Volume 4 · The Ledger and the Loom · Essay 290
Upper Limit Problem
Upper Limit Problem names a difficulty you have already met, probably this week. Naming it is half the repair.
The problem persists because it is usually treated as someone else's. Once you accept that the naming of it includes you, solutions stop being exotic and start being obvious.
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.
Ask the LIC agent at your door and the trader at his terminal — both will tell you the same thing in different clothes: money listens to discipline and laughs at moods.
Money is a good clerk and a terrible master; the arrangement is entirely up to us. And when you forget it — you will — the world will remind you. It is a faithful tutor.