When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men
become the tools of men
money is a barometer of a society's virtue, when you see that trade 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 pole
than by work, and your laws do not 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
So I'm going to read to you a bit of Atlas Shrugged. Ayn Rand, the author,
was born in 1905 on st. Petersburg, Russia
she was somewhat upper-middle-class, her father was a pharmacist that owned the
building that housed the pharmacy
during the time of the Russian Revolution she was 12 when her father's
business was confiscated, and they fled to Crimea
when they returned to st. Petersburg they faced nearly starving conditions and
she eventually came to hollywood in 1925 and she wrote screenplays and novels in
Hollywood all through the twenties, thirties and on in to the sixties
actually I believe that with her background there's no greater authority
to speak on the virtues of capitalism versus the evils of collective
collectivism, and this is a theme that ran all through her work. In the Great
Depression socialist values had become quite popular in the United States and
against that social backdrop all of her works idealized cap-capitalism so it was
something very unpopular, yet
her book has become one of the best --- the Atlas Shrugged has become one of the
best-selling books of all time
and so I'm going to read a masterpiece within a masterpiece, when you read Atlas
Shrugged
it's a little bit dated and boring and you wonder why you're reading it for the
first four hundred pages but then right about page 400 you go
"Holy molly!" well you can't put this.... this little speech at a party
pops up and then you realize why you're reading this thing
standing unnoticed on the edge of the group, Rearden heard a woman who had a
large diamond earrings in a flabby nervous face
ask densely: "Signore D'aconia, what do you think is going to happen to the world?"
"Just exactly what it deserves"
"Oh how cruel". "Don't you believe in the operation of the moral law madam?"
Francisco ask greatly
"I do". Rearden heard Bertram scatter outside the group say to a girl who made
some sound of indignation
"Don't let him disturb you, you know money is the root of all evil and he's the
typical product of money". Rearden did not think that Francisco could have heard it
but he saw Francisco turning to them with a gravely courteous smile
"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco
"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 principal the men who wish to deal with
one another must deal by trade and give value for value money is not a tool of
the moochers who claim your product by tears or the looters who take it from
you by force
money is made possible by the men who produce is this what you consider evil?
when you accept money in payment for your effort you do so 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 honor your
claim on 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 that moral principle which is the root
of money
is this what you consider evil?
have you ever looked at the root of production take a look at an electrical
generator and dare tell yourself that was created by the muscular effort of
unthinking brutes, try to go grow 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 that physical motions and you'll
learn man's mind is the root of all the goods produced and 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 the who did not invent it? is money
made 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?
money is made before it can be mooched or looted, made by the effort of every
honest man
each to the extent of his own ability and honest man knows that he can't
consume more than he has produced. To trade by means of money is the code of
the men of goodwill. 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 the men who would 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 for their injury, for their gain not their loss.
The recognition that they are not beasts of burden borne 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 stupidity but your talent to their
reason.
It demands that you by not the shoddiest they offer but the best your money can
find, and when men live by trade with reason
, not foce, us 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 who's 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, nor admiration for the coward, nor 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 the 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 yet discovered, that no man may
be smaller than his money.
Is this the reason 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 then it serves him, if not it destroys him but
you look on and you 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 50 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 why you call it evil?
money is your means of survival
the verdict you pronounce on your source of 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 stupidity? by
catering to fools in hope of getting more than your ability deserves?
by lowering your standards? by during doing work you despise for purchasers
you scorn?
if so your money will not give you a moment's or a Penny's worth of joy
then all the 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 unearned, neither and matter nor
in spirit, is this the root of your hatred of money? or did you say that it's
the love of money that is 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 pass key to trade your effort
for the effort of the best among men
it's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel
who is the loudest at 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 attained 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 the leper's bell of an approaching looter
so long as men lived together on earth and need means to deal with one another
their only substitute if they abandoned 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 their money, are not 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 the natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for
centuries but come crawling out at the first smell of the man who begs to be
forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of this
guilt and of his life as he deserves
then you will see the rise of the man 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 hitchhiker's of virtue. In a moral society
these are the criminals and the statutes are written to protect you against them
but when society establishes criminals by right and looters by law
men who use force to seize the wealth of the disarmed victims then money becomes
its creators Avenger. Such looters believe it's safe to rob a
defenseless man 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
and then the race goes, not to the ablest of production but to the most
brutal ruthless and brutality
when force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket and then
society vanishes in a spread of ruins and slaughter
do you wish to know whether that day is coming?
watch money; money is a barometer of a society's virtue, when you see that trade
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 pole
than by work, and your laws do not 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 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 in the base of a moral existence. Destroyers sees gold and
leave to its owner's a counterfeit pile of paper
this kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of
an arbitrary set 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 stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming
the father 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 achievement of the greatest productive civilization
and wonder why it is 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 edges of your cities. Throughout men's history money
was always seized by looters of one brand or another whose names changed but
whose methods remained the same to seize wealth by force and to keep the
producers bound domaine, defamed and 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 man exalted the looters as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats
of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despise the producers as slaves, as
traders, as shopkeepers, as industrialist. To the glory of mankind
to the glory of mankind there was for the first and only time in history a
country of money, and i have no more reverent tribute to pay to 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 made by
conquest but only fortunes made by work and instead of swords- swordsmen and slaves
there appeared the real makers 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 nor nation has ever used these words
before. Man had always thought of wealth is a static quantity to be seized, begged
inherited, shared, looted, or obtained as a favor
Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words
"to make money"
hold the essence of human morality
yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted
cultures of the looters continents
now the looters credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a
hallmark of shame. Your prosperity is guilt, your greatest men, the industrials,
as blaggards 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 asked 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.
thank you