It's not so much that wanting people to pay is being an idealist, but that wanting things to be some way other than way they clearly are is being an idealist.

It's not so much that wanting people to pay is being an idealist, but that wanting things to be some way other than way they clearly are is being an idealist. In another, less sophisticated time, you would have found a reality not far removed from the shop owner I described - and they would not have been considered lazy. But a shop owner who railed against the shifting sands of humanity, pining for simpler times lost as he was pilfered blind, would clearly be sorrowful idealist.