Money, Greed, and Business - How Money Causes Problems

Is money the root of all evil? I don't know if that is true, but what I do know is that money causes people to do bad things.  People are willing to be dishonest, deceitful, and immoral in order to get financial gain.  I see this with individuals and with companies all the time.  Examples:

An online company I used to work with recently changed up their business model and in turn took away money that myself and fellow employees were promised.  It was money that was supposed to be paid to us over time for work done in the past.  But instead, the company decided not to honor the former agreement so now the employees are out of luck and the money that was suppose to go to us, is now going to the company.

A credit card I signed up for about a year ago promised 3% cash back on spending.  While this was great for a while, recently they changed their policy and now they only give 1% cash back.  Companies like this get customers with an attractive deal, making you think it will always be like that.  Then once you are signed up and committed to them, they switch it up and all of a sudden, the deal is not that great.

Banks do this all the time.  I have gone through several different banks and accounts.  They start by offering a competitive interest rate to get people to sign up.  Then slowly over time the interest rate drops and you can't do anything about it.  Banks, pick a rate and stick with it!  Stop sucking people in with a nice rate only to drop it a few months later.

It is like this with mortgage rates too in the opposite way.  You see ads in the paper for low rates on mortgages.  You contact them thinking you will get the rate you see in the paper. Guess what?  You  won't.  They will have all these restrictions and stipulations and before you know it, they end up offering you a rate that is not nearly as good as the one advertised in the paper.

I recently had some work done in my house.  I was under the impression that it would be about $150 to do the job.  The worker ended up using extra time by going back and forth to his van, and going to the hardware store to pick up parts.  Meanwhile he is still charging me the high hourly rate.  I ended up paying $230.  Plus I found out later he over charged me a bit for the parts and took with him some of the parts that should have been mine.

In another example, I used to own an online company and had a group of people who worked with me.  I did most of the work, but there was a small community that were part of it.  When I decided to close down the business, I kept the left over profits.  It was not a lot by any means, and given the fact that it was my company and I did most of the work, I felt it belonged to me.  Those who contributed to the company over the years got their promised share of the revenue for their contributions.  What was left, I considered to be my share considering I was never paid over the years the business was run.  In the end though, several of the other members felt I was wrong by taking the money for myself.  Everything was ironed out, but still, money caused problems.

So is money the root of all evil?  I don't think it is the root of all evil, but it certainly is the root of a lot of evil.