The World’s Best Speech on Money
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Atlas
Shrugged this is a novel by Ein Rand and it's probably one of the most written um I'm just now getting through this book an audio book for and I recently stumbled across What's called speech and I think it is one of the best descriptions of money I have ever heard so I thought it would be useful for me to come on the show today and just read it in at full it's about a 15minute speech roughly five pages in the book in this version of Atlas Shrug is between Pages 410 and 415 it's a fiction novel there's a conversation going on between characters and uh I'm just going to jump into this it's out of context but this is a long di tribe by one of the main characters named Francisco Dan conia and so I'm going to jump into this right now enjoy so you think that money is the root of all evil said Francisco Dan conia 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 money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value money is not the tool of the muchers who claim your product by Tears or of the looters who take it from you force money is made possible only by the produce is this what you consider evil when you accept money and 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 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 tomorrow those pieces of paper which should have been gold are a token of honor your claim upon the energy of the 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 for the root production take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of 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 weak what strength do you mean it is not the strength of guns or muscles wealth is the product of a man's 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 fools by the able at the expense of the incompetent by the ambitious at 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 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 Goodwill money rests on the axom 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 money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them but no more money permits no deals except those to Mutual benefit by the unforced Traders money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit not for their own injury or 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 goods money demands that you sell not your weakness to men's stupidity but reason it demands that you buy not the shoddiest they offer but the best your find and when men live by trade with reason not force as their final Arbiter it is the best product that wins the performance the man of the best judgment ability and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward this is the code of existence money is this which 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 scorge of The Men Who attempt to reverse the law of causality the men who seek to replace the Mind by seizing the product 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 seek money will not buy intelligence for the fool or admiration for the coward or incompetent the man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him with his money replacing his judgment ends up by becoming the victim 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 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 started if an heir is equal to his money it serves him if not it destroys him but you look on and you cry that money corrupted him did it or did he money do not envy a worthless Heir his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it do not think that it should have been d distributed among you loading the world with 50 parasites instead of one would not bring back the fortune money is a living power that root money will not serve the mind that cannot match it is this the reason why evil money is your means of survival the verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you life if the source is corrupt you have existence did you get your money by fraud by pandering to men's vices or 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 scorn if if so then your money will not give you a moment's or a Penny's worth Joy then all the things you buy will become not a tribute to you but a reproach not an achievement but a Shame then you'll scream that money is evil evil because it would not pinch hit self-respect evil because it would not depravity is this the root of your 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 vices money will not give you the unearned neither in matter nor in spirit is this the root of your hatred of or do 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 pass key to trade your effort for the effort of the men it's the person who would 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 characters the man who dams money has dishonorably the man who respects it has it run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil that sentence is the lepers Bell of an 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 to it men who have no courage Pride or self-esteem men who have no moral sense of their right to 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 the natural bait for the Swarms of looters that stand 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 money the men who are The Hitchhikers of virtue in a moral Society these are the criminals and the statutes are written them but when a society establishes criminals by right and looters by law men who use Force to seize the wealth of disarm armed victims then money becomes Avenger such looters believe it safe to Rob defenseless men once they've passed 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 brutality when force is the standard the murder murer wins over the pickpocket and then that Society vanishes in a Slaughter do you wish to know whether money money is the barometer of a virtue when you see that trading is done compulsion and 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 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 you see corruption being rewarded and honesty self-sacrifice you may know that your money is so Noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not 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 a existence destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile 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 produced paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to 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 overdrawn when you have made evil the means of survival do not expect men to good do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose 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 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 money you look upon money as the Savages did before you and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of 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 to keep the producers bound demean defamed Honor that phrase about the evil of money which you mouth with such 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 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 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 there was for the first and only time in history a country of money and I have no higher more reverent tribute to pay to 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 being 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 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 had ever 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 has to be created the words to make money hold the morality yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the lutters continents Now The lutters Credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a Hallmark of Shame your Prosperity as guilt your greatest men the industrialists as black guards and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor the labor of whip driven slaves Egypt the Roder 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 will until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good you ask destruction when money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another then men become the tool tools of men blood whips and guns or dollars take choice there is no other and your time
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