Vitan

Just to clarify there is a difference between the hardworking money-makers and the lazy money-appropriators. It is just difficult to identify them from each other in reality because of the state that the world is in. The money-appropriators exist only through the work of others, some form of pull in the government for example. The money-makers work hard to actually produce value.

Self-awareness is just awareness or perception of a fact of reality, self. Man can perceive more, he can perceive concepts from his percepts. Man uses his concepts to broaden his awareness/perception of reality but the faculty is the same, looking at reality. Yes this value (to pursue productive values) is a good value because this value in particular is not produced by that man, he cannot change the need for this value it is out of his control. It is not produced by him but by the nature of living organisms. His life or death nature is producing the need for this value from the onset for him to pursue.

How I understand it is that man's consciousness is the faculty of perceiving reality. The only proper way to use this faculty to further one's life is to direct/focus this faculty on the pursuit/production of rational(meaning true to reality) values. To be in control of your consciousness, you must be directing it towards some focal point. You must focus. Otherwise, if you are not directing your consciousness then you are not exerting any control over it and your mind jumps to any whim that may stimulate you for the moment. The only place to direct your focus, so that you may benefit from this reality, is towards the pursuit/production of rational values in this reality. This is where the root of production lies philosophically, to maintain control of your mind and to ensure you are capable of receiving the values needed to sustain your life. It is difficult to examine these affluent money-makers or money-appropriators of the past because of how much our history's social systems were open to slavery. Be it the form of open slavery or stealing someone's product or productive effort to give to someone else, or chaining down a producer so that the less productive can be allowed to put forth a lazier effort. The more slavery is an option the less the slave owner has to do; he need only find a way to capture more slaves and even his slaves can do that for him. For example, the idolized monarchs and their crazed lust for conquest. The more independent the man is, the more work is demanded of him. And that is fine because since the source of his values are from his own effort, his own reasoning, he can be certain that his values are possible in this reality because they are based on fact, not on another persons beliefs that may or may not be based on facts. Even if this man is wrong about the facts, he will still profit because he will learn the truth and then he can try a new approach or pursue a different value. The world to this kind of man is knowable and logical since man can perceive reality he can identify the nature of his values and therefore control them. As oppose to the slave owner whose source of values is the slave to continue to be afraid of his wipe. What if the slave demanded, give me freedom or give me death. The incompetent employee whose source of values is the boss believing that he is competent. What if the boss discovers the employee couldn't program his way out of a paper bag. The world to this kind of man is unknowable and can be illogical because his values are other men. He will never be able to perceive directly another man's thoughts and he will never be able to completely control another man because at any time the person can change their mind. In every form of slavery there is, at the very least, a sliver of submission. Even if the choice is submit or die, there is at least the choice.