Chi capital and the liquid gold standard

As a bee keeper, one takes automatically experiences and insights from the bees into other areas of  life. Also into the office. I work at Chi Impact Capital. "Chi" means to us, next to positive life energy: "Conscious, Holistic, Impactful" investing. In our Chi-book with the title "Conscious Investing", Thomas Goldfuss writes in his contribution a.o. about "Money and the honeybee". Obviously, this paragraph has triggered me. I'm inspired by his thoughts and we seem to be pretty aligned, but not fully. Please let me share Thomas Goldfuss' text first and then, give my reaction to it:

"
Money and the honeybee
Ideally, money serves humanity and the environment as honeybees and all the other pollinators do. The honeybees have a high demand for pollen and nectar in the early spring, converting the latter to honey. However, they are not perceived as predators or vermin. Rather the opposite: they are eagerly awaited by the blossoms in spring and do a great service to most plants. And not only the plants benefit from their pollination, but all animals and humans as well. This is how I understand the job of sustainable financial service providers and impact-orientated investors. The use of capital serves mutual interests. Utilizing money serves the commonwealth.
"

Please allow me to give my view on this. My considerations as an impact investor, bee keeper and nature lover:

The ideals of (1) giving & taking at the same time, or: being able to serve mutiple interests with one mean or one action and (2) allocating capital such that it brings financial, as well as ecological and social benefits, totally resonate with me. The side note I'd like to make, however, is that comparing money with honeybees doesn't do fully justice to these beautiful beings and their true value.

Money is a cultural/ economic invention. The human species agreed to use money as a medium of exchange. Money requires (i) a basis of trust and (ii) the general acceptance in order to be valid or valuable. Humans value money as a symbol or medium, although it is only a coin, a piece of paper, a number on the screen reflecting a bank account. Especially since humans have eliminated currencies' connections to the gold standard, there is no solid, tangible basis for the value of money anymore. Money is a man-made instrument, that can be used for good or for wrong, whereas honeybees are pure nature (if not part of human selective breeding programmes) and good in themselves.

Honeybees have an intrinsic value. As all pollinators, all animals, including humans, have. We all have the very right to exist. Many living beings have a role to fulfil. We need each other for a habitable environment and we all should have healthy places to live. 

The indispensable role of honeybees on earth is the pollination role. The bees, however, don't pollinate to "serve" anybody, nor should they be "utilized" for that. It's nature. It's their nature to pollinate. It's humans who tend to instrumentalize nature, as if humans are not part of nature themselves. Humans want to classify pollination as an "environmental service",  want to value it in financial terms. But let's be real: humans can never fully appreciate the meaning and the value of single activities or elements in nature. It's the ecosystem, the biodiversity, the wholeness (all, everybody, everything, the dynamics and the balance), that enables us all to live together. 

Pollination means connecting the world of the plants with the animal kingdom including the human society. Pollination is key for ecosystems, for biodiversity, for the whole food chain. The true value of honeybees, of any life on earth is not measurable and principally invaluable. It is about life as a whole, about wellbeing in general and about the right balance all together. There is enough for all the need, but not for all the (human) greed, as Gandhi said. Honeybees are/ do what is needed and when humans deal with money we have to be cautious about greed. 

Honeybees and money can't be really compared. Money can serve humans, money can be utilized. Animals not.

Talking about need and greed: humans in the role of honeybee keepers have to be cautious when harvesting honey, the "liquid gold", too. No money, no currency in the world today is on the "gold standard" anymore (Switzerland was the last country to sever ties between the Swiss franc and gold in 1999), but when handling honey, humans definitely continuously have to maintain high ethical "liquid gold" standards! 

As experienced, caring beekeeper, I can really share the secret to keep honeybee colonies alive and healthy: simply be modest when harvesting! Appreciate the need of the bee population for their own honey. The bees store honey in the summer to be able to survive the winter. The hive is the world in small; it's about the right, natural balance between giving & taking, whereby human greed doesn't make sense. Be(e) conscious and holistic! Apply the liquid gold standard please.