Part of the point that I’m trying to make is that greed is a fundamental problem for everyone, and that our culture, which has been indirectly crafted by the wealthy to maximize profit extraction, makes the problem worse. Money and its accumulation is at the center of life because our society makes it necessary for living and directly proportionate to that amount of power/ choice one has in life. Money means you can afford heat so you’re not cold, medicine so you aren’t sick, electricity so you can function in the modern world, a car so you go where you have to go, rent so you have a roof over your head, water so you can drink and bathe and cook, the list goes on, and these are the basics. If you have issues that prevent you from getting a regular job, and you don’t have wealth to fall back on, you are screwed.
Money is power, power is choice, choices make life worth living.
If money was not the basis of power, it would matter significantly less, and the lengths we would go to in order to get it would be significantly less.
Every person needs a base measure of power, like, a vote, but that vote needs to be meaningful, it needs to be more than choosing the lesser of two evils every single time, so everyone must be enabled to run for office. Not everyone will run. Some will exploit the system. People already exploit it and we suffer for it. Holding office should be portrayed as a dutiful position with a moderate wage and the oversight of the entire community, which means the people need to be informed. Money should be separated from politics to ensure that the wealthy do not accumulate even more power at the expense of the community.
As a note: I don’t find it hypocritical to want to not have to scramble every month to meet basic needs, I don’t see that as greedy, I see that as the shallow end of the pool of desperation. Greedy is when you go beyond what you need at someone else’ expense.
