[kqr]

This was an eye-opener for me when I read C.A. Gregory's Savage Money.

Our values, i.e. the things we do to gain the approval of each other, has a huge effect on how we live. Much larger than I had expected.

Some people (not limited to Africa -- common also in e.g. rural India) value lifecycle rituals, like coming-of-age parties, marriages, and funerals. Those are the reasons they make money. They don't make money for something else and then blow it on a funeral. They made money specifically for the funeral.

I make money to be able to eventually unchain myself from the daily grind and spend my later years doing armchair research. Some people near me make money to buy a fancy home and pay eyewatering amounts of mortgage interest to their bank. And some people further from me make money to spend on lavish funerals.

It's easy to feel superior about any of these, but I struggle to see how one is better than the other. They're all restricting the way we live and imposed on us from society, they're just different from each other.

[vasco]

You struggle to see how a society which has a system where you put requests from other people ahead of your own healthcare is not equal to one where you take care of yourself?

Did you see the examples that those women started actually getting healthcare as soon as they had their own bank account?

The picture you paint is about respecting what people do with their surplus money. The picture the article paints is that in those societies you don't even take care of your basic needs and you never get to have surplus money. So debating which use of surplus money is better is besides the point.

[Daz912]

Moral relativists can't be reasoned with, no matter how plainly the logic in front of them.

[kqr]

I'm fairly certain the bank would put mortgage interest payments above the healthcare of the individual even in my society.