ambitions in cash

During a recent conversation about the merits of socialism, my counterpart argued that, in the absence of monetary remuneration for labor, ambition, ingenuity, and creativity would disappear. He claimed, in other words, that people would stop working if they stopped getting paid money to work, that productivity would vanish if the potential for gain also vanished. If this theory were true, parents would stop showing up to coach their kids' little league teams, our interstate hiking trails would become overgrown for a lack of volunteers to keep them cleared of brush and dead-fall, charities would all but cease to function, and little would transpire within religious organizations other than those tasks performed by paid clergy.

Many man hours of unpaid-for labor are performed in the United States, every year. This labor is performed to satisfy an ideal, to give back to the community, even to calm that deep inner need to do something for the good of mankind without being paid or even recognized for it. I believe this zeal to provide for the common good is inherent to all persons (although most of us in the Western world have it stamped or beaten out of us in childhood). I also believe that our current economic system of Me-First Capitalism has ensnared this zeal, subjugating it to the fleeting but hollow satisfaction of conspicuous consumption and generosity for the sake of praise or thanks. We are not all bad, or shiftless; we have merely unlearned to cherish those things that are precious beyond their monetary value. So take the first step on the journey to true freedom, and burn a Benjamin today. Mahalo.

mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥

(due to sickness-induced delirium, I accidentally posted this here; it should have gone to americanifesto.blogspot.com ; whatev's)