Would you still do it unpaid

Ask people why they do their work and money tends to come up last, if at all. It is one of the few subjects where most of us are not quite honest, even privately.

That is understandable. Money is never only money. It is how we keep score with our parents, how we know whether we are taken seriously, whether we can marry, help a brother, sleep without arithmetic. Saying you do something for the money sounds like saying you do it for nothing else, so people reach for nobler reasons first.

A useful exercise is to take the money away in your head. Would the young man who repairs phones in the souq in Buraidah still open at four if nobody paid him? Would the woman who sews school uniforms all August still sew them? Would the collectors of rare watches still chase them if no watch could ever be worth more tomorrow than today? Some would. Many would not, and that is no scandal. It is simply true, and it helps to know which kind of work you are in.

Then try it the other way round. Imagine someone handed you money for visiting your grandmother. For listening to a friend after a bad day. For returning a wallet you found on the pavement.

Something in each of those would curdle at once. The visit would become a shift, the listening a service, the honesty a fee. The same money that keeps one kind of work alive would quietly ruin the other kind.