Four Dimensional Perspective

What is Money?
Money does not exist in nature, it is a way to count value-addition in business. It is meant to accelerate business opportunities to unlimited-folds, leading all of society to gradually ascending prosperity. If not prevented by force, prosperity naturally breeds prosperity.

Prior to use of money, barter may have been the perfect way of doing business between any two persons. Barter meant “simultaneous value-addition” to each other. Both parties gained and no one lost anything . However, barter had an inherent limitation: it required both parties to be ready with their goods-to-exchange, simultaneously at the same time and same place. Barter required that both parties acted as buyers and sellers of goods at the same time, in one step . If someone had surplus goods, and no one else had surplus goods-to-exchange with him at the same time and place, barter could not have taken place. And surplus goods got wasted.

Thanks to ingenuity of a creative mind, there appeared the concept of money. What if barter could be performed in more steps than one: one person had surplus goods to offer (i.e. to sell) while the other person had no ready goods of seller's choice to exchange with him? Someone then may have thought about this problem. All that was required was a method to measure the worth of these goods in some terms that was acceptable to all the members living in that society. Thus, the concept of money may have come into being!

This way, it became possible to break the barter into two, three, four, and eventually to unlimited steps and thus enhance the scope of barter on path of potentially exponential-growth, with no limitations of distance and time. So, a seller got money from the buyer for his goods, and in turn spent this money to buy one or more goods from one or more other sellers, as and when he wanted. And thus the process of barter got expanded from one-step to multi-step value-addition. The concept of money thus became the key instrument of revolution, breaking the barriers of barters, limited within small villages to distant locations, wherever common forms of money were trusted and acceptable to all the people concerned.

This innovation (introduction of concept of money into barter) can be compared in some sense to today's revolutionary concept of what we call “windows” on our personal computer. Before “windows”, there was one fixed-screen alone. Concept of “windows” converted one screen into possibility of multitude of screens within another within another, theoretically extending to…infinite, i.e., having practically no limits. No wonder, one is able to do more and more work with less and less time, through the world of computers today. Thanks to this innovation, greater information travels in lesser time and cost, with each passing day. Likewise, if the money remains true measure of value-addition, as originally meant to be, any society could aspire to achieve gradually ascending prosperity, for all .

The question then arises is, what has then gone wrong with the concept of money? Like windows in computers, why we are not able to see multitude of value-add, i.e. more and more value with less and less money with each passing day? Is it possible? Could every individual find a way to achieve gradually increasing prosperity while others also gain? What is stopping this process? Are we making any deliberate error by not understanding the “power of money” correctly and preventing its journey to create greater and greater wealth, for all?

Loss in Sanctity of Money: Preventing Abundance of Prosperity

The problem lies when ‘ sanctity of money ' is lost and a few people with power and privileges can acquire and control larger part of ‘money-flow' through transfer of wealth activities rather than allowing it to create fresh wealth in the economy as whole. Money then ceases to remain a genuine measure of value-addition, as originally meant to be by its design. Possession of greater money then does not necessarily represent creation of wealth.

Total wealth of a society or nation is cumulative sum of six types of roles we play in the economy (Exhibit). As wealth creators, we add greater weath than we acquire, whereas in other four roles (viz., parasite, speculator, manipulator, wealth destroyer), we tend to acquire greater wealth than we add or even by destroying potential/existing wealth-creation. Transfer-of wealth(ToW) represents growth in our personal-wealth (PW) without contributing fresh wealth-creation. While all six forms of roles naturally exist in all societies at all times, the problem for a nation lies when instead of being restricted to tolerable limits, ToW begins to dominate and dictate CoW activities. This is when a nation's economy is unfortunately led towards widening-disparity, poverty and exploitation.

Quality-Time-Quotient (Q t Q)... The Exponential Growth Factor in Wealth-creation

While trade, i.e. exchange of value-added goods, results in marginal-growth in created-wealth , the knowledge of the scientific principles of nature and applying them purposefully leads to exponential-growth. This happens because scientific knowledge increases collective time-efficiency of human society. There was a period in ancient world, when all people may have worked all day to produce enough food for the day. Today, merely 3-5 % of population is required to work to produce basic food for all, such is the increase in human-time-efficiency.

Wealth creation is a result of human efforts, by combining both routine and creative actions. Doing routine work, human can be equated to a machine that gives finite and fixed output. However, once creative mind is incorporated in one's work; output can grow exponentially. All technological growth from the times of stone age till date has come from curious application of a few creative minds, yet benefitting all of society eventually. Due to cumulative growth in knowledge, a man can do today what whole population of earth could not have done collectively just a hundred years ago.

Innovation in work need not be restricted to a few rare individuals, in times to come. Everyone by birth, irrespective of formal education, is gifted with ability to think. Given opportunity and belief in self, each individual could think creatively. For any individual, time has two aspects:

1. Quantity of Time
2. Quality of Time

Q t Q (Quality-time Quotient) :
"Human-time invested to achieve creative excellence" (divided by) "Human-time spent for maintenance of life"

The real challenge for leaders of business and economy is in their conviction towards growth in quality-time of people. While comparing low income individuals with those with high income, the critical parameter to observe is what percentage of time is required to earn basic livelihood. If an individual has to work all his time to earn for living needs, there is little scope for his continuing-growth and creative contribution. On the other hand, lesser the time required to earn survival needs, greater the possibility of creative excellence. The root to abundance of wealth for any society lies in the growth of quality-time-quotient of its people.

Globalization that we talk about today has not happened suddenly. It has been a ‘process' of gradual expansion in group-size of people doing business with each other freely. From few within a village, thousands of years ago, the group-size extended to among few villages, then to among few kingdoms, then to among a few nations, and now leading towards a totally unrestricted globe. The only thing new that is happening now is: g lobalization, as a process, is reaching its finale, as the final stage of completion. It has engulfed the whole world into one boundary, more or less.

From the point of view of wealth creation, the gradual expansion in group-size has led to greater complexities, varieties, and opportunities, nevertheless, the fundamental principles of wealth creation have not changed. It is like, when you produce one grain of wheat in a nursery or a million grains on a farm, the process of managing the production and delivery may change accordingly, however, the fundamental process of creating each grain remains the same, each time, everywhere. Formation of water from two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen remains the same, whether we look at water in a glass or in the ocean.

As in case of earlier stages of group expansion, starting from within a village to globe as one today, the purpose of group-expansion has also been the same. Accelerate the process of wealth-creation.

Group-expansion by itself however cannot decide, whether this would be favorable to few or all. This is because, as we have discussed earlier, if sanctity of money is lost within any group or nation, to such an extent that transfer of wealth dominates creation of wealth heavily, the inherent nature of business processes is already at fault, with or without globalization. If genuine wealth creators have lesser opportunities to create wealth and ‘money-flow' is controlled by manipulators or speculators in any nation, globalization cannot undo it. Globalization, i.e. group-expansion can only accelerate what is dominant. So when people target globalization as cause of spread of economic exploitation of masses by few, they need to reexamine. The real issue for any society is whether opportunities for creation of wealth (CoW) is facilitated to dominate transfer of wealth (ToW) activities or not. Globalization-process has always existed.

In the new world ahead, no one nation in the world or no one individual in a city is a superpower, the only winner. All are going to achieve their firsts, in fields of their natural aptitude. Like in a symphony orchestra, every instrument can have moments of its own climax, and yet very much remain a loyal-member of the whole group for all other times. This is how we can hope to achieve the identity of self and yet be in harmonious coexistence with others. This is the opportunity. This is the challenge!