What is money to you?

Is money the root of all evil? Or the source of happiness.

In some places, even in a rich city such as a Melbourne (Australia) there are millions of people struggling to get up and make a living. There are also those in the small minority within the homeless that are homeless due to something such as a drug addiction, violence, gambling, etc. In the end, it all comes down to one thing; money.

crime rates related to monetary gains have gone up very high recently

Many people love using money as a scapegoat for either their wrong doings or other people's ones. But is that an accurate thing to go to? Let's find out.

Morals over money

I don't know about you, but I myself have seen some very gruesome things. A group of thugs beating an old man for $5 in the city I live in. An old lady being stabbed for her purse. All that good stuff. But what would the mass majority of people actually do for money?

Polling site OnePoll.com surveyed 1,000 people to see what morals they’d be willing to disregard for large sums of cash, and the results were pretty shocking.

For $1,000, 15 percent of people would shoplift or illegally bet on a sporting event. Thirteen people — about 1 percent of the respondents — said a $1,000 payday would be enough to commit murder.

For $100,000, one in 10 would be willing to prostitute themselves or steal a purse; for $ 1 million, 10 percent of respondents would star in a porno. One million dollars is also enough to convince 10 percent of people to become a drug mule or commit a crime like armed robbery or arson.

As mentioned above, 6 percent of Americans would murder for $1 billion, while 15 percent would fake their own death for $100 million.

Overall, male respondents tended to have fewer morals than female respondents and were four times more likely to commit murder for money than women.

While these stats may be just that... stats, they may also have a very high role in our modern society. Let's compare some of these results to what's happening...

10% would participate in a porno for $1,000,000. Well, we all know this is most likely very true. Just have to go on Pornhub and this is confirmed.

While armed robbery isn't leading, it's still a problem in Australia. Now if it's this consistent here, imagine how bad it is in other countries.

Purpose

No one has stopped to ask, why? Why do these people throw away their morals for money? People with a lot of money may seem happy, but who knows how they get to sleep at the end of the day with all that guilt no their conscience? It is well known that many people who cheated their way to the top are trying to do everything they can to clear their conscience and find a way to right their wrongs.

Some people are in it for the long run, some just for a quick gain because they are in monetary trouble usually related to gambling losses, drugs, loans, etc.

Interesting facts

Have you ever heard of a contract killer? You know; the guys who get paid around $10,000, usually in bitcoins, to hunt and kill down someone's target? Well if you haven't, now you have.

In Australia...

The first Australian study found, perhaps unsurprisingly, that contract killers strongly tend to be men between 25 and 49 years old, typically unmarried. Firearms are the most common weapon, as one might also expect—though in the U.S., Murder Incorporated, a loose confederation of killers for hire employed as enforcers by the mob in the 1930s and ’40s, were known for using an ice pick.

In 2010 the federal government opened investigations of 958 murder suspects. In the same year 31 people were charged with violating chapter 18, section 1958 of the U.S. code, “Use of interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire.” Using these two figures we get a rough murder-for-hire rate of 3.2 percent.

The total number of U.S. murders in 2010 was 12,996. If we assume 3.2 percent of these crimes were committed on a commercial basis, we get 416 contract hits. That sounds like a lot. However, let’s inquire further.

One of the better recent studies on contract killings was conducted in Australia, where an estimated 2 percent of all murders are for hire. Over a three-year period there were 69 contract killings and 94 attempted killings. A more recent Australian study concentrated on homicides in the state of Victoria, examining 208 homicides over a seven-year period. Four percent of all offenders in the study were involved in murder for hire, double the number who committed gang-related killings. We notice murder for hire seems to occur at roughly the same rate in Australia as in the States.

However, not all of these people are professionals. Some are just amateurs wanting a quick dollar...

An Idaho man paid a contract killer $10,000 in silver coins to rig his wife’s car with a pipe bomb in hopes of killing both his wife and mother-in-law.
A former Roman Catholic priest was sentenced to 60 years in prison for trying to hire his neighbor’s brother to murder a man who’d accused him of sexual abuse.
An inept contract killer in England made the news recently when he missed his first target, hit but didn’t kill his second, and the third time around shot the wrong guy.

So what do you think?

I personally think that money is indeed the root of all evil, paired with religion. However while it is a bad object, it can also be used as a positive positive thing as without it we probably wouldn't be here today. Luckily currencies are evolving ;)

What are your thoughts?