I gotta learn about what is money, why do I need it and how to manage it without screwing up.
Noted from a Youtube Video.
1304: Padua, Italy
On the wall of a church in Padua near Venice, the painter Giotto makes a fresco: Jesus and Money Lenders. It restates the notion that a good spiritual life and the pursuit of business and money are sworn enemies. Jesus goes to a temple in Jerusalem, sees merchants and small time bankers crowding the forecourt and gets furious. This sacred place is not fitting arena for the polluting activities of buying and selling.
1450: Venice
Luca Pacioli publishes the first ever book on accounting. Summa de arithmetic. It’s the single most important capitalist invention until the birth of the joint stock company and modern factory. Paicoli’s textbook proposes that dealing well with money doesn’t depend on money anymore. Money isn’t a divine punishment or reward, it’s a kind of science, it can be learnt through patience, reason and hard work.
1555: Geneva
The protistan theologian John Calvin emphasizes his audiences the importance of what have become known as Protestant virtues; hard work, self denial, patience, honesty and duty. These will turn out to be extremely useful qualities for capitalism. Calvin explains that you must never indulge yourself not spend money having a lavish life. You must simply put any surplus income back into your business as an investment. Calvin adds that being good at business far more pleasing in the sight of God than being aristocratic warrior or even a monk. Perhaps more than technology, it’s this new mindset that will accelerate the progress of capitalism.
1670: Delft, Dutch Republic
The newly independent Dutch Republic is the world’s first explicitly capitalist nation where lazy aristocrats are looked down upon and hard working merchants are revered. In the churches, Protestant sermons about thrift and hard work are heard. In the arts outgo glorifications of kings and queens. Johannes Vermeer finishes painting the Lacemaker, a depiction of the intricate careful and homely tasks of manufacturing lace. In his painting The Little Street, the suggestion is that living peacefully and quietly in your own home, running a business is far more glamorous and noble than fighting in a war or going to a monastery.
1776: Strand, London
Scottish Philosopher Adam Smith publishes a new popular book; An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of Wealth of Nations. Smith demystifies wealth creation by explaining how capitalist economies grow. He reaches several important conclusions; Slavery is inefficient. Violence is less of an incentive than money for a worker and the cost of buying and maintaining slaves far exceeds the cost of wages. The capitalists will make far more money by treating their workers legally and humanely. It’s by specializing that economies grow, says Smith. Smith focuses on pin making industry; while one worker can make up to 10 pins a day, 10 workers well arranged can make not 200 but 48,000 pins a day, thanks to division of labor.a