Jonathan Ong's Blog

For most of us, money is a necessity for survival and free will. For others, money is not a requirement for happiness and could, in fact, have a negative impact. For some devoutly religious, money should be avoided as it pertains to sin and evil. What most people don’t realize is that money has more significance than just merely a means to attain goods and services. Economics is the study of unlimited wants and scarce resources and money allows these resources to be allocated efficiently within society. Thus, having a higher income is synonymous with contributing to society.

Money symbolizes one’s impact on society, positive or negative. Doctors make a significant amount of income because they save lives. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are wealthy because they found a need in society and were capable of creating products that satisfied these needs. Bankers manage assets for wealthy institutions, but their contribution is debatable since they tend to widen the disparity between the rich and poor. Successful drug dealers are wealthy due to, but not limited to, their “positive” impact on drug users. Sure, you may not aspire to make a lot of money, but by doing so, you’re limiting your contribution to society and, both explicitly and implicitly, yourself.

Money allows you to contribute back to society. When you earn money, you’ve contributed something of value to society, but you also have the power to allocate a large portion of the economy as you see fit. When you buy products, you supply others with jobs. When you invest, you help companies grow. You also vote with your dollar, choosing which companies and businesses you want to survive. Your contribution is two-fold; by making twice as much as someone else, you basically contribute four times as much towards society.

Money reveals one’s true identity. We’ve all heard the phrase, “money is the root of all evil.” A poor man does not have the ability to express himself due to his monetary limitations, but a wealthy man can express himself in almost any way possible. The only reason “money is the root of all evil” is people themselves are evil, and when they are given the opportunity to express themselves, they prefer to express their evil thoughts and desires. Money is not the root of all evil, money allows us to become who we really are: evil. A good way to analyze a person’s character is to give him money and see how he uses it.

Money is only worth how much you want it to be worth. Think about stocks with no dividends such as Apple. The only reason Apple’s stock is an investment is due to other people’s value placed in Apple since there are no dividends. By buying Apple’s stock, you hope to earn a return which could only happen if demand for Apple’s stock increases. Basically, you’re betting that people will have more hope in Apple in the future than right now. A large factor in the stock market and consequently the economy is human psychology.

Many religions and people aren’t interested in earning as much money as they can. Sometimes it’s because there is not a sufficient market for their type of services such as not enough government funding for educators or not enough donations for charity and church workers. Sometimes it’s because they spend their time volunteering elsewhere. But most of the time it’s because people don’t care to contribute to society and only live for themselves. Hiding your talents from the rest of society is as selfish as you can get. Sure, Bill Gates may have been a little greedy when running Microsoft, but how he allocates his wealth to charity is comparable to a small country’s GDP.

The Afghanistan and Iraq wars have created a burden on the federal budget deficit. Up to date, these wars combined have cost the federal government over $1 trillion, close to the federal budget deficit estimate of $1.25 trillion for fiscal year 2011. At least Saudi Arabia paid for $40 billion of the $60 billion cost of the Gulf War. While Congress debates whether to sign a health care bill that costs less than $1 trillion over ten years and provides help to a large proportion of its citizens, it without hesitation allows the Afghanistan war to drag, providing little benefit to almost any U.S. citizens. The questions are, “Is war worth the price?” “Could our tax dollars be allocated more efficiently?”

A common misconception is that war stimulates the economy. World War II did not pull the U.S. out of the depression but instead only distracted citizens from their domestic struggles. The real stimulus derived from the U.S.’s strong post-war infrastructure which European and Asian countries lacked due to the war’s devastation. Only the U.S. was able to provide the world the goods and services necessary for reconstruction, stimulating the economy in the process. Guns do not contribute to society, does not make the economy more efficient, and does not provide a service others are incapable of providing, though it plays a role in preventing economically stifling environments.

However, the preparation of war does in fact stimulate the economy due to investments in research and development. Though NASA’s goals may sound farfetched and impractical, its research provides technology applicable to almost everyone and its needs provides a market for the private sector’s own R&D. Allocation of resources towards R&D also provides jobs to American scientists and engineers, ensuring the U.S. remains on the forefront of science and technology. Whereas the benefit of war ends when the enemy surrenders, the benefit of R&D has no bounds.

An undeniable fact is that more Americans die from lack of health care and car accidents than from terrorism every year. Are the hundreds of billions spent every year on war worth the possible benefits? Are the economic repercussions of a large federal budget deficit worth the potentially few American lives saved every year from terrorism? Do future generations prefer to spend their tax dollars on accumulated interest rather than health care or infrastructure?

But there is no purpose in discussing an issue without providing a possible solution. A paradigm shift in war tactics is necessary. It is impossible to weed out these dedicated terrorists through brute force; we need strategy and technology. Our tax dollars should be focused not on deployment but on R&D, technology such as Boston Dynamic’s BigDog which would allow the war to be fought more efficiently in the future with less manpower, less casualties, and less deployment costs. A strong, long term military presence is economically unsustainable and reaps very little benefit to the international community. Why spend money on deploying excess troops in foreign countries when we could spend that money on infrastructure and help the citizens at home?

As all you Twitter and Facebook users know, most of your feeds are filled with spam from your friends. They tell you more information than you would ever want to know, yet there’s no way you can filter the useful or entertaining information. Sure, you can hide certain friends from the news feed, but you can’t keep following and unfollowing friends on Twitter, especially if they protect their tweets. What people need to learn is how to self-edit their posts.

For the most part, social networking has only two purposes for the average user: mass communication and entertainment. If you need to communicate quickly to a large group of people, social networking allows you to do so quickly and efficiently, but if you need to communicate directly, there are much better means to do so: call, text, e-mail, etc. Most of us use it for entertainment: looking at drunk pictures, reading people’s posts and updates, making fun of people.

But social networking is no longer entertaining when your friends cease to be entertaining or informative. People tend not to self-edit their posts. They allow posts that no one cares about, posts that are uncreative and unspectacular, posts that are uninformative and not thought provoking, posts that are not in any shape, way, or form entertaining. Facebook and Twitter is not your diary, a diary is your diary. No one cares about your life because chances are, your life is pretty boring. In the words of Maddox, these people are basically saying “fuck you” to their friends and followers. They say, “your time isn’t as valuable as mine, so rather than spending time to edit down my content, I’ll let you read it all and sift for good content for me”. They say, “your friendship is only worth as much as you make me money, as much as you score me points in useless Facebook apps, as much as you retweet my tweets, etc.”

This is not only applicable to social websites, but to everything. Self-edit your portfolio. Self-edit your resume. Self-edit your blogs. Self-edit your photography. Self-edit anything and everything you make. You don’t need mediocre work in your portfolio. You don’t want employers bogged down by useless information in your resume. You don’t want readers to have to search through your blog to find the entertaining posts. You don’t want people to see your mediocre photography because then they’ll think you just got lucky with your good photos. I’m not saying that you should care what other people think of you or be ashamed of your work. I’m saying that you shouldn’t waste other people’s time if you don’t have to. Presenting too much information makes it more difficult to get your point across.

Have you ever heard a song you loved, decided to buy or download the artist’s album, and discovered their whole album was junk? These types artists need to learn to self-edit their albums. If you continuously release mediocre songs, you will be labeled as mediocre. By self-editing, your average product will be of higher quality, giving your audience more respect for you.

So please stop using social networking as a toilet for your verbal diarrea. Do yourself a favor by sharing to others only quality.