What is it that people desire when they desire riches? It may seem strange that once all basic needs are fulfilled, individuals would continue to strive for ever more, working ever harder, even at the cost of their own health. Why don’t they just enjoy life, with more time, and less stress, on their hands? Some do, but they tend to be regarded as weirdos by the mainstream of Western societies. Most people seem to understand the point of their work or their investment efforts not in fulfilling basic needs, but in something else. But what? As a philosopher working on economic issues, this is an important question, because it matters for understanding how humans behave in the economic sphere, and what this implies for institutional design. And it is also, simply, a philosophical puzzle: where does this seemingly irrational behavior come from? I got to think again about these issues when reading Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert’s The Falling Sky. Words of a Yanomami Shaman.* This fascinating book developed out of the friendship between an anthropologist and a member of the Yanomami community, who live in the North of Brazil. Kopenawa got to know “white people’s” ways early in his life, working, among other things, as an interpreter, but he returned to his community and became a shaman as well as an activist for indigenous rights.