The Roots of Evil

1. Money

People say that money is the root of all evil. How can that be? Money is just a medium of exchange — a thing that you trade goods and services for, in order to later trade that thing for other goods and services. This is an enormous aid to mutually beneficial exchanges in a large society, where there are many different goods and services. What kind of lunatic would be against this?

Maybe the saying means that people’s desire for money is the motivation behind most evil deeds (“all evil” being mere hyperbole). Yet even this is doubtful. Sure, many crimes are committed for money. But many of the worst crimes are committed out of jealousy, or vindictiveness, or general male aggression, rather than greed. There is a lot of gang-related violence and drug-related violence. Ted Bundy killed out of sadism, not greed. Hitler ordered the Holocaust out of racial hatred, not to make money. Stalin and Mao starved millions for the sake of communism and to keep their own power, not to make money. Indeed, one wishes that these evil dictators had had more interest in money — maybe then they would have enacted market reforms and kept more of their population alive.

In fact, it’s closer to the truth to say money is the root of all good — that is, the desire for money is the motivation behind most good deeds. Farmers grow the food that sustains all of us, not because they love us, but because they want money. Doctors treat us for money; firemen put out fires for money; companies make clothes, computers, cars, and houses for money. Before you lament the greed that makes all these people unwilling to work for free out of pure love for humanity, ask yourself how many of these things you would be happy to do for free.

This all works out because trade is a positive-sum game: it results in more total wealth overall. When farmers trade with the rest of us, both sides benefit.

Sure, there are harmful ways of making money. But there are so many benevolent ways of making money that a normal (not especially altruistic) person can do fine without committing any major evils.

So let’s retire the ridiculous anti-money saying. What really motivates most evil?

2. Status

Status is zero-sum

All human societies are hierarchical: there are high-status and low-status people, powerful people and powerless people. Status, unlike money, is zero-sum: if my status goes up, one or more other people’s status must go down. That’s because status is inherently comparative: your status is your relative position in the hierarchy. The total amount of status cannot increase in the way that the total wealth can.*

*Possible exception: We can create multiple status hierarchies, say, one based on sports ability, one based on mathematical ability, and one based on artistic ability. Or hierarchies relative to different subcultures. Perhaps the multiplication of status hierarchies counts as “increasing the total amount of status”.

Why we seek status

It seems as if human beings are genetically programmed to want to climb social hierarchies. This is probably because in our evolutionary history, people who climbed social hierarchies used their positions to control more valuable resources, attract more mating opportunities, and generally serve their own interests, resulting in greater reproductive success as compared to people lower in the status hierarchies.

Even today, higher status leads to greater mating success, i.e., women prefer high-status men over low-status men: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/head-games/201207/are-women-shallow. Men’s desire for money may exist largely as a means to boosting their social status.

( Thought experiment: Man A is the head of a large charity organization. Due to his organization’s altruistic nature, he takes only a $30,000 salary. Man B, on the other hand, is a low-quality lawyer, who makes $100,000 a year, the least of anyone at the law firm where he works. Which man is more attractive, ceteris paribus? My guess is A. If so, that shows that social status trumps wealth. )

The problem with status

Just from what I’ve said, you can see that there is an inherent problem with the status game, a problem that can’t be solved by any economic or technological advances. We all (or at least most) want to be higher in the hierarchy, but one person’s achieving this goal inherently conflicts with other people’s achieving the same goal. So, unlike the case with money, when you seek the goal of status, you’re inherently seeking to make others worse off with respect to the thing that you yourself value. So status competitions are to some extent anti-social and perhaps tend to attract anti-social people. (It is worth keeping in mind that our social emotions are not necessarily pro-social; they are often anti-social.)

Fortunately, in a well-working society, there are many benevolent ways of getting status, such as by being very productive and thereby earning a lot of money. But there are also malevolent ways of gaining status that are not illegal, such as spreading malicious rumors about rivals, misrepresenting one’s own achievements and qualities, and jumping on opportunities to visibly attack the outgroup.

By contrast, most malevolent ways of gaining money are actually illegal, so they are more rarely practiced.

Status and bullshit

The need for status motivates some ugly mob behavior. When someone is getting dragged on Twitter, say, you see a lot of people jumping on the bandwagon. Sometimes, the person’s erstwhile friends and colleagues will pile on, kicking the person while he’s down. They’ll do this with a self-righteous air, which only makes the behavior more morally disgusting. This is out of an attempt to preserve their own status in the toxic subculture to which they belong.

Consider, for example, when Rebecca Tuvel was mobbed for her article on transracialism. Some people signed a letter to try to get the article retracted. When it became clear that the effort to cancel Tuvel was failing, some of these people then wanted their names removed from the letter — thus removing all doubt that their performative offense had been undertaken purely for status-seeking reasons.

The same desire motivates people to lie or remain silent when the mob is proclaiming falsehoods. My Progressive Myths lists a number of politically-motivated deceptions. Some people adopt false ideological beliefs to gain social status. Even people who know they are false are often afraid to say so, because of the loss of status that would ensue.

Of course there are true-believers who are completely convinced that Wokism is true and white men are the root of all evil. But these people could not have corrupted our major cultural institutions in the way they have if it weren’t for all the spineless moderates who are afraid of losing status with the radical fringe. It’s much harder for a status-lover to have integrity than for a mere money-lover.

3. Power

Power is negative-sum

Power is closely related to social status, perhaps just a kind of status (I mean social power, not physical power). But this kind of status is particularly anti-social. For me to gain social power, there must by definition be people over whom I gain that power. Those people in turn must become correspondingly less powerful.

Plausibly, power-seeking is not just a zero-sum game but a negative-sum game: when one person acquires power over another, the harm to the latter person is greater than the benefit for the former. This is because for each person, the power to control his own life is more important than the power to control others. Thus, when A acquires power over B’s life and B loses power over B’s own life, there is a net loss.

The malevolence of power

Power-seeking is the most malevolent form of status-seeking. It need not be malevolent — you could acquire power solely through the ability to help others, which enables you to get others to do what you want. But there are many extremely malevolent instances of power-seeking.

Most war is power-seeking: a ruler of one society wants to expand his power by taking over other lands. The intended victims fight to prevent this, and perhaps to take over some land of their own.

Some great domestic atrocities are also power-oriented: a leader kills individuals who might otherwise become rivals, or kills whole groups of people who are likely to threaten the leader’s power. The Khmer Rouge (the communist party in Cambodia) killed anyone associated with the previous government, as well as intellectuals and people who could speak a foreign language, all because these people were the most likely to lead resistance against the Khmer Rouge.

People who desire power over other people are especially likely to be anti-social. George Orwell explains the reason in this exchange in 1984 between the protagonist and a thought police agent:

“How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?“

Winston thought. “By making him suffer”, he said.

“Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation.”

Human beings are probably genetically programmed to take pleasure in signs of their own social power, because social power had a huge impact on individuals’ reproductive success in our evolutionary past. These signs of power frequently involve suffering for others. Having power does not require making others suffer, but feeling one’s power pretty much does.

There may in fact be no benign power-lovers. You can gain great wealth without hurting anyone. But it’s virtually impossible to gain great power of other kinds without harming a large number of people a lot.

In sum, the root of a huge amount of evil is the human drive to climb hierarchies of status and power. The desire for material wealth is innocent by comparison.

4. Why We Get This Wrong

My guess is that we have the saying “Money is the root of all evil” rather than “Status is the root of all evil” or “Power is the root of all evil” because the people who like to invent and propagate sayings — the cultural elite — are themselves a lot more interested in status and power than they are in money, or they identify more with the power- and status-wielders than they do with the rich.

Most intellectuals and cultural elites would like to exert control over society through the government. They don’t like to condemn power or the love of power, since then they would have to condemn themselves and the government officials on whom they are counting to “fix” society. These elites are also high in the social status hierarchy, but they are not as high in the wealth hierarchy. Example: professor is a fairly high-status, respected job (or at least it used to be), but it is not much of a money-making job. With the intelligence and knowledge needed to succeed as a professor, you could make a ton more money working in business.

These cultural elites tend to lack the personality traits needed for great success in business, so they won’t become very rich (though they’re rarely poor either). Therefore, they find it perfectly comfortable to condemn the rich. Indeed, the rich make a convenient scapegoat for society’s problems.