Mo’ money, mo’ problems. That’s what Biggie says. Me, I lack the net worth to fully test the premise, but I tend to agree anyways. Because it’s something that plays out at the community level over and over again.
Too often, people are conditioned to believe that, with the right vision, leadership or hard work, a community can prosper and, in time, overcome its problems. That you can exist at a point where you’re down, come together in response, then ultimately reach some idealized state where your challenging times are behind you.

Let me tell you a little something ’bout community.
And you will get past it. But let’s not confuse transcending a particular problem with transcending problems in general. Because that’s a dangerous fantasy and the root of all future discord.
It’s a problem
Problems are the constant. They’re relentless. They take infinite forms but they never stop. Which means, for any community, your real question is this:
Do you want to be taking on the challenges associated with failure or the challenges associated with success?
At first blush, the problems of success seem a lot more attractive. But like “mo’ money, mo’ problems,” the real ideal might be counter intuitive. For example, the problems of failure tend to be obvious and unifying. Disinvestment, poor schools, pervasive cultural conflict. Things with broad appeal that rally people and bring them together. In the right hands, that can become a very powerful political tool, to be wielded in ways that bring real value to people’s lives.
In short, when people are uncomfortable — or desperate — they’re a lot more adept at seeing past the petty disagreements that might otherwise divide them. They engage each other because they need to.
Add to that the shared recognition of what success looks like. When you’re losing jobs, landing one good employer is a win. When your school is failing, raising scores or graduation rates is a win. It’s easy for people to work together at that level because it’s easy to agree on where you need to go.
Then, with enough commitment over time, your struggling community starts to turn a corner and before long, like every obnoxious movie where the bookish girl takes off her glasses, shakes out her hair, and suddenly gains the attention of everyone who’d previously dismissed her, you start to experience the sensation of being attractive.

“Well, hello there. How did I never notice you before?”
That attraction brings new investment and new resources, which makes more positive change possible, until the day finally arrives when all the obvious problems you spent years tackling are now confined to the rear view mirror. And that’s the day when you realize you’ve got new problems — the challenges of success — and they’re no picnic.
For one thing, success brings more people accustomed to getting what they want, better positioned to pay their way to preferred outcomes, and less inclined to necessarily roll up their sleeves with people they don’t know. That’s not a value judgment, just a recognition of a frequent cultural disparity. Which leads to a growing divide between old-timers and newcomers, or working class and affluent, or even black and white. And while long time residents have perspective on the positive change possible over time, new residents bought into something specific, desirable and temporal. Which means they’re less inclined to see change as anything but a negative because it impacts the very thing they bought into. Which means the plans you’ve been working on, maybe for decades, and that have borne the fruit of success, are suddenly the target of scrutiny and opposition.
Success also makes struggle harder to see. When everyone in a community is hurting, no one disputes or dismisses that fact. But once a community achieves a certain level of comfort, shared difficulty becomes a minority condition. Which makes looking the other way a whole lot easier.
As communities become more successful (by typical industry measures), it not only becomes more difficult to establish what constitutes a win, it becomes more difficult to establish what constitutes a problem. Shared vision becomes harder to achieve as people, increasingly divided, apply the same ideological lens to local issues that they apply to national ones. Left vs. Right becomes just another way we find to factionalize.
So what’s the solution?
I’ve written before about how important the tenor of our temperament can be in forging community but hesitate to frame this post specifically along the lines of “gentrification” because that’s a word with a definition so loose that it allows us to absolve ourselves of our own culpability — identifying gentrifiers as everyone who got here after me.
Instead, this is about change and about the fact that there is no stasis. There is only the whole of history that has brought us to this exact moment in time and the accompanying opportunity to help shape what comes next.
So, then, what’s more desirable: the challenges associated with failure or the challenges associated with success? Personally, I think the answer’s somewhere in the middle — not “(Better in a) Hell Hole,” as Spinal Tap suggests, nor defined by easy access to multiple varieties of artisanal mayonnaise, a la Portlandia. But how do you find that elusive balance?
The best scenario is one in which you’re able to hold your community together, and that means getting better at listening, reading between the lines, tempering your preconceptions and biases, engaging in a meaningful way, and delivering on promises.
It means being a neighbor first. Regardless of circumstance.
If you can achieve that, then I suppose it’s better to do so in a successful, empowering context rather than one of demoralizing failure. But, one way or another, don’t expect it to get any easier. If anything, the challenges become more nuanced, and more contested.
Mo’ money, mo’ problems.
> A previous version of this article misattributed “Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems” to Jay Z. Mr. Z is actually known for far greater precision in articulating his problem inventory (99, to be specific). We regret the oversight. <
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This article started out so promising, but I was sorely disappointed. Scott, quoting rap artists really should not be done by someone who does not know the music. The quote you were looking for from Biggie was “the more money you make, the more problems you get…” The quote “mo’ money, mo’ problems” is from a song. Biggie did not say “mo’ money mo’ problems” once in the song (I know because I can rap his verse verbatim). The song was a track on his “Life After Death” album. Puff Daddy/Sean Combs said it only in the music video and Kelly Price sang it on the chorus/refrain. Biggie was murdered by the time the single came out. The song was a smash hit. It was and still is a big song in Hip-Hop history. The epitome of NY Hip-Hop. It was the first hip-hop song myself and many people my age remember singing along to. To attribute the quote to Biggie (as “what Biggie says” …once again he’s dead so “said” would have been more appropriate) is incorrect. However, your original attribution to Jay-Z revealed that Scott, you have no idea what you are talking about and really did not care enough to find out. That is stupid on your part. You were able to correctly reference to Spinal Tap and Portlandia. Next time you do not think a culture is worth your time researching stick to writing about the things you know like offbeat hipster comedic sitcoms and whatever that hot mess of feathered hair, terrible music and mockumentary overkill called Spinal Tap was. Furthermore, “Let me tell you a little something ’bout community.” If this is your attempt at “Ebonics” STOP. Using poor grammar when sloppily misquoting a rap hit is obnoxious at best and condescending at worst. Just a simple Google search could have saved you from this embarrassing article.
I like to think there is a good reason why the Place Makers are a bunch of white people without any noticeable racial or ethnic diversity. I also like to think there is a good reason why diversity/race & ethnicity is not one of your “topics/top picks”. This article is starting to make me question whether there is a good reason after all or maybe for your group the only culture worth preserving in a community is a culture to which you can relate and understand.
Guilty as charged, Daphney. And thanks for chiming in. Sincerely.
I’ll be the first to admit that I know what I know and don’t know what I don’t know. You’re entirely correct that, perhaps over relying on the casual nature of the medium, I referenced a fairly well known (at least superficially, as you point out) pop-culture touchstone to make for a more broadly accessible intro. It was intended only as a bridge to a wider discussion but if instead it communicated cluelessness (or worse, dismissiveness), I can only offer apologies. Which I do.
At the root of pop culture is, of course, culture, and I shouldn’t have played so fast and loose with things held in different ways by different people. Especially those things that, really, I know little or nothing about beyond the apparent.
If nothing else, perhaps this exchange highlights even more one of the points I was hoping to get at: Community is a messy endeavor. There is so much more to finding common ground than just putting something out on the table. This really drives that point home, making for a regrettable stumble on my part which I hope to transition to a lesson learned.
Thanks for calling me out.