> We had a teacher years ago who said something that remains true until today: "everything is about money, especially the ones that appear to have non-monetary

> We had a teacher years ago who said something that remains true until today: "everything is about money, especially the ones that appear to have non-monetary reasons." That's more of an aspiration than a statement of fact. Eg I'd happily have organised a crowdfunding to give Vladimir Putin a few dozen billion dollars to bribe him away from starting a war. And if you look at Russia's finances that's effectively what happened: he (and even more his oligarchs) predictably lost untold billions in revenue and profit for this war. Also, migration from poor to rich countries increases workers' pay so much, that you could charge them a hefty sum for the privilege and they would still benefit from coming. However voters by and large don't like it, even if you were to distribute the proceeds amongst them (as a "citizen's dividend" or whatever). They have non-monetary reasons. See https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=38136c55c54a89b9dee821027d64ce7f4c010bd7 https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&d... for an interesting collection of historical cases drawn from such diverse sources as Apartheid and Post-Apartheid South Africa, Malaysia, Nazi Germany.