POM Makes Jobs

Physical object money (POM) creates jobs. There are all kinds of jobs with all kinds of people working at those jobs. People have jobs in corporations, in small businesses, in government, and in what one might call private enterprise.

But remember that a physical object is amoral, so all monies that are or represent a physical object are likewise amoral. The employer can ask the employee to do anything to gain the promised money. There are no limits to what might be asked. The employee trades obedience for money.

Who is responsible for the behavior of the employee? Is it the employee or the person who pays the employee for their actions? The assigning of responsibility is rather blurred in a POM economy. When a defective product injures people, who is blamed? Is it the individuals who actually assembled that product, those who designed the product, those who built the facility in which the product was made, the person who signed their checks, the management above them in the bureaucracy, the stockholders in the company or…? Well, you see what I mean. Because all those people were “just doing their jobs” no one is held to be responsible.

Now let us contrast that situation with the situation with a different kind of money which appears in accounts when earned and ceases to exist when spent, a money which the owner cannot transfer to anyone else. This is a money which can only be acquired by doing things which result in a net benefit to others. (We will ignore, for now, how this is brought about. Just pretend, for now, that it is possible.)

With this new kind of money there are no" jobs". One is not being paid for obediencebut rather for the consequences of one’s actions. Note the major difference between the two. If I am obedient and get paid, I don’t care what the consequences of my actions are, especially if I don’t actually see those consequences. If all that matters to my pay is the consequences of my actions then I may do what someone else tells me to do but I will not do anything which I think might have bad consequences. My “obedience” is strictly conditional. In fact, one could hardly call it obedience at all. It is more like linemen in a football game executing the play the quarterback calls in order to coordinate their behavior and win the game. Doing what the other tells one to do in that situation is cooperation.

With this new kind of money, one works *with* others rather than working *for* an employer. One works in cooperation with others rather than at the command of others. Also, responsibility is quite clear. One is responsible for the consequences of one’s own actions.

Given that the new money can only be acquired by producing net benefit to others, the money is moral. It has an ethical component. It cannot be used to produce net harm.

Given that the new money ceases to exist when spent rather than being transferred to some other person, there is no way a person can use their money to motivate someone else to do something that will harm others because they cannot transfer money to someone else. One might use one’s money to acquire some physical object and use that to motivate obedience but then one isn’t using the money but some physical object. One might promise a physical object one has not yet bought or even promise to buy some physical object that the “employee” can specify. But in those cases it isn’t the new money that provides the motivation, it is the goods or services that it can buy. With a POM, the money itself provides the motivation.

Leave a comment

Skip to toolbar