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Based on
Francisco d'Aconia's monologue on money from Ayn Rand's novel, Atlas Shrugged (1957).
So you
think that money is the root of all evil? 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 people able to produce them. Money is the material,
shaped of the principle that those 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. The value ascribed to money is made possible only by those who
produce. 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. Is this what you consider evil?
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 brutes. Wealth is the
product of our capacity to think. Is wealth created by the person who invents
a motor, at the expense of those who did not? Is wealth created by the
intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able
at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the
lazy? Wealth must be created before it can be looted or mooched. It is made
by the effort of every honest individual to the extent of their ability.
Wealth is only accumulated, by producing more than what is consumed.
A truly
free market permits you to obtain for your goods and your labour,
that which they are worth to those who volunteer to
buy them, but no more. There are no deals, except those to mutual benefit, by
the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you, the recognition
that people must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury. The
common bond among us is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of
goods. Voluntary exchange necessitates that you sell, not your weakness to
another'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
we live by trade - with reason, not force, as our final arbiter - it is the
best product that wins. This is the code of existence whose tool, and symbol,
is money. Is this what you consider evil?
Money will
not purchase happiness for someone who has no concept of what they want. It
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 desire. Is this the reason why you
call it evil?
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 us. It is the person, who
would sell their soul for a nickel, who is the loudest in proclaiming a
hatred of money - and they have 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 a person's character - the one who damns money
has obtained it dishonourably; the person who respects it, has earned it.
Run for your
life, from anyone who tells you, that money is evil. That sentence is the
leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as we live together on earth,
and need means to deal with one another - our only substitute, if we abandon
trade, is the muzzle of a gun.
You may
see a parasitism - those who live by force, yet count on others who live by
trade, to create the value of their looted money. 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 - those
who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims - then money becomes
its creators' nemesis. Such looters believe it safe to rob the defenseless,
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 themselves 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 destroyer wins over the creator -
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 those who produce nothing - when you see that money is
flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favours - when you see people
getting richer, by graft and by pull, than by work, when you see corruption,
being rewarded, and honesty, becoming a self-sacrifice - and your laws, don't
protect you against criminals, but instead protect criminals, against you -
then you may know, that your society is doomed.
Whenever
destroyers appear among us, they start with the money. Destroyers seize gold
and leave to its owners, a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all
objective standards, and delivers us into 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.
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 lifeblood - money. You look upon money, as the savages did before
you, and you wonder, why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your
cities. Throughout our history, money was always, seized by looters of one
brand or another, but the method remained the same: to seize wealth by force,
and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, and deprived of honour.
That phrase about the evil of money, comes from a time, when wealth was
produced through the labour of slaves - Production was ruled by force, and
wealth was obtained by conquest. Through all those centuries of stagnation
and starvation, history has exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword,
as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the
producers, as slaves, traders, shopkeepers - and as industrialists.
To have a
country of reason, justice, freedom, production and, achievement, both our
mind and money, must be set free. No fortunes by conquest, but only fortunes
by work. Instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appears the real maker of
wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being - the self-made
individual.
Such a
person believes in the phrase, 'to make money'. They do not think of wealth
as being a static quantity to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted,
or obtained as a favour. Wealth has to be created. The words 'to make money'
hold the essence of human morality.
Until, and
unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own
destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which we deal with one
another, then people become the tools of those who rule. Blood, whips and
guns - or money. Take your choice! There is no other and your time is running
out!
Mike Hewitt
Editor
DollarDaze.org
Mike Hewitt
is the editor of www.DollarDaze.org, a website pertaining to commentary on the instability of the global fiat
monetary system and investment strategies on mining companies. Disclaimer:
The opinions expressed above
are not intended to be taken as investment advice. It is to be taken as
opinion only and I encourage you to complete your own due diligence when making
an investment decision.
© 2007 DollarDaze
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