Wealth & Money Quote by Scott Alexander

Scott Alexander’s line lands because it refuses the usual binary: money as either grubby necessity or moral rot. Instead, he reframes it as a relationship problem. Treat money like a hobby and you get the pleasures of competence - curiosity, practice, incremental wins, a sense of control. Treat it like a god and you inherit the anxieties of worship: constant vigilance, moralizing, fear of displeasing an invisible force that can still abandon you at random. The wit is in the anthropomorphism. “Happy money” sounds like something you could cultivate, not just accumulate, nudging the reader toward process over outcome.

The subtext is recognizably Alexander: a rationalist-era ethic of instrumental thinking without self-deception. A hobby is optional, bounded, and social; it invites learning and experimentation. It also implies limits. You can be into investing or budgeting the way someone is into chess: serious, nerdy, even obsessive at times, but not spiritually totalizing. That distinction matters because the god-version of money doesn’t merely motivate; it colonizes identity. You start interpreting every choice - career, relationships, even health - as either tribute or sin.

Contextually, this reads as a corrective to both hustle-culture evangelism and the counter-moralism that romanticizes being broke. Alexander’s intent isn’t to sanctify wealth; it’s to domesticate it. Make money a craft and it can fund a life. Make it a deity and it will demand one.