Remaking Money for a Sustainable Future by Ester Barinaga Martín

PART I
 Why Money?

1

 Money and Sustainability: Really?!
 ‘Remaking money for a sustainable future’ –  really?! Aren’t money and greed 
what put the world in the unsustainable situation we are in? Is it not the 
search for profit for money’s sake that has led to entrenched inequality and 
a life- threatening climate crisis? How could new payment technologies – 
fancy as they may be –  change all of that? ‘Money’ and ‘sustainability’ can’t 
simply go together.
 We have danced to the tune many times: frolicked to Liza Minnelli’s 
‘money makes the world go round’, whirled to ABBA’s dream of ‘having 
a little money’, gambolled to Dire Straits’ ‘get your money for nothing’ or 
pranced to Pink Floyd’s ‘grab that cash with both hands and make a stash’. 
If in the heat of the partying you stopped to listen to the lyrics, you would 
have heard a much- repeated story. That we all want money; that we are 
anxiously ready to give up true love to marry rich; and that we may criticise 
greed yet readily submit to it for the sake of the good life money is supposed 
to bring about. ‘For the love of money is the root of all evil’ the priest cites 
the Bible from the pulpit.1 Back on the dance floor, the O’Jays summon 
you: ‘People! Don’t let money, don’t let money change you. It will keep on 
changing, changing up your mind.’
 Money itself is neutral –  or so the story goes. If anything, money is a 
magnifier of the person that you are. The Greeks knew this already. Who 
doesn’t remember the myth of Midas our parents read as we fell asleep? The 
king from Phrygia who, granted his wish to turn everything he touched 
into gold, turned food and, in some versions of the legend, even his own 
daughter into the precious metal. Dionysus, the granting god, eventually 
reversed the curse but the lesson persists across the centuries: it is not gold 
per se that is damaging to the world, but our foolish relationship with it. 
Avarice, greed, unrestrained desire of wealth are human passions that need 
to be controlled, managed, contained for the health of the collective.
 The understanding of money encapsulated in popular songs and childhood 
stories takes money as external, a thing one either has or doesn’t have and that, 
in whichever case, one always wants more of, regardless of how much one 

Remaking Money for a Sustainable Future by Ester Barinaga Martín