“How you make your money is way more important than how much money you make.” – Gary Vaynerchuk
Gary Vaynerchuk, CEO of VaynerMedia and Internet personality, said those words during a talk at his latest book launch in St. Louis. The audience was full of entrepreneurs, and the talk was geared toward those who wanted to build a successful business from scratch. Although the context of this quote has nothing to do with peace, the economy or a peace economy, I think it’s a fitting description of the values rooted in a peace economy.
In a war economy, there is a lack of trust. We wouldn’t need a militarized police, where shooting unarmed men and women is routine and justified, unless we didn’t trust our neighbors. We wouldn’t need a militarized border unless we didn’t trust our foreign neighbors. We wouldn’t need to send troops and set up military bases all over the world unless we didn’t trust the fellow members of our global community.
A war economy breeds a zero-sum mentality. In order for us to win, someone else must lose, even if it means the loss of life. After all, if their lives are lost, then that must mean we won, right? Even the massive multinational conglomerates understand the zero-sum game of the war economy.
We can’t trust the big corporations that exist in just about every industry because folks know those corporations don’t care about the interests of the people. They don’t even care about the interests of their customers. They know that someone else has to lose in order for them to win, and it’s completely fine for them if it’s the customer who loses.
The big corporations only care about the interests of their shareholders and their highest executives. As Thomas Friedman once said, “The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the builder of the F-15.” Big corporations need each other, and the might of the military, to maintain the status quo.
Today’s war economy, a.k.a the “status quo” economy, only looks at how much money we make. We don’t consider, or seem to care about, how we make our money. We don’t consider the millions of people exploited around the world for another’s profit. We don’t consider the minority populations left to deal with the consequences of the environmental destruction wrought by giant international firms. We don’t consider how some countries became unstable or why some countries are undeveloped and incapable of providing basic needs and services to their people.
We won. They lost. Oh well. Too bad.
That is how the U.S. makes its money.
Why does it matter how you make your money? As Gary puts it, how you did it becomes important “when you’re 80 and your kids and grandkids are talking about your life.” The United States is nearly 250 years old and everyone, Americans and the rest of the world, haven’t stopped talking about our country’s legacy. The consequences of our belligerent policies will be topics for debate and discussion for decades to come.
Ultimately, a peace economy is based on trust. We aren’t scared of our neighbors and we don’t feel like they’re going to take something from us. A peace economy values people as human beings and not collateral damage in the quest for personal gains. It takes into account what kind of world we’ll leave for our kids and grandkids and goes beyond just talking about what kind of world we want to leave for them. Most importantly, a peace economy emphasizes how we make our money instead of simply focusing on how much we make.
From the money in our wallets, to the money in our government’s coffers, we need to look at it how it gets there and how we spend it. That’s the start to a peace economy.
By Allison Reilly
