, and they would therefore take what they want and not what they need. Which is why we have money. So everyone supposedly has equal opportunity to be able to afford what we need and or want. The biggest problem with that is the fact that it is just not true. There are still poor and homeless people in this country. People yell at them all the time for being homeless, they say things like 'get a job'. In this country in order to have a job that pays well enough for you to afford anything decent you have to have a phone number or at the very least a home address. Some jobs require that you have a cell phone. In order to have a cell phone without a job it means you had to have a previous job or a friend or family member who was paying for it for you. Some jobs require a car, and the same thing applies for the cost of that. Homeless people do not have access to a phone regularly...let alone a home address.

In that sense, yes, money is the

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