Money can still be a force for good.
The price tag is a short cut we use to understand value.
“Ohh. Nice car. How much did it cost?”
It’s a mental framework we carry around, and like any mindset, it can be a little sticky when we use it a lot.
And it’s a common critique of economics – the current system has no way of valuing things that don’t have a price tag. Clean air and oxygen is obviously incredibly valuable. But since you can’t put a price tag on it, it can fall through the cracks in our economic paradigm.
And so it’s good to remember that many valuable things don’t have a price tag.
However (and this is a mistake I see advanced students of mine make), this doesn’t mean that the only truly valuable things are things that don’t have a price tag.
We spend a lot of time encouraging students to find their ‘Why’.
Your why – your reason for getting out of bed in the morning – is an incredibly important piece of the puzzle. It’s your gateway to motivation – for creativity and drive. And it’s your gateway to grit – to your ability to dig deep when things get tough.
Having a why is a powerful source of momentum.
And it’s also powerful navigational tool. It helps you understand in detail where you want to go, and what things are worth your time and energy, and which things are not.
So we turn our why into drive and our why into direction.
It’s essential.
But then I still see a lot of students bring a sort of virtue-signalling to their why.
They want to start an orphanage in Indonesia. They want to invest in clean water programs in Africa. Some people want to build women’s refuges closer to home.
These are all wonderful, wonderful things to do. These are all things that ILRE students have actually gone on to do.
But too often they have the flavour of a ‘should’.
“I’ve never spent too much time thinking about the plight of orphans in Asia, but I probably should make that my why.”
Your why can’t be a should. It can’t be something externally generated – with an eye on whether other people are going to respect your why or not.
You why has to be born out of your own authentic desires and joys.
But the thing that I notice in this co-opting of why, is that there seems to be a rush to escape the money system.
It’s like the idea is that the only virtuous why is one divorced from money and price.
This is just not true.
Many wonderful things can and do happen within the money system.
Like right now, we’re in a housing shortage. If you’re excited to find innovative (and profitable!) ways to bring more housing to the market, people are going to thank you for it.
Not only that, the profit-motive can be a wonderful disciplining force. It forces you to spend your resources wisely, and to create things that people actually value.
My sense is that the best social enterprises are built by people who have been disciplined by the challenges of for-profit enterprises.
Anyway, it’s all to say, don’t be in a rush to escape the money system. You might get there eventually. Great.
But in the meantime, there’s a lot of good you can do right now.
DB