Nick - Gold Rush

One of my favorite stories takes place in 1848 in the small town of Westhaven, California. Westhaven was settled very early compared to the rest of California, so when the gold rush rolled around they had already been settled into a pleasant, peaceful lifestyle for a long time. The problem? Westhaven was right in the middle of a gold vein passing under the city.

Fearing that the incoming rush of gold miners would overpopulate and eventually destroy their town, the city council of Westhaven acted quickly: they passed a law. The law stated that no one could mine, search for, or even posses gold. Period.

Despite the best effort of the town, nothing can come between people and money. Eventually tunnels were dug from outside of town to the rich gold mine sitting directly below it. In fact, three such tunnels were made, all from separate sides. Eventually the tunnels grew wider, wider, and wider, until the mines spanned underneath the entire town.

And then, one day in late 1850, the town collapsed. The tunnels caved in, and Westhaven sunk into the Earth in seconds. In trying to prevent their gold from being taken and their lifestyle being upset, they ended up stripped of both.

Only a few people survived the cave in. Not a single structure was left standing, save the statue in the dead center of town. A stone statue of the founder of the town, who had ventured west in an effort to escape the greed and conflict of large cities.

It stands there to this day, bearing the inscription, "Greed is the bane of humanity."

-Nick.

CA$H

I dislike money. Just the concept of currency seems silly in general if you think about it. We take a certain type of paper and a lot of semi-precious metals and we deem them worth a certain value. Then we take them and we trade them away for things that we want or that we need. And if you don't have enough of these pieces of paper and circles of tin and nickel, why, we'll say your "poor" and we'll look on you with disdain, or maybe pity. And if you have a lot of it, then certainly you deserve a position of reverence and power.

I miss the days of bartering. And when I say miss, I mean they sound really cool but I obviously wasn't around for them. But I feel like that was a better way of conducting commerce. You know exactly what you're giving and you know exactly what you're getting. It's like, "Hey man, I have this extra television and I notice you have a lot of cows. Wanna trade me one of them?" There is no inflation rate on cows (unless they eat a lot, amiright? hahaha). I'll kill it and eat it in the form of many, many hamburgers over the next few months, and it'll be delicious. You can't eat dollar bills! Who was the wise guy who even came up with currency? What was that thought process? "Hmmm, this whole trading business is too direct. Let's institute an unstable middle man that has no real value other than what we give it!" Whaaaaat a jackass.

I gave up my pursuit of a career in engineering because I realized I was really bad at it and it just wasn't for me. I basically had a job guaranteed to me right out of college, but i threw that away. Why? Because I want to have fun in college. I've always heard that college is the best (at least) 4 years of your young life, and I didn't want to throw that away and be miserable just so I could possibly have a bigger annual salary down the road. Obviously I realize the importance of money because we live in the real world, which is an imperfect world. And yeah, I'd like to win the lottery as much as the next guy, because it would make life so much easier. But honestly, I think the world would be better of if we just regressed a few centuries economy-wise. I know it sounds backwards and extremely idealistic, but hey, this is my blog post.

Anyway, I have to go run to the bank now before I go out for the night, so peace out.

-Classic