Volume 4 · The Ledger and the Loom · Essay 284
Title Inflation
Title Inflation is a lens. Nothing in the world changes when you pick it up, but quite a lot becomes visible.
Strip it to the floor and you find an old instruction: look carefully, judge slowly, act decently. The new name exists because the old instruction keeps being forgotten.
The idea is simple, and like most simple ideas it is easy to nod at and hard to use. The nod is free. The use costs attention, every day, in small change.
The vegetable vendor with a tin box knows what the salaried man with three apps forgets: count the cash at the end of the day, every day, without drama.
Money is a good clerk and a terrible master; the arrangement is entirely up to us. That is all. A small tool, honestly kept, beats a large one admired.