ABSTRACT
Living well is a social experience. Other animals are also gregarious, but what's unique about humans is that they form communities of perception of what is good and bad, just and unjust, and other social values. Domestic economy provides the support and infrastructure for living well for both the city-state and the household, for living well requires goods. Aristotle argues that the obsession with making money is not confined to mercantilists and commercial traders, but perverts many throughout the city-state. Aristotle says that those who are not commercial traders engage in "making money" by turning every human capacity into a means for making money, and destroy its natural purpose. For Aristotle, the ancient community followed a model of life activity in which the goal is non-economic: happiness as living well and doing well. Intermediate goals are self-sufficiency and leisure, "for leisure is needed both to develop virtue and to engage in political actions.".
