New Polity

Insurance. Good, bad, necessary? Marc Barnes and Jacob Imam share their thoughts.

Jacob Imam and guest Alex Renn take a look at the practicalities, the insecurities, the sacrifices, and the excitement of actually closing a 401k.

Marc Barnes and Jacob Imam have been hinting at this for a while, but they finally come out and tell us why we should be skeptical of our 401k.

Temperance can be applied to money fairly simply: if you spend your money on bad things, you won't have money to spend on good things. Marc Barnes and Jacob Imam fill this out a bit and challenge you to reconsider where you're spending your money.

If money is a placeholder (see Two Rules for Money) and you need to know what it holds a place for—does this mean that emergency accounts are wrong? Is "emergency" a sufficient place to be held? How much or how little is prudent/imprudent? Marc Barnes and Jacob Imam, as usual, have an opinion.

We've all been there. You've got so much money you don't know who to give it to. Your local almoner (?) can help. Marc Barnes and Jacob Imam celebrate and advocate for a return of almoners.

Money makes you more predictable, less creative, and more controllable. Surprise, surprise, Marc Barnes and Jacob Imam still don't like money. But they give you some ideas on how to use it to become more free, creative, and virtuous.

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Magic obscures cause and effect. Marc Barnes and Jacob Imam argue that money functions a bit like magic, at least obscuring the true cause and habituating us to the idea that we can be our own gods.

Many of us think of debts as finite monetary obligations, but that's just a modern re-framing. In this episode Jacob Imam argues that true debts can never be repaid and that gifts are supposed to create true debt—debt that builds a community of love rather than a system of repayment. Marc Barnes is there, too.

It may seem like Good Money is advocating eliminating all wealth. Is being rich sinful? Bad? Jacob Imam and Andrew Jones provide some nuance to the question of being rich.