— Money is worthless in a shitty life.

First time doing this; rather than search far and wide—sometimes taking upwards of 30 minutes to look for and find a headline image for a post—I just typed “fantasy representation of using money to buy the most expensive things” into a field right here in my WordPress editor. My same AI I use for the Chatbot Zon went out and had DALL-E create six completely different images, and Stable Diffusion, two more (so many possible settings…so lots of future experimenting). I could have had it redo as many redoes as I want, but I picked one, and just click-inserted it right up there. Less than a minute, done.

Amazing.

I like the random serendipity of it. And I think it’s going to be fun to experiment, and maybe you’ll even get a kick out of it, too. I’m happy to be done with stock photography and canned graphics, at least mostly. More creative, random, surprising, and interesting. It’s almost like art. Incidentally, this is set to Michelangelo, classical (as if I even know what that means vis-à-vis stuck-up art snobbery).

… Ask yourself this: what’s money really good for? If you say it’s to buy land, gold, homes, businesses, securities, finely-branded goods, 5-star vacations, fast cars, yachts, private jets, beautiful women, power, influence…you get the idea…then I would ask you: what then are those things good for? And if there’s an answer to that question that makes sense, then the obvious question that follows is, why not just buy that thing directly, then?

… I gave ChatGPT-4 the theme and a summary, including the bottom line, for this post. I asked it to critique and propose the structure and points for a 2000-word piece, and it did an absolutely marvelous job. No stone left unturned.

And I’m using exactly none of it.

My notions about this are radical; far beyond any sort of conventional, financial-conference, “sound money” and “wise investing” banality. These odd notions of mine are beyond that taking of money so seriously that you’re crippled, stressed out, and a damned willing and even enthusiastic slave to it. I swear to God that I often sometimes wonder who’s getting the better end, the crack dealer or the addict…of if there’s a meaningful difference.

Which drug is worse?

It’s a harsh and unforgiving master. And the more of it you have, the harsher, more unforgiving, and gargantuan it is.

Money: A Silly, Unreal, and Ridiculous Game

Right off the bat, a section header like that invites skepticism, as well it should. So let’s dispense with that first very simply and obviously.

Just because you’re compelled to do something is no justification of its soundness.