Too busy making money

A young adventurer trudges through the desert, chasing a legacy of a magic oil lamp. Prophecy foretold, this artifact would make one’s wildest wishes come true. After trudging under the beating sun for two full days, he finally saw something glisten in the endless expanse of sand. Exhausted, the adventurer approached and noticed that it was indeed the shining oil lamp he was looking for. The adventurer stroked the lamp, and out came an enormous blue genie.

“Thanks for rescuing me, kind soul. To reward you for your journey, I will make one wish come true. But I do not have much time, you must make your wish in one minute, and I’ll be off to the spirit realm.”

Luckily the adventurer didn’t have to think. He had his wish at the ready.

“I wish for infinite wishes.”

“Nice try, but no. One wish. You have 45 seconds left.”

Shit. Now the adventurer had to prioritize his long list of wishes and pick the most important one. And quick.

“I wish for infinite money.”

“And so it shall be.”

The genie started spinning, and with a loud “woosh” sound, he summoned a box, which he handed to the adventurer.

“This is a bottomless box. It will produce whatever currency you have in mind when you reach in. Use it well. Good luck on your ventures.”

The genie soared up into the sky. The adventurer lived happily ever after. He enjoyed his riches. Meanwhile, the rest of the world drowned in inflation.

The end.

Sometimes we get so caught up in trying to earn money that we forget why money exists in the first place. As humanity, we have common goals of survival and well-being. Money is a tool to distribute workload in an increasingly complex society. It’s a means to an end. But when it becomes an end in itself, society starts showing its worst side.

Society is structured around money as the driver behind most companies and organizations. Imagine a town having two grocery stores. Together, they feed the town, which is a most important mission. Both stores have similar challenges: setting up an efficient logistical process, reducing food waste in the pipeline, etc. If the companies wanted to optimize their positive impact on the community, they’d bundle forces and tackle those challenges together, sharing all their learnings. But earning money is more important. If they share learnings, they help the other store compete against them. So instead, they opt to do the same thing individually, all work done twice. Everyone loses.

I work as a software engineer. Where I work, we compete against many similar companies and write almost the same software as all of them write. I get paid for it, but it doesn’t feel like I’m contributing something to society. In the end, all I’m doing is making money. As is everyone else. As is the organization. We purify our consciousness by throwing words like “sustainability” and “positive societal impact” around, but in the end, we’re yet another group of people dreaming of becoming filthy rich.

But not everything’s like that. The internet has a great wealth of open information, which people create without any personal gain. Some companies invest in open information without any advantage for them to do so. I hope that these things grow. That more companies follow Tesla’s example of getting rid of their patents and open-sourcing their knowledge.

Capitalism is good. It rewards people for working hard to make society a better place. But often, it causes us to forget our common goal. We reinvent the wheel over and over.

We can make the change.

Ask your employer for time to work on open-source projects. Contribute to open information worldwide, like by donating to Wikipedia. By doing so, society can reach heights it has never reached before.