I hate money. I hate the concept of money. I hate that the chains that bind us which turn every interaction into transaction.

Accepting subscription payments

I'm announcing that I am now accepting subscription payments from those who want to contribute to my writing, to myself and my family, from those who are worried about how the current crisis will affect us in increasingly disastrous ways. Payments are not a requirement to continue subscribing or reading for free.

Click here if you are interested in supporting financially. Let me know if there's a different option you'd like.

But before you do, I also want to express something, regardless of financial support.

Property is stealing

One of the times I deployed as a humanitarian to the Philippines, in the wake of Typhoon Yolanda, all of my gear and luggage was lost for weeks. A German friend and colleague would often buy me beer and food. I would thank him profusely. His reaction? "No, don't thank me. It's just money. Property is stealing."

I wasn't as versed in radical leftist political theory at the time. I was just filled with angst and had a long held, deep seated feeling that the way that the world works is wrong.

There is an old joke among leftists. Why do anarchists/communists only drink herbal tea? Because proper tea is theft.

When I imagine the world I want to live in, the world I try to shape around me, I try to operate on the concept of gift economy. I want a world which is usufruct, built not on concepts of ownership, but instead on concepts of responsibility. I want a world where we don't see ourselves as owners of property, neither individual nor collective owners, but as stewards of the world, of each other, of the future and of the past in order that the present may be allowed to heal, and when possible, to thrive. I want a world where each is free to contribute according to their ability, and to take according to their need and even desire. When I express this, certainly you should feel the shining light of radical leftists long before me and of legacies of indigenous thought the world over, from time immemorial through today.

Most of the work I've done in my life, especially my most notable work, especially my lifesaving work, has been done for little to no wages, but through good fortune and the support of others who have believed in me and my work, I have survived and my family has been supported. I don't take any of this for granted.

What is work?

I had a recent friendly argument with someone who believed it was theft for someone to take without work. I touched on a number of questions, but one of the core discussions surrounded the question, what is work?

Under a capitalist system, people tend to define work by the labor that they are paid for in wages, and this definition of work is deemed as a sacred duty. We relegate all other forms of labor as lesser, no matter how necessary they are.

Any work that has historically been deemed as "women's work" would not qualify as real work under this umbrella because the labor is not compensated through wages. Much of this labor is invisible under capitalism or even deemed as hobby. On another note, love and friendship do not exist in a vacuum, they require time, labor, sacrifice. Moreover, we place the entire value of someone's humanity based on the amount of paid labor that they do. And if they are incapable of sufficient amounts of paid labor, then they are unworthy of existing, per the systems that control access to food, healthcare, and existence in public spaces.

But that's not fully true, either, is it? Because teachers, sustainable farmers, factory workers, paramedics, et al are some of the hardest working people you'll ever meet, but in return for their labor and sacrifice, they earn far less money than the people who who sit in board rooms and make decisions over golf and cocktails, or people who gamble on the price of water futures. You could never labor hard enough or long enough to earn wages that would be equivalent to the amount of profit that is hoarded by and cycles through the hands of the richest people. It's physically impossible.

However, more to the point, why are we not rewarding the most important labor that people do for each other? I know the answer, but do you?

So, then, society rewards efficiency, the refrain might say.

Efficiency to accomplish what? Why is efficiency what we reward when what people are efficient at is extraction and exploitation? Why is efficiency what we reward when the world is at stake? Why are we rewarding those who are efficient at planet-wide destruction?

A meritocracy? Is that what we want? What is merit? It sounds like eugenics to me. Who is strongest? Best? Smartest? Most efficient? Let us not forget that the word meritocracy was popularized as satire, as the description of a dystopia– author Michael Dunlop Young wrote The Rise of the Meritocracy as a critique of those who would create a society based on the concept of merit.

The value of humanity

I wish to live in a world in which we value each other for our humanity. I wish to live in a world where the concept of value is not fixed to a price index, but simply an expression of love and appreciation. I wish to live in a world where the labor I contribute to the world, to my neighbors, my friends and family, is itself simply, but profoundly, an expression of love and appreciation.

While I figured that eventually I'd likely open up an avenue to allow people to contribute to my writing (and the work I don't talk about), I hadn't planned to do so with any urgency. However, some of you have been recognizing the urgency in the world, and you've been using my own words against me, in the most loving of ways.

I have been reminded of my words in a recent post:

Accept material support. If you are being offered support, accept it. Don't be stoic. Don't be an island. Be connected. This is mutual aid.

And a dear friend tells me,

It’s a gift you are sharing and... I don’t need to explain that a gift that cannot be reciprocated is a karmic slight…so let us reciprocate, lest our goddesses be slighted that you would give your gift with no way for us to honor and return it.

More than this, many of you are recognizing the writing on the wall. You know that I'm a political target, and that so is the rest of my family, and so is the rest of our community. You know that the stakes are high. You have a sense that we may need to flee, and this won't be an easy task if we do. You know it will require steady financial and other forms of support.

I am grateful to you. You check on me and my family. You ask how we are doing. You ask for ways to contribute, to help. You ask me with grave sincerity to accept the help that is offered.

I will accept what is offered

I have not intended to be stoic or to be an island, but many of you have convinced me by reminding me that we won't get through this crisis without assistance, without mutual aid, without solidarity, and that at minimum, when you offer a gift, I should accept it.

This newsletter is still scrappy, though it's growing faster than I anticipated when I relaunched it. I know I have you to thank for this, for sharing these posts and emails. I expect we will need a lot of support in many ways, not all of them financial, and sharing these posts is wonderfully appreciated.

I want to stress in the strongest terms: there is no requirement to support these posts financially. But I'm ready to accept what is offered, based on your requests to support– not on the basis of wages, but as gift, as support, as mutual aid and solidarity, as love and appreciation.

Thank you dearly for your support, whatever form it takes.

no ends, only means