And conversely you have people who value love above all else - but misinterpret love as meaning complete selflessness.

Could you expand on this either here or elsewhere!

money and love are not opposites at all. it’s the belief that they are which stops creative thinking, because it’s a ‘given’ that you have to exclude one to have the other, and that creates rich tyrants and starving saints

Rich tyrants and starving saints sounds like good lyrics to something…

Can you have starving tyrants and rich saints? What would that take?

No, that’s an assumption. You can be a bastard without accruing tons of money.

I’m sure it is an assumption. But I didn’t say you couldn’t be a poor bastard, or that you can’t accrue money and also be a decent human being. I just meant that to amass a whole lot of money requires a certain degree of self-interest (self love), and a lot of people go too far with that in their striving for wealth and get lost there. You have all these people who don’t know how to make money without it being at the expense of others. And conversely you have people who value love above all else - but misinterpret love as meaning complete selflessness. They tend to have money troubles because they experience a conflict between living according to that limited idea of love and the ability to attract or build wealth.

So I agree with you completely that money and love are not opposites at all. it’s the belief that they are which stops creative thinking, because it’s a ‘given’ that you have to exclude one to have the other, and that creates rich tyrants and starving saints. I choose neither of those.

I see where Ran is coming from, a lot of the worlds “evil” systems (and I can see another semantic argument rearing up right here) use money to oil the gears of their engines of despair. And money does give you power to make people do things that they wouldn’t do unless you had the power of money over them.

But having money, or needing some yourself to take care of business, feed yourself and loved ones, use it to feed and shelter others etc is using money for love..

It’s just that to accrue tons and tons of money you have to become kind of a bastard

No, that’s an assumption. You can be a bastard without accruing tons of money.

I think most people are well-intentioned. Most people naturally want to do good and help others. The real problem is that people are unaware, and undisciplined. They don’t understand the full meaning of their actions, or the system they’re part of, and they have an incentive to not understand. I’ve written about this before: Our tools, including money, enable us to do subtle harm for obvious good, and this pattern feeds itself and grows, and then we have to either be stupid or evil, either not allow ourselves to see the harm, or see it and feel good about it, because if we don’t do one of those things, we have to give up our benefits.

i think you’ve reacted to the ‘money for work’ thing (understandable given your ambitions at the moment) but there’s money and then there’s money, yknow?

i don’t think you’re talking about the same thing. paging mr prieur…

1) what isn’t?
2) what difference does it make?

besides, how is the concept of “doing good” more tangible than money?

the idea of something being illusory or real is itself illusory, if u follow me…

1) what is it doing?
2) what can i do with it?

btw, anarchy = personal responsibility, not no responsibility

Being an anarchist means nobody is in charge. Being sovereign is better because you at least then recognize your ability to control your own life and destiny.

It’s very difficult to use money to do good, because of the nature of money.

[Clever retort]

if you love doing something, you don’t need to be paid money

This works out great for bake sales and such but most people make a trade off between a tolerable job/tolerable rate of pay.

if you’re paid money to do something, you don’t need to love it

On some level you do. I think the statistic is 50% of immigrants coming through Ellis Island eventually returned to their home countries. They were being paid a lot more money here.