The basic problem with money is that you can never quite get enough of it. The more you have, the more you spend. The more you spend, the more you need more of it.

If you don't spend it, someone else surely will, and that will always be a cause for unlimited stress. The need for more is actually nothing but an open invitation to an increasing list of impulsive, compulsive, unreasonable postulations.

Call it systematic plunder, call it an organized racket, call it extortion, call it a threat, call it whatever fits your vocal pocket, but take away all the pretences at justification, and what is left is pure, uncorrupted avarice.

Avariciousness without restraints or remedies, so that in a minimally productive society like ours, it has become an uncontrollable force creating precipitous insecurities. Divisions in this society are more pronounced now, and our values are not really unlike: this is a largely poor society but it is also not a humane society.

We are also distracted by already-outdated socio-political rhetoric - arguments that scarcities and human suffering follow from abuse of our system from within and without. But actually, these insecurities are the result of what people do to people. It is actually what we have done, and keep doing, to each other.

By any account, looking from a distance, this is a state of persistent and resiliently angry people with an unshakable mission: the pursuit of unhappiness. Miserable is an out-dated term to describe it.

Like hopelessness, it seems antique, an 'old world' term. "Fantastically self-throttling" is perhaps the best word to describe the often insane and ridiculously unreasonable demands that are made upon our time, money, possessions, space, and peace of mind by none other than our very own.

The not-so-old world notion is that this is a flamboyantly optimistic and self-congratulatory society, and the puzzle is why it allows this suffering. The inequalities are stunning, but a frequent attitude is a discount - a 'what can we do anyway?' While a few grow richer and hungrier, the many are growing poorer and angrier and hungrier.

This is no coincidence. But we largely deny the connection. This is a society which, as the divide between the discontent and the abject grows, tries by paradox or by distraction, to avoid the sorry consequences of its collective actions, and in the end - because none of those strategies is effective - it uses event-specific strategies for vacating reality.

There is indeed a problem, and it has a story. The pursuit of greed makes it inevitable for all within an enclosed society to end up on the same losing side. We are hostage to our own distorted sense of money.

As powerfully as we struggle for wealth, we fling ourselves on the proverb that all are not equal, and this cannot be without some damage to the collective psyche. The whispered truth is that a state damaged from within is not so happy. It is fantastically unhappy.

Greed is not just the whimsical excess of the individual. Legal as well as extra-legal associations, groups and organizations display its most virulent forms as well. It is an anti-people, anti-everything force.

Greed demolishes equality. It also destroys peace. Surely we cannot have money, peace, and equality. But we continue to have and demand money for nothing.

Perhaps that explains why our most articulate political bigwigs are so quiet on this topic. They are also part of the problem.

They also need to look within. To put it bluntly, we need a whole new strategy for change, in which a person feels he is part of the problem and also therefore a part of the solution.

Money without effort maintains a diseased way of seeing and evaluating our society. We focus on the uppermost members, and by not paying attention to the lowest, we deny them. But they are there.

Inevitably, as our economic tree dries up, its roots die further down. It is not enough to say that we will hopefully accumulate layers of experience from our collective misery. Money will not deliver us. Money has not delivered us. We want our money back. We want our votes back. We want our lives back.

The money-or-your-life, money for nothing game involves two opposing rationalities: what is rational for the few versus what is rational for the many.

And the resolution has less to do with reason than with rapacity. In the long run, what is good for the few is bad for the many. The result is a crippled community choking a slowly diminishing resource.

Perhaps if we drop our pretenses to do-gooder democracy, and instead salute material hedonism, accept Darwinian ethics, and pin up the Rupee as our state symbol, then we would at least show some degree of honesty and integrity in our affairs.

After all, what good is money if no profit comes out of it? Whom does it benefit if nothing comes out of it?

In the end, it will all have been for nothing.

Money for nothing. Misery for free.