Almighty dollar. Must be funny in a rich man’s world. If I were a rich man… it gives options, but illusions aplenty, and carries so many costs. It can cost a love, a soul, a life, health, so much wasted time. Time isn’t money; you can’t buy back time, and time alone isn’t for sale, and some people’s time is unavailable at any price. The measurement of time, like the measurement of relative value, are human creations, and risky reductive ones. Sin starts with treating people as things. Money greases the rails to that end. Greed has poisoned men’s souls, & so on. All this obsession with urgency, speed, and hustle, has left us mired in busywork and paralysed while also disconnected and unreachable when it matters. ‘Work’ is a filthy, four-letter word to me because our concept of it, like our concept of allowable humanity and value of human life, has shrunk to exclude huge swaths of people and legitimate labour and effort. If someone labours hard to accomplish something, but doesn’t get a paycheck, did it happen? Yes, it did. Money is not evidence of work, or hard work, or worthy work. Money isn’t even a scorekeeper of who is the best at work. It’s a measure of how good someone is at getting and hoarding money. Which should not be as admirable a trait or aspiration. Money is evidence of persuading other people to give one money. It’s a little charm, popularity points, how much one can get for one’s efforts — from people who have money. Neurotypical as fuck. It’s easier to not care what people think if you have enough money one doesn’t have to sell anyone on oneself anymore, and one can pay to, say, buy an island, or leave the planet altogether. And it’s easier to get money if one doesn’t care how other people are impacted by one’s pursuit of wealth. Easier still if one’s ideals are fluid, and sacrificed for expediency in getting paid. Or if money is seen as life-support, and it’s a survival thing, then all bets are off, and this is a war with everyone else. Philanthropy is better than nothing, but it’s voluntary, and not a cure. It also involves a lot of barriers to actual aid, in that the neediest will have the least time and resources and support and attention necessary to access charity. The neediest are the most vulnerable to exploitation, violence, and being tricked into bad situations for ‘free money’ or food or anything else. Just as people are suspicious of freeloaders ‘ripping off’ benefits and charities for pittance and crumbs, the truly needy are justifiably afraid of being trapped and tricked and drained of what little dignity and safety and freedom they have for a promise of aid that is rarely worth it, if it ever comes, and requires so much sacrifice to hang on to. There are no easy answers, but so far the success rate is so egregiously abysmal that if this were run like a business, with the goal of helping people, it would be a badly failed one, and a new system would have to be redesigned in order for anyone to invest any time or money or effort in it. People go into social work to serve the needy and more often wind up serving the systems that keep people needy and barred from what is needed to survive. Money foils altruistic dreams. Somewhere in the process will be someone with a lot of power who serves money. Like taffy in clockwork, like a poisoning cook, everything intended for good will be spoiled by one charming person. Especially if they have lied to themselves so long they are convinced they are doing what they do for the greater good, which will somehow trickle down from impenetrable self-justified grips on alllllll that money. Rant over, here’s a cookie! That’ll be $17.99.