Temptation and Where it Leads

It’s hard for people to know this until they get there, but money has such diminishing returns. Once you can buy dinner and not worry about it, everything beyond that is just marginal square footage in a second home or an extra-comfy seat on an airplane. However, wealth can be useful if you see money as a system. I have more “system points” than others, so if I want, I can donate money to my kids’ school or fund businesses that I think are interesting. Accumulating wealth for its own sake is creatively bankrupt. But deploying it to move needles you care about moving is a super-good use of time and energy. Startup CEO Daniel Eberhard, interview with Macleans, 10 August 2026

Eberhard is newly rich and elsewhere in his interview sounds like he has been hanging out with bad company who tell him he is more productive than a homemaker who raises children and organizes or a bus driver who keeps the local makerspace going. I think he is smart enough to understand why the rest of us don’t like a few people who were lucky in their parents or lucky in business moving so many needles. But I don’t know he has seen where this kind of thinking leads as well as Agatha Christie saw in 1952.

‘Lewis was a great man,’ (Carrie Louise) said. ‘A man of great vision, and a passionate believer in what could be accomplished – with money. He didn’t want it for himself – or at least not in the greedy vulgar sense – he did want the power of it, he wanted the power to do great good with it -‘
‘He wanted,’ said the Bishop, ‘to be God.’ His voice was suddenly stern. ‘He forgot that man is only the humble instrument of God’s will.’
‘And so he embezzled the trust funds?’ said Miss Marple. Agatha Christie, They Do it With Mirrors (1952) p. 212

One of the most important decisions in your life is who you chose to listen to and respect.

(scheduled 17 August 2026)