Money is everything, and money is nothing. This is one of the most interesting insights I've had since starting business school. For a company, meaning the LLC-CCorp-faceless-legal-mumbojumbo contractual relationship, money is everything. Companies exist to generate a profit. Money is the means and the end. There is no reason to have a company if it does not make money. To be sure, it's not unfortunate if the company does other things instead of make money, but that's not the most function of a company.

The most important function of a company is to make money. But a company is nothing without people.

For people, meaning the air-breating-love-making-hand-holding-fun-loving-soul-filled humans, money is nothing. Everything that matters in life to people is precisely not money. We care about freedom, love, justice, god, greed, stability, pleasure, pain, prestige, and truth. Money only matters because it is a way to get one of those things that we actually care about. To be sure, money is important because it's how we can get those other things.

For a person, money is a mere means that's not intrinsically valuable. But we need it.

Paradoxically, money is everything and money is nothing.