And the Jews’ passover was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
And found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting.
And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen, and poured out the changers’ money, and overthrew the tables.
And said unto them that sold doves. Take these things hence, make not my Father’s house an house of merchandise.
We are usually told in Sunday School that this was Jesus’ declaration of the evil of money, but we must always remember that the New Testament was written by the Pharisees and Jesus was an Essene. These two sects of the Jews had very different views of how to deal with the Romans. As with most political positions the argument centered around another issue all together; Mosaic Law. The Pharisees were advocates of a strict (read exact) interpretation of the Commandments and found allies in the Sadducees in their dispute with the Essene. But this diverges from the current topic.
The explanation we are given is incomplete. Money is not innately evil when used for its intended purpose (equal exchange for effort and production). The Money Changers don’t use money that way. They are in a position to corrupt the exchange process because they set the exchange rates. The livestock in this story was probably only purchasable with Caesar’s currency, but many currencies were in use. (just like present day). So, given the state of affairs where coin of the realm may be traded for shekels at a rate of one coin gains three shekel. When asked to take 100 coin the money changer offers 300 shekel. At a later time (maybe very short) he is asked to convert 300 shekel into coin and the money lender offers 90 coin. The supplicant has little choice in the exchange and the money changer just made 10 coin for producing nothing of value. Since the money lender also acted as proxy for the owners of livestock, he could require a money exchange to do the deal. The buyer of the ox is told the seller requires coin and the buyer only has shekels. The buyer and the owner both live on shekels so the money changer can honestly say that the buyer paid with coin and make money on both exchanges, cheating both the buyer and the seller. (This practice is much more blatant today with positions called Distributor who takes the manufacturers price, adds his (significant) cut and collects the final inflated price from the buyer.
The Money Changers were also practicing the the Roman practice of charging interest for loaned money. When a farmer didn’t have enough to buy the cow, the money changer would lend him the amount and charge whatever the going rate of interest was when the farmer payed them back. That was the major issue the Essene had with the Pharisees along with the fact that they were no longer distributing the Temple’s excess wealth as alms for the poor, which had been the practice before the Romans got their attention.
The Roman model encourages the hording of money, which decreases the value of the currency that is in circulation, requiring the accumulation of more money, and making life harder for all those who are left to fend for their livelihoods have less currency to work with to get things done. Currently workers get around 10% of the value of their productivity for the company and on the other side pay 40 to 60% more than the product is worth, all because our monetary system has been corrupted by these processes of money manipulation.
So how do we remove the corruption and still have a currency that can’t be corrupted. One idea is to turn the direction of the currency flow. That is, turn the idea of a Dollar into the idea of an Obb. (this may need a better name ? Where you give the person providing the service or product with dollars in exchange for the service or product, with an Obb the person/company providing the service or product pays you with an Obb representing that exchanges value. You can only use the Obb to obligate another person or Company by providing service or product for them. The flow of currency and its negative value greatly discourages hording of the currency. In addition the company selling your product or service must give you enough Obbs to buy enough hours of your time to create an item of their product or service, Only then can you go to work for them and have enough Obbs to pay them for your hours worked.
It sounds quite backward, but that is the point. Sort of like reverse polish notation… The natural pressures of the system discourage corruption of the exchanges unlike Dollars. Wile this may not be the way it works out, at some point a separate, more just social structure must be built beside the current ones so as to slowly steal the negative energy use of current societal machinery. The only realistic way to collapse the current social structure is to build a better one, outside the destructive components of the current society. How we get there is the nut of the problem.