Another Money Speech Excerpt
Posted by CircuitGuy 9 years ago to The Gulch: General
Rich's recent post inspired me to read the speech and post another excerpt.
"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 the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers – as industrialists.
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 America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement."
Most of human history forms of slavery held sway more than trade as the motivation to produce. The size of the economic pie was a function of the amount of arable land and animals to work it. People divided the pie by force. When people trade freely, they develop amazing wealth that blows way past the wealth of kings in ancient times. Despite this enormous benefit, some people still say money as evil, a vestige of a time when wealth was limited, and divided up by aristocrats. Now that trading stuff has given us imaginable wealth, it's absurd to repeat a thousand-year-old absurdity that trading stuff (i.e. money) is bad.
"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 the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers – as industrialists.
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 America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement."
Most of human history forms of slavery held sway more than trade as the motivation to produce. The size of the economic pie was a function of the amount of arable land and animals to work it. People divided the pie by force. When people trade freely, they develop amazing wealth that blows way past the wealth of kings in ancient times. Despite this enormous benefit, some people still say money as evil, a vestige of a time when wealth was limited, and divided up by aristocrats. Now that trading stuff has given us imaginable wealth, it's absurd to repeat a thousand-year-old absurdity that trading stuff (i.e. money) is bad.
I also wonder when people say the love of money is the root of evil if they really mean the love of *wealth* is evil.
Money is just a way for people who want to trade things to trade even if they don't both have things the other wants. It doesn't force you to trade or to use it. It's amazingly powerful.
Why would loving wealth be any more evil than loving money? If money is the tool of exchange of productivity then wealth is the measure of one's productivity. If wealth is evil than so is success.
Envy is the word that fits. Envy of wealth. A "stolen concept"?
They have replaced "envy of wealth" with "love of money" as if the two were interchangeable to create doubt and suspicion within the unthinking. When the product of your success is being taken from you it is the silence and/or approval of the unthinking that makes it possible.