Wealth & Money Quote by Doug Coupland

Coupland’s line lands like a dirty joke told with a straight face: blunt, a little nihilistic, and calibrated to sting people who think of themselves as sophisticated. The provocation isn’t really about libido versus greed; it’s about what late-capitalist life has trained us to admit in public. Sex is supposed to be the unruly, human counterforce to spreadsheets. Money is the boring necessity. Coupland flips that romance and dares you to deny it.

The specific intent is to puncture the self-flattering story that we’re driven by passion. If you can quantify something, optimize it, and bank it, you can justify it. Sex, for all its power, is messy: it risks rejection, intimacy, loss of control, time you can’t invoice. Money offers a cleaner dopamine hit and a more defensible identity. You can tell yourself you’re “being responsible,” “building a future,” “investing in yourself.” Few people say the parallel things about sex without sounding pathetic.

Subtext: the market colonizes desire. Coupland, a signature voice of Gen X disaffection, is diagnosing a culture where even pleasure gets judged by opportunity cost. The line echoes an era of ironic detachment and consumer saturation: when selfhood is assembled from brands and careers, money becomes not just security but proof you’re winning.

It works because it’s cynical in a way that feels uncomfortably testable. Most readers can immediately imagine the trade-off, then feel the guilty recognition that the “rational” choice has been preselected for them.