The Trap of Money

How many hours did you work today?

How much did you receive in exchange for that time?

If you divide your annual income by your annual working hours, you get the “market value” of your life. One hour of your life, unrepeatable and one-of-a-kind in this world. Are you satisfied with that answer? There is a saying: “He who does not work, neither shall he eat.” From the moment we are born, we are immersed in this value system that takes it for granted to live in exchange for labor. That is why no one questions this equation. Continuing to sell off one’s life by the hour has become all too “normal.”

“Talking about money is vulgar.” “Making money easily is bad.” “You should earn money by the sweat of your brow.” — What if the things you have long believed to be “your own values” are actually emotional programs installed by someone else? Something is blocking us from thinking deeply about money. And that block itself is part of the trap.

So far on this site, we have dissected education, social media, news, advertising, alcohol, and the “trap of capitalism” that integrates them all. While the “trap of capitalism” provided an overview of the OS of the entire system, this article focuses on one program that functions most powerfully on that OS: “money.” Rather than a historical or economic explanation of money, we will delve into the deepest parts of how money controls human emotions, identity, human relationships, and life itself.

Key Points of This Article

• Money is an “invention,” not a “natural object”: Bills are just paper, and coins are just metal. They have value simply because everyone believes they do. It is the most successful shared illusion in human history, and holds no physical substance in itself.
• “Money = Time = Life” is the gateway to the trap: The money you earn by selling your time is literally selling off your life piece by piece. Being unaware of this equation supports the deepest structure of exploitation.
• Bringing emotions into money is itself a program: “Making easy money is dirty” and “Talking about money is vulgar” — these beliefs are not morals, but emotional programs ingrained in us to keep using workers cheaply.
• The only way to turn money into a “tool”: To generate income through systems other than your own time. Only then does money change from selling off your life into a tool to expand your choices.

1. What is Money: Currency as a Shared Illusion

First, let’s face the true nature of money.

The 10,000-yen bill in your wallet. What is it? Physically speaking, it is just paper. It is a 15.6 cm x 7.6 cm piece of paper printed with patterns in special ink. Considering the cost of raw materials, the value of that paper is less than a few dozen yen. However, in exchange for this scrap of paper, you can get a meal, ride a train, and sleep in a room with a roof. Why?

In “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind,” Yuval Noah Harari called money “the most successful fiction in human history.” Nations, religions, laws, human rights — these are all “shared illusions (fictions)” that humans consensually believe in. Money is just another human invention on par with these. However, what makes money decisively different from other fictions is its universality. Religion functions only among believers. A nation functions only within its borders. But money can instantly connect humans of different languages, cultures, and religions. Muslims and Christians may not agree on God, but they can agree on the value of a dollar bill. That is the magic of currency.

Economically speaking, money has three functions: a medium of exchange (can buy things), a store of value (can be saved), and a unit of account (can be compared). However, in modern society, money wields power far beyond these three functions. Money has become an indicator of “ability,” a yardstick to measure “human worth,” a score to determine “social status,” and a judge to pronounce “success or failure in life.” What was originally just a tool to make exchange convenient has somehow come to function as a system that quantifies human life itself. This is the starting point of the money trap.

2. Money = Time = Life — The Cruelty of This Equation

Now that we understand the true nature of money as a “shared illusion,” there is another reality we must face. That is the fact that, for most people, the only way to obtain money is “to sell their own time.”

The Violence of the Concept of an Hourly Wage

An hourly wage of 1,000 yen. What this number means is that one hour of your life can be bought for 1,000 yen. You, as a human being, are trading one unrepeatable, unique hour in this world for the equivalent of a thousand 1-yen coins. For salaried workers, this is obfuscated by the form of a monthly salary, but the essence is the same. If you divide your annual income by your working hours, the “market value” of your life is calculated.

How do you feel looking at that number? Suppose your annual income is 5 million yen and your annual working hours are 2,000; your hourly wage is 2,500 yen. One hour of your life, which will never return, is 2,500 yen. We accept this equation — no, this cruel pricing — as “normal.”

Moreover, these 90,000 hours are a calculation of “working hours” only. Time spent commuting, evening hours when you are too exhausted from work stress to do anything, holidays occupied by thoughts of “work tomorrow,” time buying clothes for work, time spent at drinking parties you don’t want to attend for work relationships—if you add these “work-peripheral times,” you realize that the majority of life is sucked dry by “activities to obtain money.”

Freelancers Are in the Same Trap

“So, just go independent”—some might think so. I thought so too. Working over 100 hours of overtime a month at a black company with zero overtime pay, and having my salary cut because “work is slow,” I reached my limit and went independent as a freelancer. I could choose my place and time. However, that “freedom” was an illusion.

The reality of freelancing was that my boss just changed to a “client,” and the structure of “selling my own time” hadn’t changed a bit. On crowdsourcing sites, projects that take days are listed for 5,000 yen. If I don’t take it, I have no income. If I take it, it converts to a few hundred yen per hour. Far from the “price of freedom,” there are cases where the exploitation rate is higher than when being an employee. The office just changed to my home; the structure of selling life by the hour was exactly the same.

The decorations used to keep us from noticing this structure are words like “fulfillment,” “growth,” “career,” and “upskilling.” These words are merely wrappings to beautifully package the act of selling one’s life. As pointed out in the “Curse of Working Hard” article, the belief that “one should feel fulfillment in work” functions as mental restraints to make people work long hours for low wages.

3. The Atmosphere That Can’t “Talk Money”—Implanted Emotional Programs

Reading this far, some of you might feel a little uncomfortable. “You’re only talking about money,” or “Money, money, money… it feels somewhat vulgar.” If you felt that way, that is exactly the operating sound of the “program” we will dissect in this chapter.

The True Identity of “Emotions” Toward Money

I myself held beliefs like these for a long time:

• “Talking about money is vulgar and lacks class.”
• “The ideal is to do something useful for others and have money follow naturally.”
• “It’s best if you can earn money doing what you love.”
• “Money isn’t everything.”
• “The clean way to earn money is by working hard and sweating for it.”
• “Trying to make money easily is not good.”

At a glance, these seem like decent values. They look like beautiful morals. But try verifying them calmly one by one. Who is it convenient for to have these beliefs?

“Talking about money is vulgar” → Thrown into the labor market with low financial literacy → Don’t realize even if exploited under unfavorable conditions. “Earning by effort is beautiful” → Accept long hours and low wages as a virtue → The best personnel for the employer. “Making money easily is not good” → Stop looking for ways to earn through systems → Never escape from selling time forever.

These are all programs to reproduce “workers who work cheaply, without complaint, for long hours.” They are not morals. They are emotional arguments. And those emotional arguments have been installed into your subconscious through school education, family environment, media, and the social atmosphere. Try tracing the manufacturer of what you believe to be “your values.”

Why Schools Don’t Teach How Money Works

As discussed in detail in the “Trap of Education” article, school education hardly teaches the “mechanisms of money.” Compound interest, investment, accounting, tax systems, entrepreneurship—despite being knowledge directly connected to life, their priority in the curriculum is extremely low. Instead, they teach calculus, auxiliary verbs in ancient texts, and dates in world history.

This is not negligence; it is design. Humans who understand the mechanisms of money realize there are options other than “being hired and selling time.” That is inconvenient for the system. As pointed out in “The Trap of Education,” the modern education system was designed to mass-produce “obedient workers.” If you teach those workers the “mechanisms of money,” more humans will drop off the production line. It raises the system’s operating rate if they remain unknowing.

From Emotional Theory to System Theory

What I want to propose here is a fundamental shift in how we view money.

Money is neither “good” nor “bad.” It is neither “clean” nor “dirty.” Money is merely a protocol (communication rule) running within the operating system called Capitalism. There is no good or evil in a protocol. It simply exists as part of the system. Just like there is no good or evil in tap water.

The problem is that we bring a massive amount of “emotions” and “should-theories” into this protocol. “There are good and bad ways to earn,” “Rich people must be [negative trait],” “Honest poverty is beautiful”—the moment these emotions arise, we lose the ability to process money calmly as a system. And this emotional confusion is exactly what creates irrational judgments regarding money—acceptance of low salaries, impulse buying, fear of investment, and declining literacy by avoiding money talk.

Recognize money not as an object of emotion, but as a part of a system. This shift alone will drastically change your relationship with money.

4. The “Invisible Hierarchy” Ruled by Money—Relationships and Identity

The trap of money doesn’t stop at the individual’s inner self. Money structurally distorts relationships themselves.

What Lies Deep Within Shyness

I will talk about something that seems unrelated to “money” at first glance. About shyness (social anxiety).

At the root of shyness is the fear of “wanting to look good” or “not wanting to be thought of as insignificant.” So why is “being thought of as insignificant” so scary? Let’s dig deeper.

Thought of as insignificant → Considered low ability → Low ability = Not economically successful → Not economically successful = Low value within the community → Being excluded from the community is fatal in a capitalist society.

When we verbalize this chain, we see that buried at the root of shyness, which seems like a “personality issue,” is the fear of “human worth” mediated by money. Unconsciously, we are appraising each other: “What level is this person socially?” And a large part of that appraisal standard is the estimate of “how much this person earns.”

The Implicit Equation: Annual Income = Human Value

Think about the meaning of the culture of asking a person you just met, “What do you do for work?” This is not pure curiosity about their occupation. We don’t want to know “what they do”; we want to estimate “what economic tier they are in.” Between “I am a doctor” and “I am a part-timer,” different “price tags” are instantly attached in the other person’s brain. Just by a difference in occupation, the estimated values regarding that person’s intelligence, judgment, reliability, and worth as a human being change. You might say this is discrimination, but it is something many people do unconsciously.

This implicit equation—Annual Income = Ability = Human Value—quietly distorts all human relationships. The power dynamic between the one treating and the one being treated. Mounting others to show “status” with brand-name goods. Unconscious condescension because “that guy has a low income.” Conversely, unconditional respect for high-income earners, or the phenomenon where a “successful person’s” statement sounds important regardless of the content. Money embeds an invisible hierarchy into human relationships.

The Deep-Seated Fear that “Without Money, I Won’t Be Loved”

Diving into an even deeper layer, we reach a fundamental fear held by many. The fear that “if I don’t have money, I won’t be loved.”

This is not a matter of logic, but of emotion. However, it cannot be denied that capitalist society is structured to reinforce this fear. Figures portrayed by media as “successful” are wealthy without exception, and heroes and heroines in romance dramas hold high status. The proverb “When poverty comes in at the door, love flies out at the window” (literally: “The end of money is the end of the bond”) bluntly expresses the reality that money and relationships are linked.

The perspective on money differs completely depending on a person’s position and consciousness. For those with money to spare, money is “options,” but for those chased by money, money is “shackles.” Even the same 10,000 yen holds a completely different meaning for someone earning 1 million yen a month versus someone earning 150,000 yen a month. Money should be a neutral tool, yet its emotional gravity changes depending on the holder’s situation. This imbalance of gravity creates distortions in human relationships.

5. The Immense Power of Money—The Reality of the System Beyond Emotion

Here, let’s put emotions aside for a moment and calmly face the power money holds.

“Money isn’t everything”—this saying is correct. However, hiding behind this correctness, we must not look away from an important reality. Whether we like it or not, we live within the OS called Capitalism. Within this OS, money is not merely a tool but functions as a protocol with immense power. Underestimating that power is just as dangerous as overestimating it by saying “Money is everything.”

What Money Can Buy

Listing what money provides directly and indirectly reveals the magnitude of its power.

Time—If you have money, you can reduce time spent on work you don’t like. Housekeeping services, efficient transportation, services that buy time. In a capitalist society, money is literally a means to buy time.

Options—Where to live, what to eat, learning environments, people to associate with. Money directly determines the breadth of life’s choices. If the essence of freedom is having many choices, then money can be said to be freedom quantified.

Safety—Good living environment, security, insurance, legal support. Many means to protect oneself from danger are only obtainable through money.

Access to Health—High-quality medical care, preventive health management, good food ingredients, exercise environments. It is said “money can’t buy health,” but the reality is that the risk of losing health due to a lack of money increases dramatically.

Education and Growth—Books, courses, mentors, studying abroad, exposure to new environments. Many opportunities for knowledge and growth become accessible through money.

The Danger of the “It’s Okay Without Money” Illusion

“Money can’t buy happiness”—this claim is correct in a sense. There is research (2010, Princeton University study by Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton) stating that once annual income exceeds roughly $75,000, the improvement in daily emotional happiness from additional income plateaus. However, this is a story that “happiness saturates after exceeding a certain amount,” not a story that “you can be happy without money.”

Rather, we should pay attention to the other side of the fact shown by the same study. When annual income falls below that level, unhappiness rises dramatically in proportion to the decrease in income. Food insecurity, housing instability, limited access to medical care, loss of future prospects—these directly trigger mental anguish.

“Money isn’t everything” is correct. But “It’s okay without money” is a dangerous illusion that covers up a reality we must not look away from as long as we live in the capitalist OS. Within this OS, food, clothing, shelter, medical care, and education are all only available through the market. Lack of money is not merely an inconvenience; it is a direct threat to survival and safety.

Money functions not as “something that enriches life if you have it,” but as a “defensive wall against being deprived of things if you don’t have it.” This difference in perception is decisive. As long as you view money as “something you want,” you are manipulated by ads and enter the infinite loop of “more.” However, if you view money as a “shield to protect what you would lose,” it becomes possible to calmly define “how much is truly necessary for yourself.”

6. Turning Money from “Life” to “Tool”—Rewriting the Equation

Now, let’s integrate the discussion so far.

Money is a collective illusion, and there is no good or evil in itself (Section 1). However, for many people, money is only obtainable by selling off pieces of their lives (Section 2). Emotional programs are embedded in society to prevent questioning of that structure (Section 3). Money quietly dominates relationships and identity (Section 4). And, on the capitalist OS, money holds immense power (Section 5).

From here, one decisive question arises. Can we rewrite the equation of money and life?

Two Equations

Until now, within me, money was defined by the following equation:

Money = My Time = Life

As long as you are within this equation, obtaining money equals shaving away your life. The more you earn, the more you consume your life. If you rest, income stops. Money is always linked to “sacrifice.” That is why guilt and heaviness always follow whenever money is discussed.

However, changing the perspective reveals another equation.

Money = Systems other than my time = Tool

The moment you possess a mechanism where money comes in without using your time, money ceases to be a “sell-off of life.” If money is not directly connected to your life, it is purely a tool. A tool to expand choices. It changes into something to protect life, not something shaved from life.

Capitalists Know This From the Start

The difference between these two equations becomes vivid when you understand the structure of capitalism. For capitalists—that is, people who own systems—money is a tool from the beginning. While they sleep, the system operates and generates profit. Their time is not bound by money. That is precisely why they can “process money as a system without emotion.”

On the other hand, for workers, money is always directly connected to their lives. If they rest, income stops. If they ruin their health, they can’t earn. As they age, their value drops. Because this fear is always running in the background, they cannot be calm about money. Even looking at the same “money,” if the equation is different, they are seeing something completely different.

And, as pointed out in “The Trap of Education,” schools consistently mass-produce humans who live by the “first equation”—that is, humans on the side of “selling time.” Teaching the existence of the “second equation” is not included in the curriculum.

What Blocks Rewriting the Equation

“Then, why not just build a system?”—The logic is correct. However, here lies the wall many people hit. That is the emotional program dissected in Section 3.

“It’s not good to make money easily.” “Unearned income is suspicious.” “Money not made by sweating isn’t real.” These emotions activate automatically and block the rewriting of the equation from the inside. Even if one had the skills or chance to build a system, the emotion that “it is not right” seals off the action. The deepest layer of the money trap is not a structural problem, but an emotional one.

With the evolution of technology and AI, the hurdle to “building a system” has lowered more than ever before. Blogs, affiliates, digital products, automated services. Things that required capital investment 10 years ago can now be started with a single laptop. The problem is not the technical hurdle, but whether you can recognize the inner voice saying “earning easily is evil” as a program.

7. Mindset Design Perspective: Redesigning Your Relationship with Money

So, what can we specifically do to rewrite the money equation and redesign our relationship with money?

① Observe Emotions Toward Money

The first step is to observe without judgment what emotions you hold toward money. When you feel “I want money,” when you feel “money is scary,” when you feel “I hate talking about money”—trace the manufacturer of that emotion. When, where, and from whom was that emotion implanted? A parent’s catchphrase? School teachings? Media images?

It is the same as the practice of meditation. When a thought arises, instead of identifying with that thought as “mine,” observe it with detachment as “this is a program.” Switching emotional reactions toward money from automatic to manual—that is the first step.

② Realize Which Equation You Are Living By

Is your current income “compensation for selling your time” or “something generated by a mechanism other than your time”? For most people, it is likely the former. Whether you accept that as “normal” or recognize it as a “structure”—this difference is decisive.

Living by the equation of “Money = Life” is not bad in itself. However, believing it is the only equation is brainwashing. If you are consciously choosing the current equation while knowing the existence of the other, that is a choice. Are you following unconsciously, or choosing while awakened?—What Mindset Design has continued to ask is always this distinction.

③ Convert Emotional Theory to System Theory

When a belief of “it should be this way” regarding money arises, try translating it from the language of emotion to the language of systems.

“Money should be earned by sweating” → “I only know revenue models that sell labor by the hour.”
“Making money easily is not good” → “I have psychological resistance to automated revenue models via systems.”
“Money isn’t everything” → “I am underestimating the function of money within the Capitalist OS.”

The moment you translate emotional theory into system theory, the problem moves from the realm of “personality” to the realm of “design.” Personality is hard to change, but design is changeable. As long as you continue to process money problems with emotion, you will go in circles. When you become able to process money as a system, you can take rational action for the first time.

④ Define “Enough” Yourself

As pointed out in “The Trap of Advertising” and “The Trap of Capitalism,” the program of capitalism is “More.” Earn more, buy more, grow more. To counter this program, it is crucial to define “enough” for yourself with concrete numbers.

How much per month protects the safety of you and your family? How much is needed to spend on what you truly find valuable, not false desires manufactured by ads? A human who sets this line of “enough” becomes free from the “More” program. You can stop running on a treadmill with no goal and walk toward a goal you decided yourself.

⑤ Start an Experiment to Create One Income Source That Doesn’t Sell Time

Finally, the most concrete step. You don’t need to quit your company suddenly. You might not even need side income at first. Just start one experiment to “get money by a method other than selling your time.”

Write a blog. Create a digital product. Content-ize your knowledge or skills. Build a small automated mechanism. It doesn’t matter if the amount is 0 yen. What is important is not the revenue, but to let your brain experience, just once, the experience that “money can be born without selling time.”

Experiencing this even once creates a crack in the equation in your brain. Knowing, not as logic but as a bodily sensation, that the equation “Money = Time = Life” is not absolute. That crack eventually becomes the starting point for rewriting to the new equation—”Money = Tool.” It is not a complete escape, but the first step to rewriting the equation.

8. Conclusion: The Trap of Money Is Not Within Money Itself

The essence of the money trap lies not in money itself. The trap lies in the emotions and beliefs unconsciously implanted regarding money.

The moment you feel “talking about money is vulgar,” ask yourself: Who wrote that program? The moment you feel “earning easily is bad,” ask yourself: Who is that belief convenient for? The moment you think “money isn’t everything,” ask one more thing: Am I, living within the Capitalist OS, underestimating the power of the most powerful protocol of that OS?

Whether you can turn money from a sell-off of life into a tool depends not on skills or chances, but on whether you can face these questions. Recognizing unconscious emotional programs regarding money, converting emotional theory to system theory, and adding another equation to “Money = Time = Life.” That is not achieved overnight. As this site has repeatedly proposed, rewriting programs imprinted in the subconscious requires repeated conscious awareness and practice.

Money is a collective illusion. But we live within that illusion. Do you accept the illusion as “reality” unconsciously, or do you recognize the illusion as an illusion and consciously choose your position within it?—I used the metaphor of “fish in water” in the article on the Trap of Capitalism, and money is the same. You cannot change being in the water called money. However, from the moment you realize you are in the water, you become able to choose whether to be swept away or to swim.

Will you continue to offer the time of your life as fuel for someone else’s system? Or will you turn money into a tool and use the time of your life as your own? That choice begins with realizing the true nature of money.