Posted on 02/02/2007 5:37:44 PM PST by shrinkermd
Worth repeating.
L
Money is certainly that, but it's also a whole lot more.
As the incredibly prescient Miss Rand put it:
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.
Without goods and services produced which people desire money is nothing but prettily colored bits of paper with absolutely no intrinsic value of its own.
Rand continues:
"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."
Money is the ultimate symbol of the trust a society places in its members. Without that trust money once again becomes nothing more than worthless paper. We use money as a store for the excess value of our time. The more valuable our time is to the other members of our society, the more money we earn with which to store that value.
When a society ceases to trust its own, money becomes worthless and one is back to barter. For proof of this one need look no farther than a country like Zimbabwe where 'inflation' is running something like 100% a week IIRC.
It's not that the actual value of the goods in Zimbabwe is rising. A loaf of bread is, after all, still the same on Friday as it was the previous Monday.
What's happened is that that bond of trust between the members of Zim society is gone so they no longer have a medium of exchange worthy of trust. Zim government doesn't trust its citizens and vice versa, and the citizens no longer trust each other. Therefore what they use to trade with one another, money, has become worthless.
What money allows you to do is take care of the top level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs - self-actualization
This is absolutely correct and it's one of the best short explanations I've ever seen as to what the power of money actually is. It's not that it can buy pretty baubles, fancy cars, or attract the attention of attractive members of the opposite sex (although that is a nice side-benefit to having money...LOL)
Anyone who would deny me the fruits of my labors, driven by my intense desire to be self-acutalize, is nothing more than a petty dictator who believes they know more what's good for me than I do.
Once again you show why I consider you to be one of the finer posters on the forum. This is an incredibly important point which even most conservatives are unable to articulate. You are to be congratulated for making the point so succinctly.
Rand said it a bit differently, but the idea is the same:
"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 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.
There are only two ways for people to deal with each other in this world. We can freely and voluntarily trade with each other with absolutely the bare minimum of interference from Government which should take only that amount it absolutely requires in order to do some very basic and clearly defined tasks. Our Founders understood this and laid out those tasks very clearly in our Constitution.
Or we can devalue our fellow citizens by implying that they somehow obtained their money fraudulently and then force them to our will with the muzzles of guns. There are no other ways no matter what anyone tells you, although Hillary and her ilk will try. They'll usually do it by mouthing platitudes about 'the common good' when we both know there really is no such thing.
Finally Miss Rand left us with a warning which we ignore to our mortal peril:
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 is 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.
This last line is why the Zim 'dollar, the Cuban peso, the Russian Ruble, and the ChiCom yuan are not used internationally and most likely never will be. Money will not permit itself to be debased like that. It can't. Rational people won't trust a 'currency' which isn't based on the idea that people own themselves, even if they can't articulate that idea aloud.
Lastly there is this:
"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 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."
Time is indeed running out. Just today we had a 'serious' Presidential candidate utter out loud on national television the idea that she wants to 'take those profits' from a lawful industry. The mere fact that she felt safe saying such a thing should chill sane people down to their very bones.
After all, if she can take it from them she can take it from anyone. And once that process starts (we're already long past that start, but you know what I mean) the end result is an utterly predictable foregone conclusion.
And it's never pretty.
L
No.
Morality is rooted entirely in the presupposition some higher power defines what is correct for human behavior.
A greater number of "atheists" and "pagans" adopt the same hackneyed tenets of a faux Judaic-Christian ideal (golden calf). They also subscribe to the Judaic fetishism of "sin," but will fight to their death in denial of it. Most of them are so wrapped up in their own polemics that they have become nothing more than pathetic anti-Christians with the same false hypocritical philosophy.
They just slap a new label on it hoping nobody will notice - - they replace the idea of "avoiding sin" with "morals."
But, since we are all properly obeying the * modern interpretation * of the First Amendment, good & evil isn't the question... Good & bad, right & wrong, etc., etc., ad nausea; are all inherently religious ideals.
The modern interpretation of the First Amendment (according to the liberal-tarians) says government must exorcise all traces of religion and theism from itself. Therefore, government must never consider issues of morality and right and wrong...
So, it becomes a question of benefits versus costs.
Fetus killing has its benefits to society, especially if you like to sleep late on Saturdays. But it also has its costs as well. Society (by which I mean, whoever manages to seize power) needs to evaluate these costs and decide accordingly.
The mythical rights of men and women are also meaningless. The very concept of rights is also founded in religion. Since the enlightened person is freed from any superstitions about some "God," they are free from having to worry about "rights." Only raw power counts and humans are just meat puppets for the powerful...
However, the third way is through nature. And this nature and the consequences of decision of nature dictate what is moral.
Might makes right. See above...
I'm still laughing out loud at this one. I thought this post started off strong, then realized from the style who it was.
If all those quotes are from Ayn Rand (whom I've unfortunately never read), there should be a radio and a TV station both devoted 24 hours a day to broadcasting readings of her work. Fantastic stuff, and clear enough for even idiot Dems to understand (at least I'd like to think).
Like most Rand works it runs long.
The entire 'speech', which the character Francisco gives to a couple of old biddies at a dinner party after he hears them say 'money is the root of all evil' can be found here.
Reading the entire book is worth it just to get to that part IMO.
If it's true you've never read Rand then I recommend strongly that you do. Yea, the settings are a bit dated but the concepts ring dead true because they are.
She also wrote quite a bit of non-fiction. IMO one of her best is "Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal."
It is indeed great stuff.
there should be a radio and a TV station both devoted 24 hours a day to broadcasting readings of her work.
One of her associates, Leonard Piekoff, had a radio show a few years back I think. There were some recordings of it posted on the 'net but I don't remember where.
L
Like hell they are.
The very concept of rights is also founded in religion.
When exactly did Jesus give a sermon on 4th or 5th Amendment rights? I must have missed that Book in my Bible.
L
The Ayn Rand Lexicon, edited by Harry Binswanger is a must have.
She had some insightful stuff, but her myopic hostility to the religionists was a fatal flaw of her philosophy.
Rand got most of her philosophical egotism directly from John Locke and Thomas Hobbes before him.
When exactly did Jesus give a sermon on 4th or 5th Amendment rights? I must have missed that Book in my Bible.
From where are those rights enumerated in the Constitution derived???
Answer: Declaration of Independence.
Let's clarify that...
"...to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them... that all men are created... Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world... with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence..."
The very idea that human beings have individual rights not subject to the whims of an earthly monarch, but subject to the laws of Yahweh, is directly from Moses.
It is not a matter of Yeshua giving a sermon on the 4th or 5th Amendments, it is a matter of the philosophical basis from Moses.
Clue: Moses was not a Christian...
"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 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."
See any parallels?
Have a pleasant day my friend.
L
Sorry. I'm coming off a very long shift and am literally having trouble keeping my eyes open. You have my apologies, sir.
L
I'll have to pick that up.
She had some insightful stuff, but her myopic hostility to the religionists was a fatal flaw of her philosophy.
I would largely agree with you on this point.
Rand got most of her philosophical egotism directly from John Locke and Thomas Hobbes before him.
Goody. More books to buy....
L
Bookmarking great article
No harm done...
My point is that the Judaic basis American jurisprudence is where our "rights" are philosophically derived from.
Rand had a lot of trouble with that. She was an unobservant Russian Jew.
That should be compulsory reading. I've read most of Rand's works, but that single passage really brought things into focus for me.
I sometimes wonder how powerful of a proponent for religion she could have been if she had only had her eyes opened to the Truth.
It's a pity it appears not to have happened.
L
Hobbes was intensely and neurotically anti-war. But that does not inherently make his ideas irrelevant. He was a monarchist, what else could you be in the 1600's? (Both Yeshua and Yahweh are Zionist monarchs in the Bible.) He skewers the Left from the grave.
"But most agree on this: Capitalism works, but it is insufficiently moral."
NONSENSE.
But even if so capitalism is certainly more moral than big government socialism.
Taking from those who produce at the point of a gun to give to the nonproductive is patently immoral.
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The author is really talking about politics, not economics. He is just is too stupid to understand the difference.
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