What is more important Money or Power?

The question was asked first on LinkedIn where other answers can be found. My answer was:

“Dear Vladimir,

Thanks for posing this question as a matter of choice.

For some time I have tried to suggest to others on LinkedIn that making a choice is different from making a judgment, and both of these are different from making a decision.

At first your question seems to hang as a matter of choice, a dilemma where only one of two options make sense.

However, with the introduction of importance as a criteria, what seemed to be a matter of choice becomes a matter of judgment. The criteria of importance then seems to dictate outcome, since we seem to have to weigh money over and against power to answer as the only possible answers.

But with the seemingly timeless, and for that matter space-less, aspects of your question, not "what was" or what "will be" more important, but rather what "is" more important, now you have introduced the problem of absolute value versus relative value.

In an economy where money is created by incurring debt rather than holding gold for example, it is not always the case that a person is in debt or for that matter has any other supply of money.

Thus it seems wise to Do What You Love, the Money Will Follow. Likewise in a polity where power is created by perception, rather than derived by authority from philosophical principle or religious tradition, it is not always the case that a person has power or for that matter any other supply of power.

But perhaps the real source of power comes from your participation in culture and in in the power structure. Leisure then becomes the basis for culture, the more profound force in our society.

This appears to leave us in the position of having to decide what is more important, money or power, for the present with a view to the future.

Unlike choice that only involves the present and unlike judgment that only involves the past and the present, decision-making means the taking of a course of action now with the future in mind.

Thus instead of the two options you posed, there are four options for the future hidden in your question when you make this a matter of decision:

(1) Money;
(2) Power;
(3) Money and Power; or
(4) neither Money nor Power.

Thus when I make a decision about Money or Power as distinct from a choice or a judgment, I may safely pick (4) and realize that both relatively and absolutely, neither Money nor Power are more important than each other when we are not constrained by time and space.

It is at that point that I believe we understand the significance of saying that that time and space (where we're coming from, where we are, and where we want to go) is more important than either Money or Power.

We do not create time. We move around in space. They are both more importance than Money or Power or both.

This conclusion suggests to me that working for more leisure time and better location is one of the most important decisions we can make as and that neither Money nor Power outweighs their importance for me.

For Happiness is more a matter of time and place than of Money or Power.

For example, being with our loved ones usually requires neither Money nor Power. And as my grandmother always told me, love is not real until it is given away.

Not sold for money nor expecting reciprocation and thus making oneself powerless and vulnerable to rejection.

Thanks for the question."

What do you think?

Please include your comment here or contact me to discuss.

Thanks.

John Darrouzet