People are off complaining in a different thread about how religious people are insane because they spend money on things that aren't profitable for metaphysical reasons like karma or the good state of the soul, wanting to do good, etc., but maybe having non-profit motivations is actually an economic superpower for a group.
Maybe that's why there are so many religious people. 🤷♀️ We help each other and pay for stuff, even if we don't get paid back in money.
Psychic profits are still profits. When someone donates $5 to a homeless person, it's not because they expect a monetary profit; it's because the psychic/emotional profit they get (helping someone else) is worth at least $5 to them.
What I've never understood about non-fanatic religious people is why they don't go 100% in. On one side of the balance, you have eternity. On the other, some integers. Infinity is always going to beat some integers. I understand the suicidal jihadist way more than I do the Sunday church-goer who puts $5 in a basket. Why not $500? Why not 5 million? Why aren't you living as a missionary in a tent, giving up all earthly possessions to maximize returns times infinity?
It's not that psychic profits are illegitimate or useless. Quite the contrary, they are highly effective.
But they require ideological alignment in order to be a coordinating factor among a group of people. An in-group. Psychic profits won't be shared by outgroup members when the character of the psychic profit is unaligned with their ideals (imagine nonprofits raising donations for abortions, or to protest abortion clinics).
The further apart the ethics and ideals of the groups, the more of a disorganizing, rivalrous effect psychic profits will have.
This creates Game A rivalry. Red vs Blue. Us vs them, zero-sum outcomes. Aside from being useful manipulation levers for the State, it's also a waste of energy and resources, to the extent that contradicting efforts will cancel eachother out. With only the remainder having an impact (and having spent way more than necessary to make an impact of the resulting size).
Monetary, non-psychic profits are ideologically neutral. You can happily trade with your worst enemy if it increases the quality of your own life. Muslims, Jews and Christians were happy trade partners for centuries. You might not savor the idea of making your enemy's life better... But at what cost to your own potential profit will you spite yourself in order to deprive your enemy?
I'm not saying psychic profits are pointless and that money is all that matters. But I am saying that if you care about creating peace, fewer zero-sum dynamics, and reducing rivalrousness and factions, you should think twice about where you place your priorities on the scale between "psychic profits that are uniquely biased towards my metaphysical camp" and "monetary profits that raise all boats in shared society".
Incidentally, this is also why most people here prefer the neutral money that is Bitcoin to various meme coins and strongly politicized Shitcoins of other stripes. If the meme coin doesn't represent your ideology, you don't reap psychic profits from it. But all people benefit from Bitcoin, as long as they stack sats, no matter what they believe.
