Man vs. Money

 

Man vs. Money

A nation built on two ideals — one of them a parasite.

 

This country was never just founded on freedom. It was built on two conflicting ideologies — the rights of man, and the pursuit of money.

And from the beginning, those two forces have been fighting it out.

In choosing to enshrine both ideologies — the rights of man and the pursuit of wealth — in the same foundational documents, the Founding Fathers opened the door to the beast. They wove contradiction into the country’s very DNA. One ideal sought liberty and equality; the other sought profit, even if it meant exploitation. And the tension between those two has shaped every chapter since.

We have pretended for more than two hundred years that these competing ideologies could rest easy in each other’s company. But I fear Money has always been waiting for Man to relax — to slip into sleep — so it could garrote him in the dark.

Where "man" meant dignity, community, shared burden, and collective good — "money" meant ownership, profit, extraction, and power. Eventually, those ideologies became embodied by the political parties. Not cleanly, not perfectly — but culturally:

• Democrats staked their identity on people, humanity, progress.

• Republicans aligned with capital, deregulation, and the concentration of wealth.

But somewhere along the way, something changed. The money stopped being a tool. It became the point.

The Red Gold

In The Belgariad and The Mallorean, there was a metal called Red Gold — so powerful, so cursed, that it created in those who held it a consuming hunger. Not for beauty. Not for comfort. For more. Always more.

And that's exactly the behavior we see in certain billionaires today. They don't want to fix the world. Or even rule it. They want to consume it.

Jeff Bezos didn’t run for office. He didn’t need to. His god wasn’t politics — it was acquisition. Whole Foods. The Washington Post. Not because they offered spiritual nourishment, but because they expanded the empire.

This isn’t capitalism. It’s addiction.

And yes, I’m an atheist — but even I can tell you: There’s something spiritually rotten about that kind of hunger. Not un-American. Not illegal. Unholy.

Money, when worshiped, hollows people out. Turns them into predators in Patagonia fleeces. Convinces them that taking from the starving is simply efficiency.

And the system rewards it.

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If I Were a Fabelist

If I were a fabelist, I would tell the story of a small agricultural village before the advent of money.

Everyone in town works to maintain the village, provide food, care for the children. They keep a central store — everyone contributes the fruits of their labor, and they share the bounty freely. No one ever goes hungry while others eat.

Eventually, their abundance grows. Someone is tasked with managing the store — to inventory, preserve, and distribute the goods.

Time passes. A drought strikes. The people are anxious, but they’ve prepared. They’ve dried, smoked, canned food for just such a time.

But when they go to the store, the keeper bars the door.

"The food is mine," he says.

And in the dark of night, he recruits the strongest men in the village to guard the storehouse — promising them that their families will never go hungry. Because money has ever had the power to corrupt.

And just like that, the balance is broken. What once belonged to all is now controlled by one.

And money is born.

Or maybe not money exactly. But its ancestor:

Ownership without labor. Security without contribution. Power without trust.

That's the seed.

The Soul Rot of Wealth

It seems — at least to me — that the nouveau riche are especially vulnerable to the sickness. Old money, for all its arrogance, often learns to tame the beast. But new wealth? It wears the hunger on its sleeve.

So maybe the disease isn’t just about money. Maybe it’s about the naked ache of poverty, of being overlooked, of never being enough. Maybe it’s born from lack, from wounds never healed. Mommy didn’t love me. Daddy didn’t care. I’m not a psychologist, but Ray Charles could see there’s something very wrong with the soul of someone who can have an obscene fortune — a fortune that now makes more money by simply existing — and still feel compelled to hoard.

Not just hoard — scheme. To take from the elderly. To strip food from the mouths of hungry children. To yank IVs from the arms of the dying.

That’s not policy. That’s pathology.

What Money Can Buy

I’m not averse to wealth. I’d like some of my own.

The Beatles said Money Can’t Buy You Love — yeah, but it can buy a pretty close facsimile. Okay, seriously — maybe not love. But let’s not pretend money isn’t powerful. It can buy comfort, ease, security. It can put a secure roof over your head and food in your fridge and pantry.

The truth is, if you have those things — really have them — it can put you in a place where you’re more fully yourself. Where you’re not distorted by anxiety, fear, or survival mode. And maybe that version of you is a little easier to love. Maybe that’s the real secret — not that money brings love, but that stability makes space for it.

What an Abundant World Could Look Like

In an abundant world, everyone has enough. Good food. A secure roof. Money to meet all their needs — and still cover some wants.

People don’t buy eighteen cars when they only have one ass.

And those who do have more than enough? They recognize that hoarding is a kind of theft. They understand that wealth doesn’t just sit — it circulates. It nourishes. It builds.

See, I think the magnates of old understood something modern billionaires have forgotten:

If you drive the poor and middle class into the ground, who’s left to buy your goods?

The Invisibility of Digital Wealth

Maybe that’s part of it. Maybe it’s not just greed — it’s the nature of the wealth itself.

Because the old magnates built things you could see. Factories. Railroads. Cars. Oil refineries. Their empires had smokestacks and steel beams and cities around them. You couldn’t ignore what they built.

But today’s titans? They build in the cloud. Their products are invisible. Their wealth is abstract — code, stock valuations, data. You can’t touch it. You can’t see it piling up. And maybe that’s why they hoard more of it. Maybe that’s why there’s no sense of enough.

You don’t notice what you’re taking when what you’re taking can’t be seen.

And in the digital age, you can’t even tell — from among the oppressed — which ones are your customers. When profit becomes invisible, so does empathy.

The End of Empathy

Elon Musk once said on Joe Rogan’s show that the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy — that it’s been "weaponized" and exploited. That’s not a fringe opinion anymore. It’s becoming the billionaire gospel.

Empathy, they say, is a bug. A vulnerability. A threat to efficiency. And they’re not subtle about it — they see human compassion as the flaw in the code.

But that’s not the voice of innovation. That’s the voice of rot. The voice of someone who’s either forgotten what it means to be human — or never knew.

Empathy isn’t weakness. It’s civilization.

And if this civilization falls, it won’t be because we cared too much. It’ll be because the richest men on Earth declared war on caring itself.

That’s not progress. That’s collapse.

Empathy is Elon Musk’s conscience — and he’s determined to kill that fucker.

More to come...