Living at Kongwe Mission, in Dowa District, many years ago, my brother and I, both toddlers then, used to play a lot around the mission. One day my brother, who was two years younger than me, went out without me but in the company of a friend. He came back claiming to have picked up some coins somewhere along the road. He was all smiles as he hastily asked a young man who was staying with us to buy some sweets for him at Dowa Boma.
I turned green with envy; I was envious of my brother who had hit a jackpot. I wondered why such windfalls were few and far between. We had so many wants and needs but hardly had any wherewithal by which to acquire them.
When I grew a little order, I often reflected on what I perceived as the unfairness of life by not letting the citizens of Earth have what they needed most: money. Why did money not grow on trees or on some plant species that could be grown by those who wished to have it?
Of course my thinking then was devoid of any economic considerations. I have never studied Economics at any level but I have come to realise that money is only valuable to the extent that it represents a tangible value in terms of goods or services. In backward societies, trade is carried out by means of barter, items being exchanged for different items of similar perceived value. Money was invented to replace barter by the use an exchange medium to represent the value of goods.
If the value of a goat can be equated to the value of ten reed mats, the two items can be exchanged one for another in those quantities. Alternatively, either of them can be converted into money and the money can be used to purchase the other. At the most basic level, that is how an economy works.
We must understand the undisputable principle that the acquisition of currency possessing substantive worth necessitates the exchange of commensurate effort or temporal investment. Minus such exertion of dedication, neither banknotes nor coinage hold inherent value. Hence counterfeit currency remains devoid of legitimacy, for its genesis lacks the essence of genuine labour or time. If a fraudster gains access to sophisticated equipment enabling meticulous replication, the replica’s value dissipates upon detection of its falsity.
Sometimes, governments print real money without backing it with anything. Such an action erodes the value of a currency. Idi Amin of Uganda, for example, engaged in reckless economic policies by printing excessive amounts of currency in the 1970s. This led to hyperinflation and economic instability in that country. Printing money recklessly is a shortcut to economic woes.
Any money obtained in the absence of genuine investment of effort or time in something valuable has little or no value. The coins that my brother picked up at Kongwe may have been valuable to the extent that the person who lost the money would have worked for it.
As a medium of exchange, the function of money is to facilitate the process of two parties with two different goods or services swap them equitably without having to go into direct barter. If I have an item, I should be able to value it and convert it into money equivalent to that value by selling it. I can then use the money to obtain a different item of equivalent value. It is by means of processes of this nature that goods and services move around, changing hands, in an economy.
The flow of goods and services can be critically dislocated if money does not represent a value in goods or services. If everybody would get free money, nobody would produce anything or offer any service and this would lead to a sure collapse of the economy. This is why we must always be wary of money that we may get without earning it. Earning money simply means that somebody puts in something of value (by way of goods or services) and in return gets the equivalent value in the form of money.
Money can be obtained without earning it in various ways, including but not limited to, corrupt practices, theft/robbery, miracle money and gambling.
I would urge all of us to search within our lifestyles and gauge our appetite for cheap money. We need to make sure that we keep ourselves as far away as possible from the sources of money mentioned in the preceding paragraph. It may be tempting to accept money that comes without any effort but the effects of such money are greatly undesirable.