The Dark Side of Money
The Dark Side of Money
Jacob Schroeder Jul 24, 2023
What we can learn from the ways money brings out the worst in us
Last year, the YouTuber Mr. Beast posted a Twitter poll that revealed an evilness lurking in our relationship with money.
As you can see, almost half the respondents said “Yes.” Yes, to the death of a person – who could be a devoted parent, an innocent child, the world’s leading cancer researcher, or Tom Hanks – for $10,000, about the worth of a used Honda.
It’s proof that money has power. The power to take our lives – with diligent saving and patient investing – to great heights. But also the power to lead us to some dark places.
Perhaps, that’s where the best financial lessons lie.
When discussing how dark experiences acted as life’s greatest teacher, endurance athlete and former Navy SEAL David Goggins said: “There are no answers in the light… knowledge comes from the muck.”
The same rings true for money; financial knowledge often comes from unfortunate events — job loss, market crashes, bankruptcy, fraud, et al. Most finance books and articles tell us we deserve financial success. Less frequent are those that help people identify their own toxic relationships with money as a route to personal growth. Fortunately, we can learn from the experiences of others.
For instance, I’ll briefly tell you why I don’t gamble. It’s not that I think gambling is a waste of money (which I do), or that I think the “games” are boring (which I do), or that I think of casinos as pitiful dungeons soiled with the stench of stale cigarette smoke and desperation (which I also do). It’s because it reminds me of the tragic death of a family.
When I was 18, my best friend called me one day to tell me that a family had been found murdered in their home nearby. This was a quiet, upper-class neighborhood where such tragedies never happened. Out of shock, we drove by the family’s once comfortable home that now resembled the set of a cop show with telltale props and extras – yellow tape, detectives, reporters, coroners.
It turned out the killer was the father. He had been a successful businessman who started to gamble and gamble some more, and then he started to lose and lose some more, until he inevitably lost almost everything. Distraught and at rock bottom, he decided to cash in the last thing he had left, the lives of his family and his own.
The experience taught me how a potentially big financial windfall could influence our psyche, like a siren call toward the rocks and cliffs of financial ruin. And at times, much worse.
I don’t believe money is not inherently evil. But research shows that it can trigger the worst parts of our nature if we let it.
The surprising thing? Unfortunate consequences can arise through both financial strain and abundance. Go too far in either direction, and you end up in the same miserable place.
So, when does money transform from an illusory store of value to an accessory to evil? How do we keep it from ruling over us?
How does this relate to our own financial lives?
Humans may have an inherent sensitivity to fairness, which explains why inequality can feel so stressful and damaging.
Consider a video of an experiment with two capuchin monkeys, our distant relatives often used in psychological tests as human stunt doubles. The capuchins perform the task of giving the experimenter a rock in exchange for a slice of cucumber.
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