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Making money holds the essence of human morality

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Hazmatac

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In OPAR page 402, Peikoff quotes Rand. The quote is:

"If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose---because it contains all the others---the fact that they ere the people ho created the phrase "to make money." No other language or nation had ever used these ords before; men had alays thought of ealth as a static quantity---to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted, or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that ealth has to be created. The words "to make money" hold the essnce of human morality"

(bold mine)

I was wondering why Rand thought that making money was the essence of morailty. Is it the idea that you do good and get rewarded compaired to the good you do? That's what it seems like to me.

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Leave out any reference to the idea of reward, which relates to justice. All the virtues can be related to each other but it is confusing to define productivity in terms of justice.

Wealth is production, the product of productivity.

If one isn't productive, one will be driven to live by "seizing, begging, inheriting, sharing, looting, or obtaining as a favor".

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I was wondering why Rand thought that making money was the essence of morality. Is it the idea that you do good and get rewarded compared to the good you do? That's what it seems like to me.

I wouldn't put it that way. Here's my analysis. "To make money" means to create wealth. Wealth creation is the process of rearranging things in reality through a process of rationally-guided action so as to better serve human life. And since for Rand human life is the standard of moral value, "making money" in the above sense can be viewed as the centerpiece of morality.

Another quote from Rand that expresses the same idea in a somewhat different way is "My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute." In the money speech she calls it "making money"; in this quote she calls it "productive achievement". The underlying identification is the same.

As is often the case, Rand is making a much deeper observation than is apparent from a superficial reading.

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"...The words "to make money" hold the essnce of human morality"

Always look for a contrast by asking, "as opposed to what?" As in:

To make money is the essence of morality, as opposed to what?

If money, wealth, or values in general are not made, how else are they to be obtained? And why?

Do values need to be created or are they just seized by force?

Do values need to be created or are they somehow just possessed by some others leaving us no choice but to beg to mooch from those who have them?

How do money, wealth, and/or values in general come into existence? Is money just here, waiting for us to take? Where do the goods and services we need to sustain our lives come from? What is the cause of values in general?

The essence of morality is discovered by examining the nature of man and the nature of values as such.

In Ayn Rand’s book, “The Virtue of Selfishness,” she begins not by asking, which values men should pursue, but by asking, “What are values and why does man need them?”

When you examine the nature of values as such (money, food, clothing, shelter, friends, etc.), and you examine the nature of men as such, you will discover men possess a certain constellation of attributes; which in turn give rise to the need for both the concept of value (potential goods and/or services) as-well-as real-concrete values (actual goods and/or services).

You will find that values must be “made” as a consequence of a whole constellation of factors about man’s mental and physical nature, as-well-as the nature of the external world as such.

You will find that values must be “caused,” i.e., they must be produced or “made,” and brought into existence. You will find there is a long causal chain required to produce any given value, and that that chain of causes begins inside any given man’s mind, and is completed and/or enacted in the physical world via some set of actions.

Specifically:

You will find first and for most a given man must bring his mind into conscious focus, and then he must choose to sustain an active process of thought about himself and what he needs to be doing. You will find that no one else can do this for him and why.

You will find that he must make a judgment about what constitutes a value in general, and also in his present context of knowledge, what the right value(s) is, which he should be pursuing over the short and/or long run.

You will find that all the mental actions (choices, judgments, evaluations, and assessments), are a precondition for any subsequent work to “make” the actual concrete good and/or service he’s judged he needs.

You will find that even once he make the selection of, which value(s) he wants to pursue and why, he must continuously reaffirm the choice, and continuously sustain both the mental and physical actions needed to finish “making” the value.

You will find that all of these requirements are necessary for producing any value of any scale, weight, size, shape, or kind.

Finally, you will find that if a given person did not choose to enact and sustain the necessary conditions to bring a given value into existence; that some other man had to.

Therefore, implied in the action of “making” a single penny, and/or “making” any value regardless of the type, requires the exercise of all aspects of a given man’s moral knowledge and moral know-how.

The moral is the chosen. The moral is the “made.” The moral is the willful exercise of one’s mind in application to solving the problem of living qua man.

Regards,

Michael

Edited by phibetakappa
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I want to add a link to this youtube rant http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj5IV23g-fE.

I will pass over the intellectual property issue at play here, that is just too easy. I loved his remark about whoring. Giving your work away in exchange for non-monetary advantages doesn't make you less of a whore. Which means whoring doesn't really mean anything, it is a slur against the concept of trading and earning.

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