We’re all looking for ways to monetize our values.
Why not just live them? Well, any method for living a comfortable life today requires money. And it requires significant risk and skill to live a life that both embodies your values and acquires money. It’s far easier to 1) come into money in a way that doesn’t embody your values, then use that money to stop and live comfortably or 2) become comfortable with less money and potentially risk catastrophic circumstance for your family (medical bankruptcy, insufficient access to child education, etc).
I myself have worked for companies I could justify in my mind but deep down I knew were problematic. I acquired money from them, now I live comfortably and write about my experiences – taking on some risk that’s cushioned by my self-assessed dirty money and using skills I acquired from my means acquiring it.
Ultimately, shouldn’t each of us opt to climb the economic ladder the best we can even if we have misgivings along the way? Who can blame us for taking the path to this comfortable life while being served just enough koolaid to free ourselves from guilt? Nevertheless it seems there must be a better way.
How can we retain the people-centric benefits of a market-based economy while radically widening the access to a comfortable life? Universal access to a comfortable life is right. And capitalism is what enables us to acquire the money to redistribute that enables it.
I understand that it’s scary to design your life around multiple generations of guidance that “wealth acquisition is the key to freedom, the best chance for your children to pursue their dreams, and personal happiness.” I am a child of those generations and I can attest is it scary.
Independence is coveted and glorified and idolized in America. Self-sufficiency. How do we create a society where people feel self-sufficient while relying on a government check?
The answer is that any of us who have become “self-sufficient” only did it by building on top of the public infrastructure of society. How many of us get to work on the roads we publicly pay for and own with your taxes? How many can participate in the economy because of public education system for your children? How many can retire and care for and love and spend time with our grandkids because of social security? How many have had someone in our family unexpectedly hospitalized and not gone bankrupt because of medicare? These are measures that ENHANCE our economy – not detract from it. They don’t make you less independent, they enable you to be more independent.
Freedom from the control and influence of massive companies is more independent than freedom from public infrastructure that makes opportunity and comfort universal.
Public, universal services pave the road to our personal independence.