Member-only story
Prophet Motives
It’s not always about the money.
A friend and I were talking recently about the urgent need to develop alternate energy sources. They said, matter -of-factly, “Of course, people have to be incentivized to do that development…”
We’ve all heard this riff a hundred times. This time, it stopped me in my tracks and I abruptly sputtered, “Incentivized how?”
“Why, they need to be able to make a profit on those things.”
“Says who?” I responded wisely.
Because you and I know, deep down, that people are really “incentivized” by almost everything but money. It’s just that people have been hard-selling us that profit motive line for years, and now we can’t get out of the damned contract.
We assume it’s always about the money
First of all, the best definition of money I’ve ever seen is by leftside365 on the Urban Dictionary:
Money, says leftside365, is “The little pieces of paper and earth that control all of mankind. It is ironic that we are slaves to trees and rocks.”