Capitalism has done great things, sure, but it has also forced us all to weigh our worth against a single accounting ledger.

That is to say, of all the ways to measure a human being, tallys of the good and bad parts of ourselves set against a moral backdrop or a social yardstick or an artistic canvas, the dominant one of western culture of the year 2024 seems to be monetary value.

Morality is mistaken for poiltical persuasion. Social worth is too often singularly measured in online engagement clickthroughs. The value of expression, music and art is flawed in its tracking merey by record sales or performance revenue or delivered commissions.

All of it loops right back to money. 

Of course, the counterpoint ledgers by which could alternatively judge our success are less quantifiable, less fungible, less ready to be assigned a number. How do you put happiness on a scale that has objective value for all? Is there a stock market equivalent for intellectual enlightenment ourside of acedemia? How many hamburgers does musical expression of the soul buy?  We don’t track any of these things, at least not with the bank-balance, black-red precision of our monetary worth, yet each of our lives are affected by the surplus or debtor status of these invisible ledgers.

Money can’t buy happiness, they say—yet it seems to come from somewhere and vanish again into the mists of life—so perhaps we should each of us figure out what does buy a smile and a warm feeling and all those other things by which we can measure our worth.