Do we value money over human life?

It is a worthy question which needs analysis. If it is true then we need to find out when it happened. Is money merely the symbol for Earthly pleasures?

These days money can provide us all the earthly pleasure we want. From sex to food to property to power. Who wouldn't want that? Individuals like ex-president Bush and his father who gained massive wealth from the energy industries came to power thereof. If you examine their character they have morals, but both the father and the son had a love for power, they both made it through money. It is getting harder and harder for individuals to gain power without money, that is a proof that our well being comes under money.

Would a man/woman from the American ghetto run for the presidency without the huge flow of money? They need to gain that money through different means.

Anyone who values money over human life, which is most people.

This is an opinion of who ever poster the answer in WikiAnswers to the question: 'What type of person would kill for money?'
wiki.answers.com...

Is it true, that most of us value money over human life? Well most of us don't seem to care regarding our actions having negative actions on someone's life somewhere else. When you gain a job(pursuit of money), someone else either lost it or was also seeking the job but was turned down. Not many people exist out there who would think about such things. To give you an example, would the police have a job if there was no criminals.

Crime is needed in a society because people who follow good money are guaranteed with good welfare but people who pursue bad money are guaranteed a life of hardship. Since money is the symbol of worldly pleasures why would one care if it is good or bad.

More and more people kill for money, we have armies who kill for money. We give more worldly pleasures to hired killers then we do to the education system, we give more to scientists who create weapons of mass destruction then to scientists who create cures.

It's not a fair question, on the surface almost all would say no. However, it has been proven since the dawn of time that in fact many people do value wealth over human life.

You can not ask the question because the answer can not be unbiased out of a sense of public morality or persucution.

[edit on 7-8-2009 by Helious]

I have always said that the government cared more about power and money than they do people. If all countries thought more about their people and less about greed, it would be a better world.

Depends on the amount of money of course.

It's a thing, you either win or you lose.

If you lose you lose, you may win a promised eternal life in a golden city, or wind up with 72 virgins, but for here and now, money gives us a whole heck of a lot.

I doubt i'd kill for it though honestly speaking.

But if we didn't have money, we'd be worse off. There is a reason why it's here.

We need to look at this question on two levels.

1) On one level, we need THINGS and ENERGY to survive (fundamentally: to ward off entropy --2nd law of thermodynamics -- and maintain physical bodily integrity). In other words, to simply survive, we need food and shelter, and we often find ourselves competing with each other or with other organisms for this. In such a universe, there is a kind of inherent "unfairness" where one organism must die in order for another to live. We cannot "simply live" without depriving some other living organism of its life or necessary resources (and yes, vegitarians....you are KILLING an organism when you eat a carrot because that carrot is a LIVING THING. Learn to deal with it. Even by breathing you are killing bacteria by the zillions.) Even plants themselves, which (usually) don't have to "eat" other living things, often compete with other plants for sunlight, soil nutrients, space to grow and spread seeds, etc...with the result being that the loser dies. Yup, its a tough ole world all around.

So, in this kind of life, money is one way of smoothing out the inherent competition process. It doesn't completely get rid of the "unfairness" factor, but all things told, I think its a bit fairer than boinking your neighbor on the skull with a club and grabbing his food.

2) On another level, although I think money or someting like it is ultimately necessary (see above), there IS such a thing as too much of a good thing. That is, the desire to pile up billions and billions of dollars, for example, is not necessarily healthy or logical. The fact is, that capitalism demands GROWTH and eternal growth is not possible in a closed system with limited resources (something we are now painfully discovering). One way of generating GROWTH is to to manipulate DESIRE and FEAR, usually related to status, through the media. People don't realize how incredibly powerful the media is...so much so that the lust for money has become extreme and the connections among money, status, affection, and simple love have become pathologically fused in the minds of millions. This is a sickness that we will someday (soon) have to solve, or face disasterous consequences on both the individual and societal level.

Unfortunately, some people do value money over human life, which is pathetic. Money is a material object. Human life is so much more.

But, you continually see people murdering their spouses over a life insurance claim, or somebody killed during a mugging or robbery. Then there's the instances of a contract killing, for whatever purpose. There are gangs that will kill somebody who owes them money, or will end up costing them money. Or politicians and other powerful people who stand for something that will end up costing another (corrupt) politician or powerful person/group a lot of money, leading up to an assassination. There are wars started in order for somebody to gain financial wealth. It is sickening.

Money is needed in society as we know it. Civilization would collapse without any money. People can't be expected to do the lousy yet important jobs such as garbage men, sewer workers, or janitors, without receiving compensation. Even some of the other common things in society, like making fast-food burgers all day, or landscaping, or construction, would most likely not be done without receiving some type of compensation. The only way civilization would work without currency, is with an absolute and unforgiving totalarian regime which involves forced labor in order to make people do what is necessary to continue the way of life.

Money is not the true problem. It is people. While most people are generous and revere human life the most, that is not always the case, and there are also many who value money more. Those individuals are what is wrong. Money doesn't kill people, people kill people.

The famous saying "Money is the root of all evil" is incorrect. A more truthful statement would be: "Greed is the root of all evil"

Life is inherently insecure; we could all drop dead any day. Having money doesn't remove the inherent insecurity -- billionares like Steve Jobs can still get pancreatic cancer -- but in many people's minds, money = security. This is true to some extent, but for many it becomes such a fundamental truth that they simply cannot stop piling up money and will do anything...including stepping on others...in the vain attempt to achieve security. Funny thing is, since insecurity is fundamental to life, the more money they pile up, the more they feel they need because the insecure feeling never goes away.

The only way to deal with the problem is by learning to live with insecurity. This isn't easy for anyone, but we've all got to try.

Originally posted by Ownification
Well most of us don't seem to care regarding our actions having negative actions on someone's life somewhere else. When you gain a job(pursuit of money), someone else either lost it or was also seeking the job but was turned down. Not many people exist out there who would think about such things. To give you an example, would the police have a job if there was no criminals.

There is a universal law that states "Every action has an equal and opposite reaction." This is true for everything, from physics to nature to human behavior.

I'll show what i mean by using the example of gaining a job. Where it says someone else either lost their job, or somebody who was also seeking the job was turned down, in order for you to gain the job, is true - both the other person seeking the job and the person who lost the job were each affected negatively by you gaining the job. But, if the other person who was seeking the job gained it, that means you didn't. So you were negatively affected by the other person gaining the job, along with the person who originally lost it. On the other hand, if the original person never lost their job in the first place, then both you and the other person seeking the job would be negatively affected, since neither of you would be able to gain the job.

Another example is the food chain and predator-prey relationships. If a predator, such as a shark, does not manage to capture and eat its prey (say, a large fish, for example), then the shark goes hungry and possibly starves. So the shark is negatively affected. The sharks prey, however, is positively affected and gets to live. But the large fish also needs to eat. Since it was not eaten by the shark, the large fish has a chance to eat a small fish, so the small fish is also negatively affected. Whatever the small fish would normally eat (something as miniscule as plankton) gets to live since the small fish can't eat it. Therefore, the plankton is positively affected. But, if the shark does manage to successfully eat the large fish, then the shark is affected positively, and the large fish is affected negatively. The large fish is now unable to eat the small fish, so the small fish is able to eat the plankton. This means that the small fish is affected positively, and the plankton is affected negatively. It is a never ending cycle, and is present everywhere. If there were fewer sharks, then the large fish could not be kept in check, and would overpopulate. All these fish need to eat, so they in turn rapidly reduce the amounts of small fish. Without small fish, there is much more plankton, and it begins to grow out of control. The big fish also have nothing left to eat, and they start disappearing as well. Also, too much plankton is bad for the ecosystem. It depletes all of the oxygen, causing many other organisms to die.

Sorry to rant a little bit, but i was just trying to prove my point
Every action or choice has both positive and negative consequences that affect others.

Back on topic though...
There is no need to kill somebody out of greed. But, there are still consequences all around. The person who is killed for money is affected negatively, as are their loved ones who mourn. The killer gains money from it, and is therefore affected positively. When the killer spends this money on whatever they choose, the people receiving the money being spent are also affected positively. The place where killing somebody for greed differs from the above examples I provided is that it is simply wrong. It is an unnecessary evil. Whereas the person gets a job in order to provide for themselves and their family, and the sea creatures kill because they need to eat and survive, killing out of greed is for something that the perpetrator wants but does not need. The negative consequences heavily outweigh the positive ones. There are numerous other ways to obtain money that are more balanced and morally acceptable.

I don't get it... what does this have to do with Board Business and Questions?

I think the majority of people have a price tag.

I can't say I agree with you on the bushes having morals.

Regardless, governments covet contol, not so much money, money is a tool used to control. I had a discussion today with someone and they said something along the lines of "maybe people should work for something else other than money, maybe that would get rid of the problems with money"(just a random conversation not exactly thr most thought provoking I admit). Anyway I stated to him that it didn't matter, that whoever controled what people were working for would then control things.
(Unless, of course, people worked for nothing other than to help each other and society)

I also think what you have in some cases is people that have been poor, downtrodden and had their needs neglected for so long life has become something inconsequential to them.

Back to the government aspect, I reiterate what I said before they covet power and control. No amount of lives or no consequence would deter them. The prospect of losing power and control is reason enough for untold atrocities, in their mind, committed over and over again.


Also, I find most people nowadays are just perpetuations of the state... living, breathing, and dying the status quo. If you live in a country that openly participates in wars and executions you will eventually become desensitized to the voilence that you have witnessed and act accordingly.

You could blame it on capitalism. You could blame it on corruption. Truthfully, people have just let it go on for too long and it seems to be to the point now that material things have more meaning to people than the lives of other people. It's really sad, but there's a part of me that knows this to be true.

[edit on 7-8-2009 by AgnosticX]

In the words of Martin Luther King Jr:

Every man lives in two realms, the internal and the external. The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals and religion. The external is that complex of devices, techniques, mechanisms and instrumentalities by means of which we live. Our problem today is that we have allowed the internal to become lost in the external. We have allowed the means by which we live to outdistance the means for which we live.

I think people have been consumed by money and are in the process of forgetting the things that are more important..

[edit on 7/8/09 by pretty_vacant]

reply to post by AgnosticX

Truthfully, people have just let it go on for too long and it seems to be to the point now that material things have more meaning to people than the lives of other people. It's really sad, but there's a part of me that knows this to be true.

Sorry for posting in the wrong category.

The above quote is the type of discussion I wanted to bring about through this thread. And it seems at least some got the point. It has become normal to us, it is called adaptation. Adaptation is a state of normality. We have seen it in movies, we have heard it in songs how could this not become normal. I'm not at all saying that we should ban movies with violence or what so not, I just want a solution to the problem.

If there is a problem, I assume there must be a solution and vice versa. Let's keep our heads as far away from our bananas and have a think.

Let’s hope that the individual who presses the button for the nukes to go off do it because he hates our guts not because he is getting paid of it.

reply to post by silent thunder


Good point I'm still reading, I'll even sleep over this one. See you tomorrow.

Originally posted by AgnosticX
Also, I find most people nowadays are just perpetuations of the state... living, breathing, and dying the status quo. If you live in a country that openly participates in wars and executions you will eventually become desensitized to the voilence that you have witnessed and act accordingly.

I would also like to add to this that people desensitized to this kind of thing will also make excuses and justify this type of thing going on in their society. I.E. When I told someone the other day that I wouldn't join the military because I wouldn't partake in dropping bombs on children his response was "well, those kids are trying to kill us, too, you know." I was baffled that this would come out of someones mouth, but I suspect this type of thing is said alot in the country I live in.

people just want the dream to continue like .. they are owed something... its a sad state of affares... take care of me Uncle Sam... what ever happend to standing on your own two feet... fighting every day for a living. My daughter wished there was such a thing as TV watcher wanted $20 per hour. no experience required.... but it aint gonna happen so get off your arse and make a living on two feet.

reply to post by Ownification

Crime is needed in a society because people who follow good money are guaranteed with good welfare but people who pursue bad money are guaranteed a life of hardship. Since money is the symbol of worldly pleasures why would one care if it is good or bad.

That is what I was thinking about, if money is needed for our welfare then why should we care where it comes from. If we fill our ships with slaves, it is of no concern of ours due to the fact that those slaves will in return bring money and then in return bring welfare to me and my loved ones. Why would I care is the question in hand.

People say well if you don't care then no one will care, well good.

reply to post by oozyism


Truth be told, I don't know if you could label any money good or bad. Money in itself is a means of control, whether it be control of goods or control of people, it's still a means of control. Human kind should be working for a day when we can eliminate all forms of currecy and utilize technology to eliminate meaningless jobs and scarcity of goods.

You cannot solve problems without getting to the root. The root of problems with money is that of money itself. The only way to eliminate those problems is to eliminate the currency itself.

reply to post by Ownification


Personally I hate money! It has ruined so many lives... It is used to manipulate peoples feelings, to control the world and many other issues which I can't be bothered getting into because it frustrated me!

However without it I can't do anything!

I think we should go back to the start, trade for objects and items we need, and live off the land...

reply to post by Ownification



You ask: Do we value money over human life?


On personal level, I would say not, in many instances


However, it's become alarmingly apparent that our governments and laws DO place much higher value on money

So .. they need to watch their backs. Because we might adopt the same philosophies as they, instead of holding to the warnings of the Good Book

Certainly money is valued over human life.

Look at what we do to the environment in the name of the "economy." I only have one question. What good is an economy if you can't breathe the air around you? I'd say not much.



[edit on 31-8-2009 by SpeakerofTruth]