value using money

Progress means that I shouldn't have to get a job just because I need to buy stuff.

Stuff is not needs. Needs are food, clean water, sleep, permanent shelter, protections from the elements, transportation, internet access, relationships.

These needs should allow me to be the best woman, the best mother, the best wife, the best friend, the best member of society that I can physically and emotionally be. Spiritual health is some sort of result of emotional and physical health depending on who you are; depending on how God made you.
I like to imagine it like a chemical equation because it only works one way. Adding two things to create a third, but if you take that third thing it won't necessarily break down into the original two parts.

In any case, for me, the world is broken because needs are not seen separately from stuff. Or stuff is assumed to be necessary. Needs are assumed to not be necessary. For me, needs should be handled differently from stuff. The acquisition of stuff shouldn't be more important than needs... or be required to meet needs.

I love to go out to my garden and pick the foods that eventually end up on my plate for dinner. Going to a store is not as fulfilling. But, in the society I live in, I can't live off of my own land. Even though technologically I could probably grow enough food to feed my family. I could find a compromise between the diet we have based mostly on supermarket shopping and the diet we could have based on eating only what we could grow. I imagine a supermarket could be just a place where the community barters with one another. Trading needs for needs. That's the world I want to live in.

That world only exists on the fringes and in pieces right now. And I know there are so many people that think it would be crazy because they define progress so much differently from me. But I say to people who put value to things that are not about needs: get over yourself. The choices we make every day effect other people. The choice to live in a developed country inherently means exploiting something somewhere in a developing country. Just because we don't want it to be that way, or choose to ignore facts. Just because we find it easier the way we do it, or maybe it's impossible to change the way, it doesn't make the effects any less. Facts are facts.

It is clear for anyone who wants to see it. Anyone who chooses to let go of the things that makes them unhealthy mentally any physically... even only for a moment... It is clear that capitalism is flawed. Emphasizing value using money does not allow all needs to be met without barriers.