Adding Value

The financial crisis has given the chance to some people who wear berets the chance to question whether capitalism is or isn't the way the world should operate in the future. Funny enough, they like to say it isn't, but when pressed for a better alternative they can't come up with anything better.

There's another group of people, these ones wear suits, but I suspect deep down they wish they wore berets. This group thinks financial speculation is wrong, and anyone who is in any way related to the financial industry is some sort of witch. It seems to these people that the only way to make money in the financial industry is either through witchcraft or insider trading.

Anyway, these people have all woken up from their lethargic existence with the financial crisis. They're popping up all over the place, complaining about how financial speculation does not add any real value, hence it's not productive.

I may be quite ignorant, or rather, I am quite ignorant, but still I have an opinion about this.

What's this talk of "real" value? These people who criticize the financial industry because of it's lack of added value should criticize most industries, as most value these days is either a label, a tag or an emblem triggering primitive feelings of superiority amongst the potential buyers of whatever it is they sell.

The value most objects we buy is so false that I have - and this is no joke - toyed with the idea of starting my own brand of pretty much anything these days, and I reckon it's actually not a bad idea. It may be a bad idea to do it now, in these crisis infected days, but in a few months time it might not be so bad. I'd also like to learn a bit of financial market witchcraft (I have no access to insider information sadly.), but I'll leave that for another post.

PS: I hope my opening statement offending beret wearers will inspire them to hang their berets forever and maybe even stop talking crap. It's a big goal I know, but I'm ambitious like that.