DailyJim: It’s also about the money

Hello everyone, welcome to another Daily Gym. Today is Tuesday, January 7th, 2025, and today I want to talk about, it's also about the money.

I'm wondering if I should title these things before or just put the title at the end, but it's all about the money. The idea yesterday was how many people will I lose in my life because they're scared to love me so much or something along those lines. And one of the questions I asked was, how many people have I already lost in my life because I don't have money? I didn't have money.

And that question hit me really hard. And I think it's both. I think there is the fear of loving someone so much.

And as someone has said to me before what's the point in falling in love with someone who doesn't have any money now you may hear that and go oh that's a very gold digger perspective this person only cares about you because of the money and and honestly as a as a white man who has spent a lot of time in africa that is uh what people will often say you know the girl's only with you because of your money. She only wants you because of your money. Well, the thing about life that has been hard for me to, okay, not life, but human society as we've developed it, that's been hard for me to reconcile or admit is that money is necessary.

It's not sufficient, but it's necessary.

I mean, I tried at some point to be like, how could I live a life with no money at all? And it's pretty darn hard unless somebody is letting you live in their place rent free. If you, there's still property tax to pay. If you want to interact with strangers at all, that means so much as society is built on the exchange of currency for goods. So if I ever want I could maybe live on a commune or a farm or have someone provide everything for me so I don't touch the money but then the money is still being involved kind of indirectly.

So money is necessary but not sufficient and so in these relationships friendships, again, not just romantic, but family, friendships, stuff like this.

Money's important. Because let's just say a friendship, for example. If I am in a friendship with, say, there's four of us. Three of my friends have jobs where they're making, let's say, $50,000 a year. And because that's kind of an American number we can throw out, maybe middle class. I don't know what the numbers are these days. But they make $50,000 a year. And so when they go out for a dinner, for them, maybe spending $20 on dinner is not a big deal. And then maybe they'll spend $10 or $20 on drinks. So maybe they'll spend $40 for one person if they go out to dinner. Now, if I go out with them or if someone goes out with them who doesn't have that much money, maybe they only make $20,000 a year. Then going out and spending $40 on a meal is a lot. So maybe that person can only afford $10 or $20, or they think they can only afford it because they're really stressed out. That can really throw off the dynamics with the group because then they feel bad that the person, and maybe they always have to cover for that person sometimes. And it can be hard associating across different levels. And I felt this before in East Africa, going out with some friends. If we're all in somewhat similar economic class, then yeah, we all can kind of spend our own way. But if maybe I have more money or I'm assumed to have more money than a lot of the people with me, then there can be this weird dynamic of, well, should I pay for all of them? I don't know if I can really afford to pay for all of them. Well, okay, I can't afford to pay for all of them. So I guess I'm just not going to invite them because they can't afford to be here. And then it gets a little tricky like that. So money is even important in friendships to maintain relationships. And again, it's not all about the money. It's just about the interactions that can happen with or without the money. And again, money often being used to facilitate trade or exchange with more distant people, more strangers.

And sometimes you don't have much choice. You can't say, well, I appreciate, well, can I have some free food here at the airport? I'm not going to give you free food. You're just flying to another country. How do I know you'll ever come back? Good point.

And so I wonder, yeah, how many people will I lose in my life because I don't have money or enough money? And enough is all relative, right? But stable, predictable, money. And I think this is a problem for a lot of people in general around the world, right? But especially it's this weird type of problem for people who, could get a quote-unquote normal job working in a company that does a lot of exchange and trading and business, as we'd call it, and make decent money or good money, but choose to do something in a more non-profit, non-governmental organization space, a more charity, a more public goods space. These are people who start nonprofits. These are sometimes people who work at nonprofits. These are people who do a lot of volunteering, like open source projects. So if you're familiar with open source software, these people who write and maintain a lot of open source software. These are artists in some ways who are doing something for the public benefit more than the private exchange of goods. And often when we do this, we care more about the thing that we're doing and giving to other people than receiving. And sometimes we, I mean, a lot of times we'll give what a song or we'll give some kind of good or service to other people just because they need it. They're struggling. They have a problem and we can help resolve it with them. But sometimes we actually give money too, because we see money is the easiest way for them to solve the problem. Maybe they have a specific thing, like maybe their friend or their family members in the hospital and they have to pay for the bill, especially in East Africa, they have to pay cash. So cash is the best way. I mean, I could say, well, I could drive you to the hospital, but they still need to pay cash. And so sometimes the easiest and the most helpful gift we can give somebody is cash, is money. And, um, I just think.

I am so tired of not having it, not because I want to have it because I want to be rich, but because when I have it, I can do so much more. I can do so much more to help people. My goodness.

My goodness. And so one thing I appreciate as of late is that, you know, a lot of people have pushed me on this, but I think certain people in my life are pushing me even more to this idea of like money is necessary and what, what power can money give us? What can we do with that power? Um, there's a phrase they say, you know, power, absolute power corrupts absolutely. And there was a guy recently, Adam Grant, I believe who said, no power reveals Power doesn't corrupt. Power reveals what's on the inside. Just like alcohol or drugs or, frankly, even intimate relationships, it reveals what's inside, what we've been suppressing, what we've been burying comes out, especially in a position of power, because we're not so afraid that others are going to be able to steal the power from us so we can have more courage to say it out, to get the stuff out. And so I really like this idea that power reveals.

And if we have so many loving people around the world, like the ones often who are like focused so hard on giving to other people and being really open and really kind and really compassionate, don't have money.

It's like they're revealing it, like we're revealing it, but it's not going anywhere. You know it's not really distributing as much as it could it's like this inner light is there but it's shining and there's no uh relay that passes it around the world this is the super nerdy fiber optic cable joke um but uh reference other and uh oh almost 10 minutes so um this wasn't as powerful as i thought it would be but there's just this reflection that it is about the money And if someone gets hurt that we don't have money, especially in a romantic relationship, or if someone gets hurt in a family that we don't have money or that we're choosing not to go down a traditional path to get money, it's okay. It makes sense. You know, they're not a bad person for wanting you to have money. Yeah.

But at the same time, I believe we need to find ways, we need to create new ways for people who are very openly giving of services, but also money, for them to be openly given money instead of having to go exchange their time for money or other types of things that they're selling in direct exchange for money. And so this is an idea I will talk about more tomorrow probably, but it's been percolating, it's been boiling for me a little bit, simmering, whatever cooking reference you want to use. But to change the way that I receive money and to change the way that other people receive money, especially people who are trying to lead society to be more open and loving. Um, and these people who are currently doing this and doing it may be very well, but can't pay rent or, you know, or their wife is threatening to leave them because they won't just get a job.

Or so these people that are merely subsisting, or maybe they're there in their middle class and they're okay. But what if we actually had financial power? What if I actually had financial power in my life. What would I do with financial power? It's not even about money. Maybe a better way to frame it is financial power. What would I do with financial power?

What would I do with financial power? Probably the same stuff I've been doing for 12 years, but with power, with financial power behind it. Hey, you know my app, Ifeelio, that I stopped working on because I got tired of developing it? Hey, if I had financial power, maybe I could pay somebody to develop it. Now, you could argue they would volunteer and they could volunteer. Maybe they could. And you know, that's a possibility as well, but they need money too. So, I mean, if they want to volunteer and do it, that's great. I would love that. And then if I had money, then maybe I could still contribute money to them just in general. I don't know the legality or like they would have to pay taxes on it. Maybe, I don't know. But yeah, again, money is necessary for people to move on. And I'm just hoping that at some point, and I hope some point soon, we can shift it from giving money only in scenario, giving money to individuals only in scenarios where they're either completely completely destroyed and need help getting off the ground or in direct exchange for a good or service that they're giving us. Because maybe we can just give money a lot more to people. Be a really interesting concept, huh? So I don't know what y'all think about this, but I'll talk about it more tomorrow because I'm over time and God, I got to get these down to like five minutes. Bye.