money, money, money.

Money is a topic that supposedly interests everybody. Even the most selfless need certain amounts of money to sustain themselves day-to-day. Adam Smith wrote about it, so did St. Augustine. Both Abba and Pink Floyd have songs entitled “Money.” Modern theology equates money with greed, and the bible equates greed with the root of all evil. Money funds public schooling and fuels bitter divorces, money buys food, and money buys guns too. And it is money with which microeconomics concerns itself.

Inasmuch as money is vital to any economy (allowing the economy to expand by making transactions virtually limitless), I cannot help but wonder if we are all giving money far too much importance. One of the pillar beliefs that my school advocates is selflessness in service. I’m a firm believer in giving back to society, but that becomes difficult when one becomes exposed to subjects discussing money and satisfaction as two things so intricately related that they become impossible to distinguish.

Peter Singer is a modern-day utilitarian philosopher whose solution to world poverty involves everybody giving excess income to non-governmental organizations to aid the poor, the hungry, the sick. In it his essay, The Singer Solution to world poverty, he quotes several economic concepts—one of which is Thorstein Veblen’s conspicuous consumption. But this essay is not concerned with that. It concerns itself with the proverbial hypothetical question to end all hypothetical questions—would you save a four hundred thousand dollar Bugatti or a six year-old child from a runaway train?

Granted, this example is not just a bit overblown, but terribly overblown, it does still drive home a vital point. Society has come to the point wherein happiness and satisfaction, once purely abstract concepts, can become quantified. We have come to days when the word budget is a constraint, and not a blank canvas of possibility.

And I understand how necessary money is. I believe that as someone who is often in need of money, I understand that the dynamics behind it isn’t as simple as it seems. One does not pull money out of thin air. Nor does one simply make money, printing it out of inkjet printers. But then, one must also remember that money is not everything. The very concepts some economists talk about—utility, satisfaction, even opportunity costs, concern things that cannot be quantified in purely monetary terms.

Yesterday, I had to decide between staying at home and spending the night out with friends over at our favorite Persian restaurant with the best opium beds. I decided to stay home, and spend nothing last night. I spent nothing, and none of my allowance went anywhere. But there was a certain happiness gained from being at home. It’s not the degree or amount (if it can ever be put into numbers) that was the highlight. It was the kind. I realized that there is an amount of satisfaction to be gained from not spending money and staying home, reading Salman Rushdie and sipping caffeine.

And that was something money didn’t buy for me that night.