{"id":12488,"date":"2009-08-08T12:10:27","date_gmt":"2009-08-08T12:10:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/08\/08\/advertising-and-the-lure-of-the-lucre\/"},"modified":"2009-08-08T12:10:27","modified_gmt":"2009-08-08T12:10:27","slug":"advertising-and-the-lure-of-the-lucre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/08\/08\/advertising-and-the-lure-of-the-lucre\/","title":{"rendered":"Advertising and the Lure of the Lucre"},"content":{"rendered":"

I received an e-mail from a fellow who offered me $35 to run an ad on the <\/font>alcohol, tobacco, and firearms<\/font> page of this site for a alcoholism\/drug addiction resource. I declined the offer for the same reason I don't display any money-making gimmicks such as 'tip jars.' The work I do on this site is a labor of love and an end in itself. To commercialize it would be to sully it. Of course, I have no objection to someone else turning a buck from his online work. If you need money, go ahead and try to earn some by any legitimate means and if this involves cluttering your site with advertising and such, it's a free country. But if you have enough of the lean green, then why not be content with what you have and turn your mind to the nonutilitarian? <\/font><\/p>\n

"But what if he offered you $3,500?" Well, if I don't need $35, why would I need $3,500 or $35,000?<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

They say every man has his price. Suppose you were offered $1,000 to kill a defenseless old lady who lives by herself in an outlying area. You wouldn't do it, would you? But what if you were offered a million or ten million? Suppose she is near death, of no use to herself or anyone else, and no one cares whether she lives or dies. Suppose not even she cares whether she lives or dies. Upon hearing such an offer, a typical human brain would go into rationalization overdrive. But again, if you don't need a thousand why do you need a million? <\/font><\/div>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

Money, like sex, has an astonishing delusive power, a power to corrupt and distort, so much so that many think it the root of all evil. That cannot be right, of course, as a little thought will show: the most one can say is that the inordinate love<\/em> of money is at the root of some<\/em> evils. See <\/font>Money, Sex, Power, and Fame<\/font><\/a> and <\/font>Radix Omnium Malorum<\/font><\/a>. Nevertheless, money makes people crazy and they have a hard time thinking clearly about it. They think it will buy them happiness when at the most it will buy them the absence of certain forms of misery. Just as absurd is the notion promoted in the silliest song of all time, John Lennon's Imagine<\/em>, that the abolition of money is the way to human flourishing:<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world…
<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

It says something that this asinine exercise in the utopian  is <\/font>considered<\/font><\/a> one of the greatest songs of all time. I am referring to the lyrics, not the music, which is not bad. <\/font><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I received an e-mail from a fellow who offered me $35 to run an ad on the alcohol, tobacco, and firearms page of this site for a alcoholism\/drug addiction resource. I declined the offer for the same reason I don't display any money-making gimmicks such as 'tip jars.' The work I do on this site … Continue reading “Advertising and the Lure of the Lucre”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[216,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-money-matters","category-virtues-and-vices"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12488\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}