Some of you know I’ve recently gotten engaged, so I’m
cleaning out the basement to make room for our merged household. In going through some files from 40 years
ago, I found the following. I don’t remember
who it should be attributed to, but I hope you’ll find it as thought-provoking
as I did then, and do now.
“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 shape of the
principle that people 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. Money is made
possible only by the people who produce. Is this what you consider evil?
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. 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 are a token of
honor—your claim upon the energy of the people who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that
somewhere in the world around you there are people 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 of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare
tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking
brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat
without the knowledge left to you by people 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 the 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 the expense
of the weak? What strength do you
mean? It is not the strength of guns or
muscles. Wealth is the product of people’s
capacity to think. Then is money made by
the person 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 expense of the lazy?
Money is made—before it can be
looted or mooched—made by the effort of every honest person, each to the extent
of their ability. Honest people know they
can’t consume more than they have produced.
To trade by means of money is the code of the people of good
will. Money rests on the axiom that
every person is the owner of his or her mind and effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value
of your effort except the voluntary choice of the person who is willing to
trade you for their effort in return.
Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which
they are worth to the people who 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 people
must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury; for their gain, not
for 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 people is not the exchange of suffering, but
the exchange of goods!
Money demands that you sell not your weaknesses to others’
stupidity, but your talent to their
reason; it demands that you buy not the shoddiest that they offer, but the best
that your money can find. And when people
live by trade—with reason, not force, as their final arbiter—it is the best
product that wins, the best performance, the people of best judgment and
highest ability—and the degree of a person’s productiveness is the degree of their
reward. This is the code of existence
whose tool and symbol is money. Is this
what you consider evil?”
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