Charles Eisenstein

When there is no standard of value, different humans want different things. When money is exchangeable for any thing, then all people want the same thing: money.

“Stripped of all personal association, money is promiscuous, capable of being exchanged with anybody for anything, indifferent to all nonmonetary interpersonal relationships.”

Money depersonalizes a relationship, turning two people into mere “parties to an exchange” driven by the universal goal of maximizing self-interest.

In later chapters I will describe a fatal contradiction in the attempt to invest ethically, but

If I have $2,000 in the bank, half from my friend and half from my enemy, I cannot choose to spend my enemy’s $1,000 first and save my friend’s. Each dollar is identical.

That the profit motive is antithetical to any benignant personal motive is nearly axiomatic—

Today, an ethical business movement and ethical investment movement seek to heal the opposition between

but for now just note your natural suspicion of it,

t seems irrational, even miraculous, that someone would actually give without contrivance of return.

In the empires of usury the sentimentality of the man with the soft heart calls to us because it speaks of