Monday, February 21, 2011

Currency

This hit me while I was researching for music pegs:

True currency is not money, but time.

Think about it: money is but a valuation of what people has invested their time in.

When you pay a worker his wages, you pay foe the time he spends on the labor.

For example, I pay my yaya for the time she spends washing my son's clothes, preparing his meals, inspecting his school bag and nagging him to stop watching TV so he can study.

The advertising company pays me to help form strategies, brainstorm, develop copy and boards, supervise shoots and watch over post production (aside from researching music).

My yaya and I both have 24 hours a day, except that my time is exponentially more valued - in monetary terms - by the skills that I've developed over years of schooling, plus the experience of my previous and present jobs.

Applying the principle on objects, a 10x12 canvas costs just over one hundred pesos. But if I paint on it for 3-5 hours, I can produce an artwork that can be sold for probably eight thousand pesos. If Malang paints on it, he can sell it for more than a hundred thousand pesos. The thing is, Malang has spent a lot of time honing his craft, and the time spent marketing it as well - by himself or others - has added to the value of his artwork.

What about objects which are not works of art?

A diamond is an object of great value. Its value is intrinsically attached to its properties - like hardness, clarity, luster. But you have to consider that it also took a great amount of time (and heat and pressure) to create a diamond, about a billion years or so. (No wonder they say that a diamond is forever.) Not to mention the effort spent in acquiring it through digging, drilling, political wrangling and even cutting and polishing.

I know I'm going somewhere with this thought, so bear with me...

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