The pursuit of security—protecting against theft and ensuring continuous capacity to perform work garnering finances—is a costly burden. Measures, whether public or private, require resources and often lead to .. setbacks that extend far beyond financial strain.
While fear-driven dynamics and the over-consumption that result may lead to a disregard of ethics, the risk grows of misuse of compassion, care, trust and forgiveness—essential elements fostering collaboration. Akin to practices of misusing donations to excuse incurring more of the very harm mitigated by the donations—profitable, like a power source—ethical justifications may fuel ongoing exploitation while masking the costs behind a veil of necessity.
Shared Resources as a Path to Ethical Security
Carrying a bag of gold for security would be exhausting, let alone needing employ security guards for the house you reside in! Yet, many do not realize that similar burdens exist in financial and security systems. Secure storage and resource-sharing—whether through co-working spaces, shared kitchens, or public transport—can significantly reduce security-related costs. By pooling resources:
- Lower Costs: Security expenses are distributed, easing the burden on individuals.
- Reduced Consumption: Less reliance on private security systems, excessive insurance, and redundant safety measures.
- Preventing Violence: While transparency can foster trust, avoiding perverse displays of wealth may reduce incentives for attempts at forcing access.
Banking follows similar principles, providing security at a lower cost, in a way that consumes less and mitigates temptations to violence. Through ethical financial practices, resource allocation can be improved, ensuring that what already exists—whether electronics, clothing, or even the ability to live well—is not wasted. Instead of extracting more to circumvent natural depletion, extending lifespans of resources, may reduce unnecessary loss.
Pressures of Financial Systems
When considering banking, its ethical impact is perhaps seldom the initial topic raised. Foregoing this, when considering banking, thoughts often turn to profit, loss, or distrust. This seems to connect to…
- Debt: Usury transforms borrowing into a long-term trap. Penalties and interest places lives in bondage, while perhaps a form of security against financial shortfalls and wasteful spenditure, it places a vast pressure to meet payment-deadlines.
The fear of failing to pay on time, to suffer loss without gain, enslaves the life into acting against ethical values. This compromise drains the sustainability banking introduces, by reducing costs, consumption and mitigating violence.
- Wealth-Building: Accumulated financial resources, over responsible administration, are determined for endless expansion. The investment schemes oft involve stock-holding, or part-ownership of an entity, and the sizes possessed are then harnessed by a board employed to drive the desired increase of salable value.
Corporations, industries and entrepreneurs are oft blamed for the methods used in driving gain. However these sizes are subjected to pressures by the broader financial eco-system – hereunder stockholders desiring increase in value of the stocks they purchase. This is oft foregone when assigning guilt, and it is worthwhile to note that banks oft are owned on a stock-basis as well.
In either case, it involves enslaved fulfillment, driving harmful approaches to securing value. It may be thought of as akin to non-monetary values; social currency, favors or spiritual wealth such as ethical depth – the willingness to incur harm in attaining each, is determined by factors. What happens is that needs for resource-access, ends up driving situations, circumstances and fulfillment-approaches that increase the need for security, veiling methods and losses incurred – pushing the need for more resources unto yet others. These forces drive scarcity, shaping dependency leading to a demand for more control, more security, to reduce undesirable outcomes.
The Cycle of Financial Bondage
On the individual level, be it near and dear, those caught up in the mess end up enslaved – potentially temporarily. The access to financial resources directly relates to reduction of enslavement, personal security and attraction – which means that financial access can turn into a means of control.
Like a dam regulating water flow, positioning as the provider – or saboteur – of financial income, acts as a limiter on access to the resource. This worsens the debt-situation – the enslavement – driving compromise on values and integrity. Especially some lives may be “in demand” as possess-able – you know the stories of rape-drugs, misuse of addictive dependency and the likes? The enslaved need for financial access with heavy incentives, plus limited access, turns into an easy fulfillment-pathway for a variety of outcomes – be it destroying competition, inspiring conflict, generating convenient rationalization, shaping denial or other exploitable resource.
Each of these either directly fulfill, or act as a means of access to changes in power, destruction or the likes – in turn meaning access to resources, fulfillment or certainty. While unlikely particularly intended, its a fulfillment-pattern that satisfies a variety of demand. It acts a pathway for needs, desires and cravings, that leaves in its wake economic distress, oppression, medical costs, resource-hoarding, ethical compromise and escalating conflicts – shaping ground-zeroes spreading negativity – demanding more.
Financial Practices
However collaboration is a necessity, and exchange facilitated by a trust-able medium – money – makes that possible across conflicts-of-interest. The purposes of civilization itself relies on division of labor – collaboration – without which human lives would be cost-heavy without much purpose. Banking is the de-facto standard of reducing related costs, meaning that the demand for cost-reducing ethical solutions are immense. This may coincide with how the individual can escape or avoid getting caught up in the fore-mentioned cycle, and examples may include:
- Reduce Reliance: While legal agreements, affiliations, and compliance requirements may be complicated, mitigating dependence on success of the financial entity may be achieved by getting a secondary bank-account.
- Avoid Usury: There may be a heavy price-tag attached to deriving gain by interest-based debt-bondage – even by indirectly causing it to occur
- Choosing Providers: Reinforcing either exploitative or ethical models, selecting the banking-services without being superficial may be desirable.
- Exploitative Investments: Avoiding participation in shaping rationalization on severe exploitation – of any kind – reducing likelihood of other instances of exploitation.
- Expand Financial Alternatives: Cooperative savings and community-based lending may provide the desired stability, without tempting predatory financial systems – lowering pressures on banking entities
Caring is a Resource!
Reducing unnecessary costs can create meaningful improvements in everyday life. Simple things like reflecting on current consumption of banking, can pave the path for small, deliberate shifts in financial decision-making. This may reduce the “footprint” of everyday transactions may be reduced – the sheer number of daily moments of exchange, that rely on these systems. A small, but significant action towards broader structural change, that both lowers personal dependence and reduces the need to exchange personal freedom for security. Ethical financial choices strengthen both individual and collective resilience, offering pathways to a more balanced existence.