Samkeet’s Blog

Driving by the Marine Blvd in San Francisco on a winter evening, watching the yellow shaded living spaces through the clear glass windows of the houses made me wonder how living in such a posh location must be like. The carefully tied drapes and the parts of dark wood furniture at least the parts I could see, seemed to me as an epitome of a luxurious lifestyle. This made me wonder, why does luxury seem so appealing in the first place. And i s luxury the privilege of exclusivity or price we pay for someone's time or both? Can luxury and exclusiveness be used interchangeably? So how could something exclusive be considered luxurious? Well there are two parts to it. Not everything exclusive is luxurious, but everything luxurious is exclusive or made to look that way. Why do we keep getting drawn to exclusive items?  As humans we like to be perceived as different from the herd. From the shoes we wear to that neatly crafted photo of them on social media. If everyone has the same taste or...

Essay attempting to answer What is money The need to always earn more How we acquire wealth Why institutions need to support investment Primer on some modes of investment & their functioning What is Money? Money is any item or verifiable record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services. Hence we are ascribing value to the symbol “$" as the unit for measuring the quantity of money. Historically a barter system was used as a system of exchange goods and services. But I can imagine that one person may not always want the things being received in exchange. That would have led to the need for a common ground or a common medium of exchanging goods.  That is how objects such as gold, silver and other precious metals became mediums of exchange since we ascribed value to these objects proportional to their rarity. Rarity of an object makes owning it more valuable. After all it is just something extracted from the earth, so is underground water. Which brings to quest...