http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Lietaer

There are many ways to skin a cat. You provide some good argument that money can be wielded. Fine. Good. Go for it. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that people who distance themselves from wealth-wielding are doing damage. What evidence do you have for that?

We, as a culture, have a hard time separating in our heads “I’m not going to do that” from “No one should do that”.

and i know this has been said so many times that it feels like a kneejerk copout, but it remains true that the only way that profiteers can succeed is if we buy goods that are produced under standards that we profess to abhor. the problem with the current arrangement is not that government is not regulating enough, it is that we think it’s their job to regulate rather than our job to pay attention. i don’t want my government to stand in the way of exploitation. i want to do it myself. i am drawn to libertarianism not because it says that we shouldn’t work to realize our shared values, but because it says that indeed, we are the only ones who can.

values do not belong solely to the private sphere, but morally grounded collective action does not belong solely to the public sphere either, and to believe otherwise strikes me as tragic. the government is not synonymous with collective action. the government is carefully granted coercion, and it should only be entrusted with powers that we absolutely cannot wield on our own. trade and environmental standards do not qualify. you can say that companies are pillaging right now all you want, and you’re right. but the government right now is far from what any libertarian would endorse, so that’s not fair. acting in our own best interest is not at all synonymous with greed or profiteering, and that’s where my mouth is when i want to put my money to match.

Who says the job of government is to keep people from standing in other people’s way? In a libertarian worldview, the job of government is precisely and solely to stand in the way of those who would act to protect people and the planet from private profiteering. That’s what Major General Smedley was talking about when he said that his career was a soldier was all about making the world safe for profiteering. He killed people in the name of freedom so that private industry could exploit the land that native peoples relied upon for their very lives. Speaking for myself, I want a government that will stand in the way of those who would lock the most vulnerable members of society into sweatshops and “free trade zones” and claim that labor protection laws are an infringement of their liberty. I want my government to stand in the way of those who claim to own the water and therefore have the right to profit from my thirst. I want my government to stand in the way of those who would destroy the wetlands, clear cut the forests, level the mountains, drill in the Arctic and poison the soil, the air, and the water for nothing other than their own private gain. I could go on but I know you get the picture.

Of course, I am picking out the things that I want to argue with. I agree with very much of what you are saying and I particularly liked this:
“money is a tool, and like any tool it is wielded most powerfully by those who are not afraid to grasp it with purpose. . . . if we don’t take the time to learn such control, we place ourselves at the mercy of other’s protection in times of danger, and we open ourselves up to being fleeced in the process.”

as for the government’s job, yeah… this is the tricky part. i don’t think “the commonwealth” is something that can be designed. the government’s job is to keep people from standing in other people’s way. after that, it’s up to us. that is the fundamental brain shift. and i know it sounds, well… dismissive, or intolerant, or arrogant, or blind.

but it’s not. it comes from a place of deep respect. and with a full awareness of the difficulty. i know you disagree, but as i said when you were here, this is only the beginning of me figuring out how to talk about it, so on we go.

Here’s just one place my flags went up. “if we think money can do some good, let’s shut up and work on getting our own; if we really don’t think money is the answer, let’s stop asking for people to give it to us”

It perpetuates the notion that the only people who don’t have money are those who aren’t working for it and that any one is a lazy, whiny, irresponsible baby who thinks that government’s job is the protection and building of the commonwealth rather than private wealth.