It is said that money is the root of all evil. But that is false. Rather it was the love of money that Jesus Christ called “the root of all evilâ€. Money is merely a tool of exchange. Money is something that men use to deal with one another in trade. It is used to give and receive value.
What is the root of money? Money can’t exist unless there are goods and services produced by men. So money is not a tool of moochers or slothful, lazy men who do not produce anything, who are parasites on society, and who beg your product from you by their tears of need. Neither is money the tool of looters who would take from you by force. Not an ocean of bleeding heart tears nor all the armies in the world would give an ounce of value to money. Rather money is the tool of men who produce something and wish to exchange it for something of like value. Would you call that evil?
Money gets its value from the belief that when you accept money in exchange for your efforts, then you will be able to exchange it for the valuable product of the effort of other men. It is based upon a faith in mankind, that out there somewhere are other men who produce goods and services, and who will not default on the moral contract that money represents. Your money is a claim upon the energy and effort of other men who produce. Is that evil?
What is the root of production? It is man’s mind. It is man’s ability to use his intellect to master his environment. Every product, whether it be an electric generator or how to cultivate wheat, was left to us by the man who discovered it, or invented it for the very first time. The knowledge, innovation, the trial and error, of generations past are handed down to us as the means of production. And each generation improves upon it, expands our knowledge, experiments, innovates, modifies, discovers, invents, and the means of production are constantly improved. Would you call that evil?
Some say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak. But it is not by strength of arms or military might by which money is made. It is the product of man’s ability to think. What strength do they refer to? Do they mean the strength of the intelligent at the expense of the foolish? Do they mean the strength of the able at the expense of the incompetent? Do they mean the strength of the industrious at the expense of the lazy and slothful? Do the mean the strength of the educated over the ignorant? Do they mean the strength of those who persevere and diligently continue when all around them are calling it impossible? Do they mean the strength of the man who invents something new over the man who did not invent it? Looters and moochers do not create wealth, for nothing can be mooched or looted until it is first exists. Wealth is earned by an honest man who uses the strength of his mind to do what others will not do or are incapable of doing. Money is made by men who use their abilities to produce. The honest man knows that he cannot consume more than he produces. He is neither a moocher or a looter, but he is a producer. Is that evil?
To trade by means of money is a code of peaceful conduct by men of goodwill. Money rests on the axiom that each man is the owner of his own mind and his own ability. Money is absolutely democratic. Each man has the voluntary choice to trade his effort for the effort of another man. No power can set the value of your effort, except for another man who is willing to trade his effort for yours. Money permits you to obtain for your efforts whatever they are worth to the man who buys them, no more, no less. Money permits no deal except to the mutual benefit of the two unforced traders. Either can decline the trade. Both can negotiate for higher value. Both can seek other buyers and other sellers. Trade by money demands that no man can work for his own detriment but only for his own benefit, not for his loss but for his gain, for his betterment not for his injury. Money rests on the acceptance that men are not beasts of burden, not slaves, made to carry your misery, that men must be offered value not wounds, that men exchange products and services, and do not exchange suffering for their efforts. Is this evil?
To trade by money improves the quality of life. Trade by money demands that men do not sell their ignorance to your stupidity, but rather their talent to your reason. You do not buy the shoddiest men offer, but rather are free to seek out the best that your money can buy. Among free men, it is the best product that is in demand. The highest rewards go to the best performance, the man of best judgment and highest ability. The degree of a man’s productivity is the degree of his reward. Is this evil?
Money is just a tool, a means of trade. Man is still the driver. States of character are not altered by wealth. Money cannot buy lasting happiness for the man of vice. Money is a means of satisfying your desires, but you still supply the desires. Money cannot teach a man what to value, who has a perverted value system. Money cannot buy intelligence for a fool, honor for a coward, ability for the incompetent. Money does not solve a flawed state of character. Is this why it is called evil?
As to inherited wealth, or undeserved fortune, the fool and his money are soon parted. The benefactor who created the wealth can pass on his money but he cannot always pass on those virtues that led to the creation of the wealth. The second generation, raised with privilege and comfort, may lack the industry of their ancestor. The inferior heir who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors, but lacks judgment, will soon be surrounded by cheats and swindlers. Unless bound to him by loyalty to his ancestor, men of true intelligence will desert him. No man is smaller than his money. Only a man who does not need wealth is fit to inherit wealth. A capable, intelligent, competent heir would have acquired his own money. He will not be destroyed by his inheritance, but his money will serve him. Money does not corrupt a man of virtue, but a man of vice will use money in corrupt ways. The worthless heir is not to be pitied or envied. His money was not yours. If he gave it away, he would only have created a group of parasitic moochers, rather than only one such ignoble creature. Money does not serve a mind that cannot manage it. Is this why it is called evil?
Money is a means of survival. Life is given to man but survival is not. A body is given to man but sustenance is not. A mind is given to man but what man puts in it is not. To remain alive man must act. And to act he must have a goal and the ways and mean to achieve the goal. To live man must think. So the mind is the basic tool for survival. The mind is the means of acquiring money. To think is an act of choice. Man is a being of volitional consciousness. Reason does not work automatically. Thinking is not a mechanical process. Logic is not instinctive. Your heart, your lungs, your stomach, they operate automatically. Your mind does not. You are free to think or to evade that effort. To be or not to be, is the same as to think or not to think. The fundamental choice for man is existence or death. But man, unlike animals and plants, has no instinct for survival, man has no automatic code for survival. The desire to survive is not the same as having the knowledge required to survive. To survive, man must obtain the knowledge of how to survive. Man must exercise his free will to take action. He must choose the ways and means of his survival. Man is not rational by nature but rather by choice. Only by using his mind to master his environment does man survive. In our society, man survives by using his mind to acquire the knowledge of how to make money.
What rational being would call the means of its survival evil? What sort of moral code would denounce life? This is really a code of death. A moral code that teaches you to become a sacrificial animal seeking slaughter on the altar of others is a code of death. A man who seeks to oppose, contradict and negate the means of his own survival is a metaphysical monstrosity, on the trail of his own destruction. Man can choose death over life, but if he chooses to exist, then he must choose a course of action that achieves survival. Any other course of action will destroy his life and his happiness.
You need money to live. So if money is evil, then you are calling life evil. Why would a man call his life evil? How did a man get his money? Was it by looting, by parasitic mooching, by fraud, by pandering to men’s vices, by taking advantage of fools, by relying on the stupidity of men to get more than his efforts were worth, by lowering his standards, or was it by doing work he despises for purchasers he scorns? If a man got his money in a manner the lacks virtue and honor, no wonder he calls money evil. No wonder he cannot enjoy a penny of his money. For he cannot trade his money for the virtue he lacks. The money cannot repurchase his self-respect. Money will not allow a man to enjoy his depravity. So if a man calls money evil, beware of that man. He has obtained his survival by dishonorable means.
Man survives by using his mind, by being rational, by acquiring knowledge of how to survive. Since Money is the means of survival, then calling money evil, is really calling rationality evil. It is calling Man’s mind and his ability to acquire knowledge evil.
Money is the effect, but man is the cause. Money is the natural product of the virtues listed above, notably of industry, but it will not give a man virtue, and it will not redeem his vices.
To understand money, to know its nature and its purpose, is to realize that money is the avenue to peaceful trade with the best and brightest among men. The person who would sell his soul for a nickel is the person who would call money evil. The man who respects money is proud of the manner in which he earned it. Realize that so long as men need a ways and means to trade with one another, then the only substitute for money is the muzzle of a gun. If you cannot trade your efforts, your services, your products, for mine, then the only way you can acquire the result of my efforts is to take them by force.
If you wish to acquire and keep wealth, then you must be a man of virtue. Men who lack courage, pride, self-esteem, have no moral sense of their right to the money they earn. They are not willing to defend their wealth as they would defend their life. Some even apologize for their wealth and they will not keep it long. For the swarms of looters and moochers will crawl out from under their rocks at the first smell of a man who apologizes for his wealth. The man who begs to be forgiven for his success, the looters and moochers will hasten to relieve him of the cause of his guilt. Like the TV evangelist who preached, “If your money bothers you, send it to me.†They will take his money and his life, and he deserves no better treatment.
Then emerges a class of wealthy people, looters of wealth, who use law to disarm their victims. They are leeches on society, hitchhikers who depend upon men of virtue to produce wealth, in order that they may loot it. In a moral society, laws are written to protect men of virtue from criminals. But when a society establishes looters-by-law and moochers-by-right, then you know that the tide has turned. When criminals use the law to loot their unarmed victims, then will arise a class of looters, each more savage and vicious than those before him. Then wealth goes not to ablest or most productive but to the most brutal and ruthless. The pickpocket gives way to the murderer. The creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties has taken over. When you see trade being done by order of law rather than by free choice, when you see production done not by consent but by compulsion, when you see that permission to produce needs to be obtained from men who produce nothing, when you see money flowing to those who deal in favors rather than in production, when men get rich by graft rather than by work, when laws don’t protect producers from looters but rather disarm producers and put them at the mercy of looters, when you see corruption being rewarded, and honesty becoming self-sacrifice, then you know that your society is doomed.
When true evil becomes the means of survival, then do not expect men to be good. Do not expect men to remain moral and sacrifice their lives to become fodder for the immoral. Do not expect able men to continue to produce when production goes unrewarded and looting is rewarded. If a society calls money evil, then do not be surprised if those men of ability, those competent and able men, those men capable of making money, those men of virtue, cease to produce. What man of virtue would choose to do something evil and disreputable?
When you call money evil, when you defame and demean the producers of wealth, when you seek to bind the producers of wealth to be enslaved to moochers and looters, then you deserve to live in an evil country. There was a time when wealth was produced from the labor of slaves, and then it was an evil. The man who sees the power of the dollar as being no different than the power of the whip, has never felt the whip upon his flesh. If money were not the tool by which men trade with one another, then there remains the whip and the gun. Which would you choose? There was a time when wealth was obtained by conquest and by force of arms, and then it was an evil. Always before in history, men thought of wealth as being fixed in quantity, to be siezed, to be begged, taken by conquest, inherited, shared, looted or bestowed upon one by favor. Only in our society, have men understood that wealth could be created. The very phrase “to make money†originated in America. In a free nation, in a country of reason, justice, and achievement, money is earned by production. In a free country, man’s mind is set free, and fortune can be achieved by work. In a free nation, money is no evil. Rather, it is the essence of human morality.