#Mark America » Feed Mark America » Comments Feed Mark America » Morality of Money Comments Feed About Mark Members Only Page Mark America Rebuilding America With Actual Conservatism * About Mark + Mark America * Members Only Page * Morality of Money * Theme Switcher ____________________ Search __________________________________________________________________ Morality of Money In all of literature, there is no greater passage to describe the root of all good in the world, and I think most will be somewhat surprised. In my estimation, there has never been a better description of the moral root of capitalism, and indeed, of money. The author chose to use the character Francisco d’Anconia to deliver this enduring statement on the moral good that is money. For once, in a quiet moment of contemplation, you should consider the piercing logic of this statement – this little speech of a character in a book – and consider how it applies to your life and to the world around you, and when you’ve considered it, you should evaluate what you’ve been taught before and wonder at how you may have been misled: “So you think money is the root of all evil?” said Francisco d’Anconia. “Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil? “When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears nor all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of your honor–your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on the moral principle which is the root of money. Is this what you consider evil? “Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at the electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions–and you’ll learn that man’s mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth. “But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made–before it can be looted or mooched–made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can’t consume more than he has produced. “To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not their own injury, for their gain, not their loss–the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery–that you must offer them values, not wounds–that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men’s stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best your money can find. And when men live by trade–with reason, not force, as their final arbiter–it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgment and highest ability–and the degree of a man’s productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil? “But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality–the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind. “Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants; money will not give him a code of values, if he’s evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he’s evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up becoming a victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered; that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil? “Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth–the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one, would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve the mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason you call it evil? “Money is your means of survival. The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men’s vices or men’s stupidity? By catering to fools in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment’s or a penny’s worth of joy. Then all things you buy will become , not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you’ll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of money? “Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the un-earned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money? “Or did you say it’s the love of money that’s the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It’s the person who could sell his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money–and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it. “Let me give you a tip on a clue to men’s characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it. “Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is a leper’s bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another–their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun. “But money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or keep it. Men who have no courage, pride or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to keep their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich–will not remain rich for long. They are natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt–and of his life, as he deserves. “Then you will see the rise of the men of the double standard–the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money–the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law–men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims–then money becomes its creators’ avenger. Such looters believe it is safe to rob defenseless men, once they’ve passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter. “Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion–when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing–when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors–when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you–when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice–you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot. “Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men’s protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards, and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked: ‘Account overdrawn.’ “When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purposes of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, ‘Who is destroying the world?’ You are. “You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it’s crumbling around you, while you’re damning its life-blood–money. You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edges of your cities. Throughout men’s history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, whose names changed, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor. That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves–slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody’s mind and left unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer. Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers–as industrialists. “To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money– and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man’s mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being–the self-made man–the American industrialist. “If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose–because it contains all the others–the fact that they were the people who created the phrase ‘to make money.’ No other language or nation has used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity–to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted, or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth was to be created. The words ‘to make money’ hold the essence of human morality. “Yet these were the words for which the Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters’ continents. Now the looters’ credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievement as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide–as, I think, he will. “Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you will ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns–or dollars. Take your choice–there is no other–and your time is running out.” From Ayn Rand’s magnificent novel Atlas Shrugged * blogger Blog this! * delicious Bookmark on Delicious * digg Digg this post * facebook Recommend on Facebook * gplus Share on google plus * linkedin Share on Linkedin * reddit share via Reddit * stumble Share with Stumblers * twitter Tweet about it * email Tell a friend * http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1649923542 Thomas Dixon Thank you for reintroducing a description of one core tenet to the reasons for uniqueness of our Republic. Though published in 1957 and first read by this contributor in 1965, the book's philosophy is bed rock to human experience that MUST be internalized to avoid the historically repeating cycle of mans' inhumanity to man. As I in that Senior year so long ago, today's youth (certainly the OWS fodder) will not recognize the reality of some individuals' devious contempt for values that are basis for a free society. Instead, they will conceptualize a view of what COULD be and fail to conclude what WILL be until after each experiences castigation or witnesses annihilation. Instead, my prayer is that those of wisdom and strength will prevail by following leaders with vision protected by the shield of our God. Surely, some of the Millenial generation will transcend for they are America's future hope as we were and are. Thanks again for publishing your relevant and insightful thoughts, reminding each of us that we are not standing alone as the shroud engulfs. As publicly shouted, we are the 53%. * http://www.ptsdsoa.org Chris Seitler Thank you for posting this. I am one of those Millennials that you, Mr. Dixon, speak of. I hope that I can help bring illumination to the minds of those around me, but it is truly an up hill battle every day. Most people of my generation are too arrogant to understand that we need to have different classes of people. I am not the smartest person I know, so I know I will not be the wealthiest; however, I am also not the dumbest,, so I know I will not be the poorest. If everyone were equally smart, we would all be sad with society. Everyone would want to do "important" work, but no one would want to drive the garbage down to the dump, no one would want to work in a factory processing different plants into edible foods. The world collapse into chaos, all because no one wants to do the dirty work required to carry on as a society. On day my generation may wake up, but until that time comes I will keep trying to make things better from my own personal end. * http://www.Collapsenet.com Eric Copenhaver I agree, but the failure of the vision above, is a failure of physics: "to make money", one must have materials to make it from- be they sweat, rocks, ideas… Our money, US Dollars, are made of oil. When it goes, so too will the Dollar. It didn't have to be this way, but it is this way now. Dollars are better than guns, for negotiations. When absurdity fails to make a change, all that's left is love, or a gun. America has been absurd for nearly five decades, and willingly crushed the messengers of change (of mind), many decades ago. Money is a tool. We, The People, have failed to use it well. Don't look for a solution to our problems. Einstein told us what you get for that… (same mind for the problem as the solution? no, it won't work like that…) Look instead at the natural progression of systems. Our winter, as a culture, is here. I wish this were not so… but I am only wishing. It's ironic, to me, that you stand in front of Ceasar's Palace, dressed as a Mafia Don. You probably meant it to show solidarity. Remember too, that Rome failed, soon after the Empire was forged. Crossing the Rubicon– heard of it? * http://www.markamerica.com MarkAmerica Eric, No, no mafia types here. I happen to like the style of the 20s, and it had naught to do with mafia types, although I'm certain that's what the pop culture would suggest. It was my first vacation with my wife in over two decades, just less than a year ago. You'll forgive me if I permitted myself a few indulgences. I knew even then that there would not be another such opportunity for a long long time, if ever. We had a great time, thanks. I'm well acquainted with the Rubicon, and the meaning of its crossing. What you seem to suggest is that it can be no other way. I disagree, but more importantly, I think you've missed something fundamental: Oil is not all there has been of our economy, although inexpensive energy has certainly been a driver in our prosperity. I wrote an article some time ago on the linkage between our economy's performance and the price of energy. The correlation is pretty distinct, if not proving direct causation. On the other hand, there may yet be developments in energy that will revolutionize the world. There are great works under way in the realm of fusion that offer us some hope. Such an advancement would yield another period of rapid growth, had we the right mindset to exploit it. Our winter is here because we've forgotten what made our spring, and in fact, none left alive were here to see it, and thus none who remember it. What Rand points out in the passage above is that money is itself an idea, an idea of moral men, and as she explains, it will not serve the immoral in the long run. What we need is what another of her characters in the same book later offered: Not a return to morality, for those who had never known it, but to discover it in the first place. My offering of this passage was merely one small and insignificant step in that direction. Thanks. * http://www.Collapsenet.com Eric Copenhaver Mark, Thank you for the gracious reply. I'm ashamed by it, because I was none too gracious to you in my post. I assumed much, and I was wrong. I apologize… Of the matter at hand- I do not believe in Destiny, for human actions. The "crossing of the Rubicon" is a milestone, watershed, what have you… but we still make choices after the crossing. I am familiar with the complexities of the US economy, and its roots in craftsmanship, entrepenuership, and industry (and agriculture, trade, etc…). The ascendence of oil to primacy can hardly be argued with, however. Nine out of 10 calories we Americans eat are fossil fuel calories (6 out of 10 are oil calories…). Although there are advances that can soften the blow of fossil fuels' diminishing supplies, our particular economy is still heaviliy dependent on liquid fuels for transportation, and for petroleum and natural gas for critical links in modern agriculture, which gave us the 7-billionth living human today, yes? No comparable substitute of any comparable scale, has been proposed to replace petroluem in that application. Fusion can help with many parts of transport and power systems, but it can not create raw materials for feedstocks. and truly, fusion is not here, now. I believe many sober experts agree that the decline of oil and natural gas is here, now. I do not agree that we have forgotten the "why" of our Spring. I believe instead that the natural order of systems applies to our cultures and societies: Winter follows Autum. Spring must wait for Winter to run its course. And that is where my hope lies (lays? :)… appropriately, in the future. I know humanity will persevere through whatever Winter we are facing. If morality survives at all, then my hopes will be realized… one day. * http://gravatar.com/renrah renrah Mark – while many would call me a conspiracy nut, I am one of those that believe Nikola Tesla had the genius to "discover" FREE Energy. The powers that be had stolen and or burned his research as soon as he died. When my children were young and asked all those "Why" questions, I told them the answer to 99% of them was "because of money". Ask why we don't have things like free energy and what other answer does one come up with ? * http://www.markamerica.com MarkAmerica The reason we don't have free energy is because it doesn't exist in a form we can easily harness. If solar panels were more efficient, and less expensive, they would be closer to "free energy" but the problem is that nothing is ever really "free" if it's a material thing. dnr Perhaps this has been addressed above and I missed it. But I believe the false statement "money is the root of all evil" comes from a twisting of Scripture. It is the LOVE of money that is the root of all evil (I Tim. 6:10). Yet another Bible passage perverted by socialists. * http://www.markamerica.com MarkAmerica It's been addressed, but Rand's character addresses that too. I don't find "the love of money" evil either, at least in the context she presents it. dnr That's what I get for skimming the passage – she does mention it. Haven't been able to finish Atlas Shrugged – but know I need to. Agree that money is to be appreciated and respected. I'd starve if I had to barter for a living. I see that as different from a love of money, where the individual is consumed with a craving for it, to the exclusion of all else. That is not a root of good, but of evil. dnr PS – just discovered your site a few days ago. Thanks for your efforts to proclaim truth, common sense, and clear thinking. Have already recommended it to others. Pingback: Does Money Corrupt Politics? « Mark America Max I believe that money as the representation of human work has power, but it is the power of people. Money that is loved, evilly and therefore sought after by the evil, leads to the money that is created without work. When this is traded for real work, it is the greatest evil of all. We now have a situation where more and more imaginary money is created, on the basis that "it doesn't seem to hurt, and we can get rich from it". But all over the world, real workers are tightening their belts. The other sources of incoming value, oil, the environment, sacrificing our investment in our children; these are drying up. To hide this, the money hungry want markets joined, so they can squeeze out every last drop before the crash. Money, if we love it, we should guard it better. http://twitter.com/Jeri2 Jeri2 It is not the money…it is the “love” of money or greed that is the root of all evil http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1315946631 David S Brandt Money is one thing, and the love of it is only the “root of all evil”. If the love of money is the root, what is the tree? Materialism perhaps, but materialism doesn’t adequately describe what “all evil” really is. How about “Idolatry”, substituting something or someone as the object of worship; that is, devotion, allegiance, obedience. “Have no other gods…” we are admonished and even warned. Even so, and in spite of the clear commandment, we easily pay lip service to God, while we attend to our creature comforts and personal peace with certain consistency. JohnInFlorida It’s too bad that there is so much human baggage attached to Ayn Rand. Even though that is true of us all, it would have been helpful if she had been a bit more “super-human” and risen above our human frailties. The pearls of wisdom like as the one quoted above that are contained in her writings are too easily buried by the enemies of freedom through misdirection and psycho-babble. Every time I am re-exposed to her truth I am renewed. * http://www.markamerica.com/ Mark America John, the beauty of Rand is that though there is some baggage attached, her thinking was concise and sound with respect to the world around her. The problem is that we don’t hold the enemies of freedom to the sort of exacting standard of argumentation her reasoning demanded. As you, I often reach for Rand when I wish to be reminded of clarity in thought. Whatever the frailties of her personal existence, they were vastly outweighed by the mass of her intellectual virtues. Pingback: The End of the United States of America « Mark America * Recent + Obamacare Profiteer Seeks Republican Nomination – And You May Give It to Him + 2016: What’s the Point? + President Ebola: The Pandemic Administration? + Governor Palin: “Stop Electing Republicans who Act Like Democrats” + GOP Mafia Produces Cochran Win in Mississippi * Categories[Select Category.....................] * Archives [Select Month........] * Blogroll + Conservatives4Palin + Gary P. Jackson + Mark Levin + Mark on Facebook + Mr. L's Tavern + Palin Defender + Politijim + Tammy Bruce + Texans4SarahPalin! + The National Patriot * Recent + Obamacare Profiteer Seeks Republican Nomination – And You May Give It to Him + 2016: What’s the Point? + President Ebola: The Pandemic Administration? + Governor Palin: “Stop Electing Republicans who Act Like Democrats” + GOP Mafia Produces Cochran Win in Mississippi * Meta + Log in + Entries RSS + Comments RSS + WordPress.org __________________________________________________________________ © Copyright 2015 | Mark America. All rights reserved. Mark America is proudly powered by WordPress Webdesign by MarkAmerica * * Facebook friend Facebook friend * RSS RSS * Follow on Twitter Follow on Twitter * Register: Register: ____________________ ____________________ Login [_] Remember me Lost your password? * + WordPress.org + Documentation + Support Forums + Feedback * ____________________ Search