Capitalism, A victim to the pragmatic age. By Jason Knavel

For centuries, the battle for Capitalism has been in a flux of social, political, and practical contention. Manny raise questions like, Is Capitalism still practical? Does it work? Does it serve the public’s best interest? Throughout history the vast majority of individuals have pursued the answers to these questions by focusing solely on the correlation between Capitalism and its effect towards the “public good.” From Glen Beck’s programs and the propositions from conservatives; to economists ranging from Adam Smith to Thomas Sowell; they all engage in a struggle aiming to prove that the overall practicality of Capitalism gives promise to greater prosperity and a better society.
Today, it is generally concluded that Capitalism, has positive and prosperous results towards the good of the public, but sadly this seems to be Capitalism’s only defense.

With practicality as the only standard of value, Capitalists today are either inadvertently or purposely proclaiming that free markets are virtuous only if they assume the duty of upholding the “public good.” One example is the idea that private property is simply a trusteeship for the benefit of society, or that property rights ought to be protected, unless of course there is a national emergency of essential need. These ideas however, represent a massive betrayal to Capitalism’s own principles.

Because the right to life is the source of all other rights, for without life no other rights would exist. And because a man cannot survive by wishes or by physical movements alone; one must rely on his mind and his work in order to survive i.e. man must support his own life through the product of his own effort. Ergo, if man cannot dispose of the product of his effort as he pleases, he cannot dispose of his life. Therefore, without property rights, no other rights can be practiced. (Rand 18) By granting validity to the claim that free markets i.e. private property, exist for the publics good, one therefore grants the public permission to concede “need” as a gateway to property; thereby sanctioning a mystic morality in which men deal with one another not as traders, but as parasites. A morality where a man is not an end in himself, but is an asset to the needy, a catalyst to the public good, a means to any looters end, a sacrificial animal. Although most Capitalists would never openly support such an altruist morality, they continue to indulge in doublethink by supporting free markets, because they seem to give way to greater prosperity; while evading the stipulations that Capitalism requires to survive.

Capitalists today are either unable or unwilling to fight for the proper justification of the most profound economic system in history, and as a consequence Capitalism is quickly disappearing from our world. This historical phenomenon of pragmatic epistemology and of intellectual abnegation can be accredited to Capitalism’s very supporters. Historically, almost every proponent of Capitalism has evaded the fact that its expediency is only the result of its practice. There is a reason for their evasion; it’s because most individuals fail to integrate a proper philosophical foundation into their support of Capitalism. However, there was one philosopher who did not indulge in such an evasion, she rose wielding a radical and appropriate defense for Capitalism, a double-edged sword per se, of philosophical integrity and moral validity. The philosopher was Ayn Rand, the sword was Atlas Shrugged.

In 1957 Ayn Rand’s masterwork Atlas Shrugged, presented a philosophy for living on earth. It approached the justification of laissez-faire-Capitalism in a way that had never been done before. The first fundamental difference was that she supported Capitalism with a philosophical foundation. She then revealed that the justification of Capitalism was not in the popular claim that it is the best way to achieve the “public good” but because it’s a moral ideal. She showed that Capitalism is the only politico-economic system that emulates the proper role of government, that it’s the only system parallel to a human’s rational nature, and that the ruling principle of Capitalism makes it the only moral system ever to exist.

Because politics is based off of three other branches of philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics; any attempt to skip these components in the process of supporting Capitalism only dams its progress. In Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand presented the moral-philosophical foundation that Capitalism could not survive without. Ayn depicted a reality of objectivity; with reason as an absolute; and where ones own happiness is the only moral purpose of ones life. It is these three components: objective reality, reason, and self-interest, that Capitalists today fail to recognize. However, if acknowledged, this philosophy then reveals the proper justification of Capitalism, its morality:

Rand, through the character “John Galt” explains to readers that of all the things that are open to disagreement, there’s one thing that isn’t: the initiation of physical force on individuals. She also explained that the only way mans rights can be violated, is through the initiation of force. Thus, because no individual has the right to initiate force against another, the same is true concerning a collective, in any private or public context. Seeing as it’s immoral to initiate force against an individual for any reason, it’s also immoral to initiate force for reasons of the public good. Any attempt to benefit the “public good” is an immoral effort to provide an advantage to one collection of individuals at the cost of another. In a free society i.e. one that practices Capitalism, no individual’s profit comes at the expense of another. In this type of society, the proper role of government is to protect individual rights. In order to do this the government does not allow citizens to use physical force against each other, and the Law prohibits the government from using force against citizens, except in retaliation against those who unjustly initiate its use. This would be ensured by means of the police, the military, and in the event of any private disputes, the courts. Capitalism therefore ensures the essential components of freedom and morality: the protection of individual rights. This ensures a code that guarantees every man the right to be fully free to act on his own judgment and for his own sake. In this type of free Capitalist system every man is able to interact with his fellow beings by means of reason, through voluntary consent and contract; each according to his own rational judgment, with his own happiness and pleasure as his motivation. (Biddle, 2009)

The reason the proper role of government is as such, is due to Capitalisms core and underling principle: Justice. The man, who works to sustain his own life by means of the product of his own effort, is and should be entitled to any profit he makes in his process of production. Under Capitalism, and only under Capitalism, is he is entitled to his profit. It is ones moral right to produce a value and to trade that value for value, and enjoy the fruits of ones labor, not because one is entitled to that enjoyment, but because one has earned it, and therefore, entitled to enjoy its benefits. Capitalist societies allow man the freedom to dispose of his property in any manner he chooses, because the very essence of ones work is the selfish and moral pursuit of ones own pleasure and profit. Some treat these virtues—pleasure and profit— as shameful fixations. These men evade the fact that a skyscraper does not erect itself by magic; that an engine does not run on wishes; that food will never make its way from the fields to ones plate by itself. They evade the fact that man’s mind is the root of all production. They disregard the fact that the profit one earns through ones own blood sweat and labor is Justice.

Perhaps the most important validation of Capitalism is the fact that it is the only system in existence that is primed to the life of a rational being. The most basic motive of Atlas Shrugged was to introduce the nature of mans mind, of its proper place in the realm of existence, and its proper role in reality. Rand explained that man is a rational being, and that his rational faculty is his only means of survival, and that production is a moral aspiration. She taught that reason is the only source of granting knowledge to any thinker. The only means by which one can perceive reality; reason is the only process in which one is able to make judgments concerning ethics, art, politics, and therefore ones only channel to action i.e. his only channel to live. Reason is a man’s most basic need for survival. However, the ability to exercise ones rational facility is not an automatic process, and because thinking, and action are properties of the individual, the men who think must be free from the interference from those who evade that effort. Capitalism grants this freedom. (Rand, 17)

In Atlas Shrugged, Capitalism is depicted as an ideal so superlative, that only the books heroes were noble enough to grasp its true meaning. In Galt’s Gulch, their Capitalist society granted the heroes protection from the whips, the guns and the orders of the irrational brutes, from the violation of their most precious rights, from the theft and fraud of the moochers and looters, and most importantly, their right to ones own reason, or in other words their right to live. Capitalism’s infallible morality—of freedom, and justice— are the crux of it’s justification; prosperity, wealth, and the “public good”. . .these are only it’s consequences.

Work Cited

Rand, Ayn. (1957). Atlas shrugged. United States: Random House.

Rand, Ayn. Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. CENTENNIAL EDITION. NY,NY,USA: SIGNET, 1967. 18, 17. Print.

C. Rick Koerber , . "Re-Launching Free Capitalist Radio." The Free Capitalist Radio. Free Capitalist Daily, January 21, 2010 . Web. 28 Aug 2010. .

Biddle, C. (2009). Capitalism and the moral high ground. The Objective Standard, 3(4), Retrieved from http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2008-winter/capitalism-moral-high-ground.asp#_ednref17

Healthcare Part I: How did we get here?

As a brief introduction I will let my readers know that this is the first of five posts that will be aimed at analyzing the current issue of Healthcare. These posts are primarily for my own pleasure, for the purpose of elucidation and crystallizing my own opinions. Informing anyone who reads this is only a secondary consequence.

Anytime a person gets sick or infected it is important to diagnose—before a remedial process can begin— what the sickness is, and how it came into existence. It is no surprise that the same is true when analyzing the problem of our current healthcare system. Therefore, the first and initial procedure in this investigation is to discover how our nation got into a Healthcare catastrophe in the first place:

However, today this step is being seriously evaded.

It is ironic that today, millions of citizens are rioting at town-hall meetings and at tea-party’s all clamoring that they don’t want Washington bureaucrats intervening in their health care—without realizing just how much the bureaucrats already interfere.

Today, everyone seems to have a different take on how to solve America’s healthcare problem. But notice that every solution offered involves some elaborate new system of government controls. Different proposals include a “public option,” mandatory insurance for individuals, government-supported health-care exchanges, government-sponsored “efficacy research,” government-supported co-ops, and as many other ways of dictating consumer and producer behavior as can fit in a 1,000-page bill.

However more regulation will not fix our Healthcare problems.

Currently, everyone has failed to see that the reason our healthcare system does not work is because The U.S. government has had its hands in every aspect of the system for decades—regulating and dictating everything from the insurance we receive to the drugs available to us.

With the vast amount of already existing regulation showing its true colors-of failure--More government controls, we are told, are necessary to solve problems such as skyrocketing health-insurance prices, lack of competition among insurance companies, the inability of workers to keep their insurance policy when switching jobs, etc.

Really?

If more controls are necessary to stimulate good business, Then why do giants of the computer industry like Google, Microsoft and Apple compete vigorously without a “public option”? Why do we have such plentiful, affordable food without a government “food insurance mandate”? Why does laser eye-surgery, which is not covered by Medicare or government insurance laws, get better and cheaper all the time, while the price of health services the government is most involved in, skyrockets?

The answer is that these other markets are (comparatively) left free--while health care has been manipulated by government “solutions” for decades. Thus, our healthcare discussion should focus, not on how government controls can solve our problems, but on how government controls have caused our problems:

First consider the general phenomenon of skyrocketing prices for health insurance. The ways in which the government drives up prices are essentially endless, but here are a few. [By Alex Epstein, ARI]

• State insurance-mandates force companies and individuals to buy policies covering all sorts of expensive treatments they wouldn’t otherwise buy coverage for: chiropractic care, psychiatric care, prenatal care. Every such “benefit” means higher costs. Those who would prefer just to purchase insurance against medical catastrophe and pay for everything else out of pocket are prohibited from doing so.

• More broadly, since the 1940s, on the idea that health care is a “right” (I’ll focus more in this issue in Part III of this series) that others must provide, the government has made Americans collectively responsible for each other’s health care, whether through collectivized employer plans or through Medicare; thus, on average, “every time an American spends a dollar on physicians' services,” explains health economist John Goodman, “only 10 cents is paid out of pocket; the remainder is paid by a third party.”

People consuming medical services on other people’s dime consume a lot more. Prices are further driven up by numerous restrictions on the supply of medical professionals, such as protectionist licensing laws that prevent doctor’s assistants, nurse practitioners, nurses, and paramedics from competing with doctors on services they are well qualified to perform (fixing minor bone breaks, diagnosing the flu, etc.).

When supply is artificially limited, and demand artificially increases, prices explode. (Any system promising “universal care” experiences this--the much-vaunted “affordable” European system just deals with it by severe rationing.)

In addition Here are four major governmental healthcare problems, brought up by Jeff Scialabba, a writer for the “Voices for Reason”, an affiliate with the Ayn Rand Institute, and the Ayn Rand Center for Individual rights. [Note: these next four points are not my own]

1. To begin, let’s take a look at one of the prominent features of our health care system: employer-sponsored health insurance. Businesses large and small struggle with the cost of providing health insurance for their employees. Employees begrudge a lack of options and volatility in coverage caused by employers looking for cheaper plans. People everywhere fear losing their job—or alternatively, feel trapped in jobs they dislike—for fear of losing coverage. So why do we have employer-sponsored health insurance? Employers don’t pay for our car or homeowner’s insurance, so why does over 60 percent of the population—including over 90 percent of the privately-insured under age 65—rely on their employer for health insurance? Essentially, it is because the U.S. government has incentivized and forced that outcome for more than sixty years.

Employer sponsored healthcare is a phenomenon that was institutionalized beginning with the Stabilization Act of 1942. This bill, which remained in effect throughout World War II, gave the government enormous control over the economy and imposed sweeping wage and price freezes across the U.S. Although it forbade wage increases, the law did not prohibit the expansion of employee benefits, and businesses began to offer health benefits as a means of attracting and retaining employees. In a country with a workforce depleted from the war, offering health benefits was a way of circumventing the wage freeze to gain a competitive advantage in the battle for scarce labor.

A further incentive for employers to provide health benefits came in the form of a 1943 tax court ruling, later codified in the Internal Revenue Code in 1954. This ruling stated that insurance premiums made by employers on behalf of employees were not taxable, meaning it was now economically advantageous for businesses to offer tax-exempt health benefits in place of taxable wages. Such an exemption, however, was not—and never has been—extended to individuals purchasing health insurance on their own. Thus through tax policy, the U.S. government created not only a strong incentive for employers to offer health insurance as a benefit, but also a strong incentive for individuals to seek insurance through their employer.

These tax incentives, perhaps more than any other government intervention, have ensured that employer-sponsored insurance has become the fixture of the U.S. health care system that it is today. But they alone are not the whole story. Where these incentives are not enough to induce a business to offer health benefits, legislation often forces businesses to provide them. Such legislation includes federal laws such as the Taft-Hartley Labor Relations Act of 1947, which requires businesses to negotiate with unions for health benefits, and state laws such as those in Massachusetts, where businesses are fined unless they provide coverage for their employees.

2. Another important feature of health insurance in the United States that has been fueled by government intervention is the fact that it is almost always comprehensive.

Contrary to other kinds of insurance, which typically cover only catastrophic expenses, our health plans cover routine care such as annual check-ups. Homeowners insurance covers fire damage but not your monthly electricity bill, car insurance protects us against the cost of an accident, not an oil change. Yet health insurance pays for our physicals and basic tests. How come?

In the 1930s, the United States was mired in the Great Depression and the health insurance market was still in its infancy. Out of fear of bills going unpaid, hospitals and doctors formed their own insurance companies. These companies, which would later become Blue Cross and Blue Shield, offered pre-paid plans that provided comprehensive coverage of services provided by any hospital or doctor within the network. The U.S. government laid the groundwork for this comprehensive model to become the U.S. standard by granting non-profit status to the Blues, which exempted them from taxes and insurance regulations. In the emerging health insurance industry, this made the Blues’ model of comprehensive insurance profitable and gave them a huge advantage over other insurers, who were compelled to offer, at great expense, the same kind of comprehensive insurance package to remain competitive. Unsurprisingly, the Blues experienced explosive growth, covering 59 percent of the insured by 1945. The government further served to entrench the comprehensive model as the U.S. standard when it established Medicare and Medicaid in the 1960s, and adopted it as their basic mechanism.

Thus, thanks primarily to government interference, about 95 percent of the insured population in America—roughly 240 million people—is covered by comprehensive health insurance provided by a third party. While there is nothing inherently wrong with comprehensive or third party-provided insurance (provided the third-party isn’t the government and provided these features are voluntarily offered and voluntarily chosen), the fact that this form of insurance has come to dominate the insurance market through government intervention is a major cause of our current health care crisis.

3. A big source of the problems currently plaguing our health care system is the fact that most of us—as consumers of medical services—are completely cut off from any concern with (and often from knowledge of) their prices. All we ask, typically, is: “Is it covered?” As I discussed in points 1 and 2, government intervention has led to a system where 95 percent of the insured population in America—some 240 million people—have comprehensive health insurance provided by a third party (either their employer or the government).

With insurance covering all kinds of medical services and the premiums paid by someone else, Americans have little financial incentive to curtail doctors’ visits for minor ailments, to question whether a test is worth its cost, or to seek out cost-effective care. Before we buy virtually anything else, we ask ourselves whether it is worth its price and whether there might be a better deal elsewhere. When we go to the doctor, we don’t even see the price until it shows up on the invoice—with all but a small co-pay or deductible (relative to the total bill) paid by the insurer. History has shown that this system increases demand for health care, encourages wasteful consumption and ultimately increases costs for third-party insurers.

The results of this model are plainly evident today. Medicare and Medicaid cost hundreds of billions of dollars each year and are projected to consume ever-greater swaths of the federal budget in the decades to come. In the private sector, where businesses provide health insurance to 158 million Americans, premium increases force employers to cut staff, reduce wages or drop health benefits altogether. Businesses locked into labor contracts risk bankruptcy. Laid-off workers struggle to purchase health insurance on their own, as they must now replace the untaxed health benefits they received through their job by purchasing individual insurance on their own that is not tax-deductible and—thanks to 70 years of the government’s favoring third-party insurance at the expense of individual insurance—more expensive and more limited in coverage than employer plans.

Supporters of the proposed reforms believe these problems can only be solved by expanding government’s role in health care. But this argument ignores the role that government already plays in ensuring the dominance of third-party, comprehensive insurance in United States. Moreover, as we’ll see in part 4, it ignores that government expansion has been tried time and again as a solution to perceived problems in the health care system—and time and again those efforts have only made things worse.

4. We see that many of the problems in our health care system are the result of the dominance of third-party comprehensive insurance—a dominance which has arisen from decades of government interventions favoring this kind of insurance. But as these interventions are not new, neither are the problems we are presently facing. On the contrary, our government has been attempting to solve our health care problems for as long as it has been creating them—and time and again these “solutions” have left our health care system worse off.

In recent decades, for instance, state governments have increasingly looked at insurance mandates as a means of expanding coverage to groups that have difficulty obtaining it. Broadly, mandates are requirements—backed by government force—that insurers cover specific medical expenses (e.g., chiropractors, treatment for lyme disease) or patient populations (e.g., continuing coverage for laid-off employees). Mandates are an extremely myopic political tool: they force insurers into a money-losing endeavor, who respond by increasing insurance premiums or decreasing coverage in another area—creating another problem for politicians to solve by passing more mandates.

Unfortunately, mandates have proven irresistible to politicians, who disingenuously portray themselves as righteous crusaders for the cause of a suffering group (who just happens to have a strong lobby), while blaming the lack of coverage on “greedy” insurance companies, one of their favorite political whipping-boys. With the detrimental effects of mandates hidden from view, a veritable mandate armada has descended upon the health insurance industry. The number of state mandates has steadily increased from 7 in 1965 to more than 2,100 today. Some states have imposed such an onerous slew of mandates that hordes of insurers have packed up and left the state, as for example, in Kentucky, Maine and Washington.

Among the hardest hit by mandates are the young and healthy who are either unemployed or in a job that does not provide health benefits. This is a low-income group that would benefit most from insurance that provided coverage only for catastrophic events and carried a high deductible and a low premium. In large part because of mandates, however, this type of insurance is virtually nonexistent. These individuals must purchase high-priced insurance that covers medical services which will likely never be used, or go uninsured, as many do.

We now face the perverted end result of mandates and other interventions having priced so many out of the market for health insurance: the idea that an “individual mandate” must be imposed to force the uninsured to buy government-chosen insurance regardless of what they judge to be in their best interest. And one of the biggest supporters of the individual mandate is the insurance companies. While this may seem ironic, this sort of thing is, as Ayn Rand observed, the routine order of business when government intervenes in the economy:

When government controls are introduced into a free economy, they create economic dislocations, hardships, and problems which, if the controls are not repealed, necessitate still further controls, which necessitate still further controls, etc. Thus a chain reaction is set up: the victimized groups seek redress by imposing controls on the profiteering groups, who retaliate in the same manner, on an ever widening scale.” (“The Cold Civil War, in The Ayn Rand Column)

This is just a fraction of the story of how government has mangled the market for health care--a story any honest discussion of health care needs to study and learn from.

Intellect, is it possible?

A group of Internet acquaintances and I were discussing the problem of education in our society. The discussion progressed, through much debate, to a point in which one individual admitted that, there were some out there who did not want to learn, and that intelligence was disappearing in our society; others agreed, as do I.
They all demanded a logical solution to this problem One man admitted that he would write an essay on the subject.

This is my response:

P.s. Much of the logic I use was founded by the Philosopher, Ayn Rand. If I'm not mistaken, all of the points are hers, the conclusions are my own.
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The problem is that you want to education people, in a society that does not allow for that process to be completed…. Try and follow this logical syllogism:

I will begin with to axiomatic definitions:

• Knowledge” is . . . a mental grasp of a fact(s) of reality, reached either by perceptual observation or by a process of reason based on perceptual observation.

• Reason is a faculty that man has to exercise by choice. Thinking is not an automatic function. In any hour and issue of his life, man is free to think or to evade that effort. Therefore, Man’s essential characteristic is his rational faculty. Ergo, Man’s mind is his basic means of survival—his only means of gaining knowledge . . . .

1. The only purpose of education is to teach a student how to live his life—by developing his mind and equipping him to deal with reality. The training he needs is theoretical, i.e., conceptual. He has to be taught to think, to understand, to integrate, to prove. He has to be taught the essentials of the knowledge discovered in the past—and he has to be equipped to acquire further knowledge by his own effort.

Conclusion: Education is aimed at arming a student with the essentials he needs in order to grasp knowledge. Knowledge is impossible to grasp without the application of Reason. And Reason is impossible to have without volitional cognitive thought i.e. reason is impossible without people choosing to think……

This is where your problem occurs: “How do we get people to think?” “To want to know things?”.. . . . This is the question you are asking now…. The answer is to free man’s mind: By restoring intelligence and intellect to our society:

2. In order to sustain its life, every living species has to follow a certain course of action required by its nature. The action required to sustain human life is primarily intellectual: everything man needs has to be discovered by his mind and produced by his effort. Production is the application of reason to the problem of survival.

Humans survive by means of man-made products, and . . . the source of man-made products is man’s intelligence. Intelligence is the ability to grasp the facts of reality and to deal with them long-range (i.e., conceptually).

Conclusion: In order to survive, to produce, and to educate people, intellect must be present, but today it isn’t! Right now your saying, “Jason, we already knew this, what’s your point? My point is Intelligence is impossible to spread in today’s society:

3. Intelligence is the ability to deal with a broad range of abstractions. Whatever a child’s natural endowment, the use of intelligence is an acquired skill. It has to be acquired by a child’s own effort and automatized by his own mind, but adults can help or hinder him in this crucial process.

However, Intelligence is not an exclusive monopoly of genius; it is an attribute of all men, and the differences are only a matter of degree. If conditions of existence are destructive to genius, they are destructive to every man, each in proportion to his intelligence. If genius is penalized, so is the faculty of intelligence in every other man. There is only this difference: the average man does not possess the genius’s power of self-confident resistance, and will break much faster; he will give up his mind, in hopeless bewilderment, under the first touch of pressure.

On the axiom of the primacy of existence, intelligence is man’s most precious attribute. But it has no place in a society ruled by the primacy of consciousness: it (intelligence) is such a society’s deadliest enemy, and is therefore sought out and destroyed.

Conclusion: We life in such a society ruled by the primacy of consciousness; this initiates a criterion of morality that is destructive to mans mind: and therefore intellect is destroyed. How is mans mind being destroyed? Through force:

4. Whatever may be open to disagreement, there is one act of evil that may not, the act that no man may commit against others and no man may sanction or forgive. So long as men desire to live together, no man may initiate—do you hear me? no man may start—the use of physical force against others.
To interpose the threat of physical destruction between a man and his perception of reality, is to negate and paralyze his means of survival; to force him to act against his own judgment, is like forcing him to act against his own sight. Whoever, to whatever purpose or extent, initiates the use of force, is a killer acting on the premise of death in a manner wider than murder: the premise of destroying man’s capacity to live.
Do not open your mouth to tell me that your mind has convinced you of your right to force my mind. Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins. When you declare that men are irrational animals and propose to treat them as such, you define thereby your own character and can no longer claim the sanction of reason—as no advocate of contradictions can claim it. There can be no “right” to destroy the source of rights, the only means of judging right and wrong: the mind.
To force a man to drop his own mind and to accept your will as a substitute, with a gun in place of a syllogism, with terror in place of proof, and death as the final argument—is to attempt to exist in defiance of reality. Reality demands of man that he act for his own rational interest; your gun demands of him that he act against it. Reality threatens man with death if he does not act on his rational judgment; you threaten him with death if he does. You place him in a world where the price of his life is the surrender of all the virtues required by life—and death by a process of gradual destruction is all that you and your system will achieve, when death is made to be the ruling power, the winning argument in a society of men.
Be it a highwayman who confronts a traveler with the ultimatum: “Your money or your life,” or a politician who confronts a country with the ultimatum: “Your children’s education or your life,” the meaning of that ultimatum is: “Your mind or your life”—and neither is possible to man without the other.

Conclusion: Force is immoral, and it destroys mans mind.

5. As men continue to learn, and produce, in order to sustain their own lives… an all out war is being waged in hopes of destroying that process:

Today, our society deems it moral, or appropriate to punish success by taking from the rich and giving to the poor, to damn intellect by taxing overwhelmingly the successful, to destroy the men of the mind, by deeming it acceptable to initiate force upon the minds of men…. Thereby destroying the mind.

Conclusion: The mind is being destroyed by the initiation of Physical force upon individuals….
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Final Conclusion to the syllogism:

Mans mind is the key to reason, which gives way to knowledge, which grants intellect. Through the initiation of force upon individuals, mans mind is being destroyed; Thereby slowly destroying everything that follows.

Today, intelligence is neither recognized nor rewarded, but is being systematically extinguished in a growing flood of brazenly flaunted irrationality, of malicious force, and of irrational brutes. The freedom of mans mind has been compromised, and we are now feeling its disastrous consequences.
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*Solution to the original question: “How do we get people to think?” “To want to know things?”:

In this type of society i.e. the one we live in today, there is no solution to the problem: “How does one restore intelligence?” It is impossible to do so… The Question we should be asking is “How do we free mans mind?” Because only then can intelligence be saved.

In order to fix this, an entire philosophical renaissance is required... A return to Reason! To Freedom! To Life!

How can this be accomplished?......... Who is John Galt? [That was a Hint]

Read Atlas Shrugged! Begin to live a Rational life, and urge others to do so… Protect freedom and Capitalism… Protect mans mind! Only then will you be able to restore sanctity to the intellect that men deserve!

Philosophy, who needs it?

I cannot stress how important and influential this address is. Please read or listen to it with an Active Mind! For the answer to the original question is: YOU DO!

This is Philosophy: Who Needs It

Ayn Rand, American Fiction Writer

Address To The Graduating Class Of
The United States Military Academy at West Point
New York — March 6, 1974

An Audio version of this speech can be found here

Since I am a fiction writer, let us start with a short short story. Suppose that you are an astronaut whose spaceship gets out of control and crashes on an unknown planet. When you regain consciousness and find that you are not hurt badly, the first three questions in or mind would be: Where am I? How can I discover it? What should I do?

You see unfamiliar vegetation outside, and there is air to breathe; the sunlight seems paler than you remember it and colder. You turn to look at the sky, but stop. You are struck by a sudden feeling: if you don't look, you won't have to know that you are, perhaps, too far from the earth and no return is possible; so long as you don't know it, you are free to believe what you wish — and you experience a foggy, pleasant, but somehow guilty, kind of hope.

You turn to your instruments: they may be damaged, you don't know how seriously. But you stop, struck by a sudden fear: how can you trust these instruments? How can you be sure that they won't mislead you? How can you know whether they will work in a different world? You turn away from the instruments.

Now you begin to wonder why you have no desire to do anything. It seems so much safer just to wait for something to turn up somehow; it is better, you tell yourself, not to rock the spaceship. Far in the distance, you see some sort of living creatures approaching; you don't know whether they are human, but they walk on two feet. They, you decide, will tell you what to do.

You are never heard from again.

This is fantasy, you say? You would not act like that and no astronaut ever would? Perhaps not. But this is the way most men live their lives, here, on earth.

Most men spend their days struggling to evade three questions, the answers to which underlie man's every thought, feeling and action, whether he is consciously aware of it or not: Where am I? How do I know it? What should I do?

By the time they are old enough to understand these questions, men believe that they know the answers. Where am I? Say, in New York City. How do I know it? It's self-evident. What should I do? Here, they are not too sure — but the usual answer is: whatever everybody does. The only trouble seems to be that they are not very active, not very confident, not very happy — and they experience, at times, a causeless fear and an undefined guilt, which they cannot explain or get rid of.

They have never discovered the fact that the trouble comes from the three unanswered questions — and that there is only one science that can answer them: philosophy.

Philosophy studies the fundamental nature of existence, of man, and of man's relationship to existence. As against the special sciences, which deal only with particular aspects, philosophy deals with those aspects of the universe which pertain to everything that exists. In the realm of cognition, the special sciences are the trees, but philosophy is the soil which makes the forest possible.

Philosophy would not tell you, for instance, whether you are in New York City or in Zanzibar (though it would give you the means to find out). But here is what it would tell you: Are you in a universe which is ruled by natural laws and, therefore, is stable, firm, absolute — and knowable? Or are you in an incomprehensible chaos, a realm of inexplicable miracles, an unpredictable, unknowable flux, which your mind is impotent to grasp? Are the things you see around you real — or are they only an illusion? Do they exist independent of any observer — or are they created by the observer? Are they the object or the subject of man's consciousness? Are they what they are — or can they be changed by a mere act of your consciousness, such as a wish?

The nature of your actions — and of your ambition — will be different, according to which set of answers you come to accept. These answers are the province of metaphysics — the study of existence as such or, in Aristotle's words, of "being qua being" — the basic branch of philosophy.

No matter what conclusions you reach, you will be confronted by the necessity to answer another, corollary question: How do I know it? Since man is not omniscient or infallible, you have to discover what you can claim as knowledge and how to prove the validity of your conclusions. Does man acquire knowledge by a process of reason — or by sudden revelation from a supernatural power? Is reason a faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man's senses — or is it fed by innate ideas, implanted in man's mind before he was born? Is reason competent to perceive reality — or does man possess some other cognitive faculty which is superior to reason? Can man achieve certainty — or is he doomed to perpetual doubt?

The extent of your self-confidence — and of your success — will be different, according to which set of answers you accept. These answers are the province of epistemology, the theory of knowledge, which studies man's means of cognition.

These two branches are the theoretical foundation of philosophy. The third branch — ethics — may be regarded as its technology. Ethics does not apply to everything that exists, only to man, but it applies to every aspect of man's life: his character, his actions, his values, his relationship to all of existence. Ethics, or morality, defines a code of values to guide man's choices and actions — the choices and actions that determine the course of his life.

Just as the astronaut in my story did not know what he should do, because he refused to know where he was and how to discover it, so you cannot know what you should do until you know the nature of the universe you deal with, the nature of your means of cognition — and your own nature. Before you come to ethics, you must answer the questions posed by metaphysics and epistemology: Is man a rational being, able to deal with reality — or is he a helplessly blind misfit, a chip buffeted by the universal flux? Are achievement and enjoyment possible to man on earth — or is he doomed to failure and distaste? Depending on the answers, you can proceed to consider the questions posed by ethics: What is good or evil for man — and why? Should man's primary concern be a quest for joy — or an escape from suffering? Should man hold self-fulfillment — or self-destruction — as the goal of his life? Should man pursue his values — or should he place the interests of others above his own? Should man seek happiness — or self-sacrifice?

I do not have to point out the different consequences of these two sets of answers. You can see them everywhere — within you and around you.

The answers given by ethics determine how man should treat other men, and this determines the fourth branch of philosophy: politics, which defines the principles of a proper social system. As an example of philosophy's function, political philosophy will not tell you how much rationed gas you should be given and on which day of the week — it will tell you whether the government has the right to impose any rationing on anything.

The fifth and last branch of philosophy is esthetics, the study of art, which is based on metaphysics, epistemology and ethics. Art deals with the needs — the refueling — of man's consciousness.

Now some of you might say, as many people do: "Aw, I never think in such abstract terms — I want to deal with concrete, particular, real-life problems — what do I need philosophy for?" My answer is: In order to be able to deal with concrete, particular, real-life problems — i.e., in order to be able to live on earth.

You might claim — as most people do — that you have never been influenced by philosophy. I will ask you to check that claim. Have you ever thought or said the following? "Don't be so sure — nobody can be certain of anything." You got that notion from David Hume (and many, many others), even though you might never have heard of him. Or: "This may be good in theory, but it doesn't work in practice." You got that from Plato. Or: "That was a rotten thing to do, but it's only human, nobody is perfect in this world." You got that from Augustine. Or: "It may be true for you, but it's not true for me." You got it from William James. Or: "I couldn't help it! Nobody can help anything he does." You got it from Hegel. Or: "I can't prove it, but I feel that it's true." You got it from Kant. Or: "It's logical, but logic has nothing to do with reality." You got it from Kant. Or: "It's evil, because it's selfish." You got it from Kant. Have you heard the modern activists say: "Act first, think afterward"? They got it from John Dewey.

Some people might answer: "Sure, I've said those things at different times, but I don't have to believe that stuff all of the time. It may have been true yesterday, but it's not true today." They got it from Hegel. They might say: "Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." They got it from a very little mind, Emerson. They might say: "But can't one compromise and borrow different ideas from different philosophies according to the expediency of the moment?" They got it from Richard Nixon — who got it from William James.

Now ask yourself: if you are not interested in abstract ideas, why do you (and all men) feel compelled to use them? The fact is that abstract ideas are conceptual integrations which subsume an incalculable number of concretes — and that without abstract ideas you would not be able to deal with concrete, particular, real-life problems. You would be in the position of a newborn infant, to whom every object is a unique, unprecedented phenomenon. The difference between his mental state and yours lies in the number of conceptual integrations your mind has performed.

You have no choice about the necessity to integrate your observations, your experiences, your knowledge into abstract ideas, i.e., into principles. Your only choice is whether these principles are true or false, whether they represent your conscious, rational conviction — or a grab-bag of notions snatched at random, whose sources, validity, context and consequences you do not know, notions which, more often than not, you would drop like a hot potato if you knew.

But the principles you accept (consciously or subconsciously) may clash with or contradict one another; they, too, have to be integrated. What integrates them? Philosophy. A philosophic system is an integrated view of existence. As a human being, you have no choice about the fact that you need a philosophy. Your only choice is whether you define you philosophy by a conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought and scrupulously logical deliberation — or let your subconscious accumulate a junk heap of unwarranted conclusions, false generalizations, undefined contradictions, undigested slogans, unidentified wishes, doubts and fears, thrown together by chance, but integrated by your subconscious into a kind of mongrel philosophy and fused into a single, solid weight: self-doubt, like a ball and chain in the place where your mind's wings should have grown.

You might say, as many people do, that it is not easy always to act on abstract principles. No, it is not easy. But how much harder is it, to have to act on them without knowing what they are?

Your subconscious is like a computer — more complex a computer than men can build — and its main function is the integration of your ideas. Who programs it? Your conscious mind. If you default, if you don't reach any firm convictions, your subconscious is programmed by chance — and you deliver yourself into the power of ideas you do not know you have accepted. But one way or the other, your computer gives you print-outs, daily and hourly, in the form of emotions — which are lightning-like estimates of the things around you, calculated according to your values. If you programmed your computer by conscious thinking, you know the nature of your values and emotions. If you didn't, you don't.

Many people, particularly today, claim that man cannot live by logic alone, that there's the emotional element of his nature to consider, and that they rely on the guidance of their emotions. Well, so did the astronaut in my story. The joke is on him — and on them: man's values and emotions are determined by his fundamental view of life. The ultimate programmer of his subconscious is philosophy — the science which, according to the emotionalists, is impotent to affect or penetrate the murky mysteries of their feelings.

The quality of a computer's output is determined by the quality of its input. If your subconscious is programmed by chance, its output will have a corresponding character. You have probably heard the computer operators' eloquent term "gigo" — which means: "Garbage in, garbage out." The same formula applies to the relationship between a man's thinking and his emotions.

A man who is run by emotions is like a man who is run by a computer whose print-outs he cannot read. He does not know whether its programming is true or false, right or wrong, whether it's set to lead him to success or destruction, whether it serves his goals or those of some evil, unknowable power. He is blind on two fronts: blind to the world around him and to his own inner world, unable to grasp reality or his own motives, and he is in chronic terror of both. Emotions are not tools of cognition. The men who are not interested in philosophy need it most urgently: they are most helplessly in its power.

The men who are not interested in philosophy absorb its principles from the cultural atmosphere around them — from schools, colleges, books, magazines, newspapers, movies, television, etc. Who sets the tone of a culture? A small handful of men: the philosophers. Others follow their lead, either by conviction or by default. For some two hundred years, under the influence of Immanuel Kant, the dominant trend of philosophy has been directed to a single goal: the destruction of man's mind, of his confidence in the power of reason. Today, we are seeing the climax of that trend.

When men abandon reason, they find not only that their emotions cannot guide them, but that they can experience no emotions save one: terror. The spread of drug addiction among young people brought up on today's intellectual fashions, demonstrates the unbearable inner state of men who are deprived of their means of cognition and who seek escape from reality — from the terror of their impotence to deal with existence. Observe these young people's dread of independence and their frantic desire to "belong," to attach themselves to some group, clique or gang. Most of them have never heard of philosophy, but they sense that they need some fundamental answers to questions they dare not ask — and they hope that the tribe will tell them how to live. They are ready to be taken over by any witch doctor, guru, or dictator. One of the most dangerous things a man can do is to surrender his moral autonomy to others: like the astronaut in my story, he does not know whether they are human, even though they walk on two feet.

Now you may ask: If philosophy can be that evil, why should one study it? Particularly, why should one study the philosophical theories which are blatantly false, make no sense, and bear no relation to real life?

My answer is: In self-protection — and in defense of truth, justice, freedom, and any value you ever held or may ever hold.

Not all philosophies are evil, though too many of them are, particularly in modern history. On the other hand, at the root of every civilized achievement, such as science, technology, progress, freedom — at the root of every value we enjoy today, including the birth of this country — you will find the achievement of one man, who lived over two thousand years ago: Aristotle.

If you feel nothing but boredom when reading the virtually unintelligible theories of some philosophers, you have my deepest sympathy. But if you brush them aside, saying: "Why should I study that stuff when I know it's nonsense?" — you are mistaken. It is nonsense, but you don't know it — not so long as you go on accepting all their conclusions, all the vicious catch phrases generated by those philosophers. And not so long as you are unable to refute them.

That nonsense deals with the most crucial, the life-or-death issues of man's existence. At the root of every significant philosophic theory, there is a legitimate issue — in the sense that there is an authentic need of man's consciousness, which some theories struggle to clarify and others struggle to obfuscate, to corrupt, to prevent man from ever discovering. The battle of philosophers is a battle for man's mind. If you do not understand their theories, you are vulnerable to the worst among them.

The best way to study philosophy is to approach it as one approaches a detective story: follow every trail, clue and implication, in order to discover who is a murderer and who is a hero. The criterion of detection is two questions: Why? and How? If a given tenet seems to be true — why? If another tenet seems to be false — why? and how is it being put over? You will not find all the answers immediately, but you will acquire an invaluable characteristic: the ability to think in terms of essentials.

Nothing is given to man automatically, neither knowledge, nor self-confidence, nor inner serenity, nor the right way to use his mind. Every value he needs or wants has to be discovered, learned and acquired — even the proper posture of his body. In this context, I want to say that I have always admired the posture of West Point graduates, a posture that projects man in proud, disciplined control of his body. Well, philosophical training gives man the proper intellectual posture — a proud, disciplined control of his mind.

In your own profession, in military science, you know the importance of keeping track of the enemy's weapons, strategy and tactics — and of being prepared to counter them. The same is true in philosophy: you have to understand the enemy's ideas and be prepared to refute them, you have to know his basic arguments and be able to blast them.

In physical warfare, you would not send your men into a booby trap: you would make every effort to discover its location. Well, Kant's system is the biggest and most intricate booby trap in the history of philosophy — but it's so full of holes that once you grasp its gimmick, you can defuse it without any trouble and walk forward over it in perfect safety. And, once it is defused, the lesser Kantians — the lower ranks of his army, the philosophical sergeants, buck privates, and mercenaries of today — will fall of their own weightlessness, by chain reaction.

There is a special reason why you, the future leaders of the United States Army, need to be philosophically armed today. You are the target of a special attack by the Kantian-Hegelian-collectivist establishment that dominates our cultural institutions at present. You are the army of the last semi-free country left on earth, yet you are accused of being a tool of imperialism — and "imperialism" is the name given to the foreign policy of this country, which has never engaged in military conquest and has never profited from the two world wars, which she did not initiate, but entered and won. (It was, incidentally, a foolishly overgenerous policy, which made this country waste her wealth on helping both her allies and her former enemies.) Something called "the military-industrial complex" — which is a myth or worse — is being blamed for all of this country's troubles. Bloody college hoodlums scream demands that R.O.T.C. units be banned from college campuses. Our defense budget is being attacked, denounced and undercut by people who claim that financial priority should be given to ecological rose gardens and to classes in esthetic self-expression for the residents of the slums.

Some of you may be bewildered by this campaign and may be wondering, in good faith, what errors you committed to bring it about. If so, it is urgently important for you to understand the nature of the enemy. You are attacked, not for any errors or flaws, but for your virtues. You are denounced, not for any weaknesses, but for your strength and your competence. You are penalized for being the protectors of the United States. On a lower level of the same issue, a similar kind of campaign is conducted against the police force. Those who seek to destroy this country, seek to disarm it — intellectually and physically. But it is not a mere political issue; politics is not the cause, but the last consequence of philosophical ideas. It is not a communist conspiracy, though some communists may be involved — as maggots cashing in on a disaster they had no power to originate. The motive of the destroyers is not love for communism, but hatred for America. Why hatred? Because America is the living refutation of a Kantian universe.

Today's mawkish concern with and compassion for the feeble, the flawed, the suffering, the guilty, is a cover for the profoundly Kantian hatred of the innocent, the strong, the able, the successful, the virtuous, the confident, the happy. A philosophy out to destroy man's mind is necessarily a philosophy of hatred for man, for man's life, and for every human value. Hatred of the good for being the good, is the hallmark of the twentieth century. This is the enemy you are facing.

A battle of this kind requires special weapons. It has to be fought with a full understanding of your cause, a full confidence in yourself, and the fullest certainty of the moral rightness of both. Only philosophy can provide you with these weapons.

The assignment I gave myself for tonight is not to sell you on my philosophy, but on philosophy as such. I have, however, been speaking implicitly of my philosophy in every sentence — since none of us and no statement can escape from philosophical premises. What is my selfish interest in the matter? I am confident enough to think that if you accept the importance of philosophy and the task of examining it critically, it is my philosophy that you will come to accept. Formally, I call it Objectivism, but informally I call it a philosophy for living on earth. You will find an explicit presentation of it in my books, particularly in Atlas Shrugged.

In conclusion, allow me to speak in personal terms. This evening means a great deal to me. I feel deeply honored by the opportunity to address you. I can say — not as a patriotic bromide, but with full knowledge of the necessary metaphysical, epistemological, ethical, political and esthetic roots — that the United States of America is the greatest, the noblest and, in its original founding principles, the only moral country in the history of the world. There is a kind of quiet radiance associated in my mind with the name West Point — because you have preserved the spirit of those original founding principles and you are their symbol. There were contradictions and omissions in those principles, and there may be in yours — but I am speaking of the essentials. There may be individuals in your history who did not live up to your highest standards — as there are in every institution — since no institutions and no social system can guarantee the automatic perfection of all its members; this depends on an individual's free will. I am speaking of your standards. You have preserved three qualities of character which were typical at the time of America's birth, but are virtually nonexistent today: earnestness — dedication — a sense of honor. Honor is self-esteem made visible in action.

You have chosen to risk your lives for the defense of this country. I will not insult you by saying that you are dedicated to selfless service — it is not a virtue in my morality. In my morality, the defense of one's country means that a man is personally unwilling to live as the conquered slave of any enemy, foreign or domestic. This is an enormous virtue. Some of you may not be consciously aware of it. I want to help you to realize it.

The army of a free country has a great responsibility: the right to use force, but not as an instrument of compulsion and brute conquest — as the armies of other countries have done in their histories — only as an instrument of a free nation's self-defense, which means: the defense of a man's individual rights. The principle of using force only in retaliation against those who initiate its use, is the principle of subordinating might to right. The highest integrity and sense of honor are required for such a task. No other army in the world has achieved it. You have.

West Point has given America a long line of heroes, known and unknown. You, this year's graduates, have a glorious tradition to carry on — which I admire profoundly, not because it is a tradition, but because it is glorious.

Since I came from a country guilty of the worst tyranny on earth, I am particularly able to appreciate the meaning, the greatness and the supreme value of that which you are defending. So, in my own name and in the name of many people who think as I do, I want to say, to all the men of West Point, past, present and future: Thank you.

Your vision of Success

As I look out into this audience I see, my family, my teachers, my friends, I would like to thank each one of you for the support you’ve given us all- to get us each to this point today….I look out and I see my fellow classmates of The Class of 2010. . . But more importantly I see a group of individuals, each with different backgrounds, ideas, desires, and achievements. We are each here today to celebrate those Achievements; Today is the day of our graduation.— Tomorrow we begin our days of independence; relying on nothing but our own vision and judgment to guide us.. . . Lancers, as you now forge ahead, you leave behind the solace of high school; but enter into a world of achievement- where success is in sight, will you press on and choose to pursue it?

Ayn Rand once said, “The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity.” The United States of America is a land of opportunity, and throughout the course of our lives we will be faced with more opportunity than any person before us. . Ronald Regan, said, “Each generation goes further than the generation preceding it because it stands on the shoulders of that generation.” — Our graduating class holds in its hands the achievements of our parents, teachers, and those who paved the roads before us. We honor them for their courage and merits, as we reach for our own success, and recognize that our triumphs begin with theirs.
A line from The Fountainhead reads, “Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision.” As we each Race towards our visions it is important to realize that you will fail if you fail to proceed with a passion. History is filled with examples of those who succeeded—against all odds—— their passion and individual desires guided them to success.

Call a child dull and hopeless and flunk him in the sixth grade, and you have a Winston Churchill. Tell a young boy that he has no talent, and that he should give up, and you have a Walt Disney. Deny a child the ability to see, hear and speak, and you have a Helen Keller. Call a boy a slow learner "retarded" and write him off as uneducable, and you have an Albert Einstein. Take an undeveloped nation whose people have no rights, no government, no trained army, and no conceivable chance at liberty—and you have the beginning of The United States of America. . . All of these examples were told that they could not, that they would never. They fought, they suffered, and they paid. But they won. Because they wanted their visions to much, to let anyone deny them from chasing it.

My Grandfather recently told me, “Jason you’re a lucky person, you already know what you want to be, so be sure, at all costs to never give up on it. Take every position, every opportunity, every internship, job or class that will bring you closer to that goal. And just don’t ever give up on it. I expect great things from you.” My friends, the world expects great things from us. But as Dr. Howard Thurman put it "Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." Ladies and Gentlemen, The road to success is by no means easy. . . in fact it is meant to be hard.. . . But you can rise above anything that stands against you; if you will swear allegiance to yourself, to your own values, to your own goals and to your vision, and promise to follow them as far down the road of achievement as your ability and ambition will carry you.

I’ll end with a quote from a character from the Famous book, Atlas Shrugged. John Galt once said, “Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it's yours.” Friends, there is a reason that both the Lancer Legend and Creed end with the words; “The World is mine”. It’s because, the world truly is yours . . . This IS our time. Now Go out there, and take it!!!

"Francisco's Money Speech"

This is just AMAZING!!!!


About two weeks ago (in church) a group of people got into an argument about the morality of money, the general consensus was that money is evil, the love of money was wrong, and that the love for the material is wrong. One girl, and myself appeared to be the only voices of reason in the class, for we were the only ones who stood for the morality of money- as a virtue-and not a vice. [My full rebuttal is soon coming]

But in the mean time I have found this speech that best elucidates my point:

The following is an excerpt from Atlas Shrugged, © Copyright, 1957, by Ayn Rand.

"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Anconia. "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 produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men 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 men 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 not 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, which should have been gold, are a token of honor--your claim upon the energy of the men who 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 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 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 the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man's capacity to 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 expense of 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 his 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 good will. Money rests on the axiom 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 in return. 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 judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for 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 the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best that your money can find. And when men live by trade--with reason, not force, as their final arbiter--it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgment and highest ability--and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what 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 scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality--the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products 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 choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the 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 of his 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 smaller than his 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 where he 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 corrupt his 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 distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one, would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve the mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

"Money is your means of survival. The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men's vices or men's 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 you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment's or a penny's worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you'll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of 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 not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money?

"Or did 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 passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among 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 men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.

"Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching 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 keep 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 stay 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 their looted money--the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law--men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims--then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm 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 most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.

"Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion--when 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 deal, not in goods, but in 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--when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice--you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that is does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with 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 of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of 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 equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce 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 bounces, marked, 'Account overdrawn.'

"When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain 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 the world? You are.

"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 damning its life-blood--money. You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your 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 and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor. That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous 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 left unimproved for 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 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. 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--the American 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 essence of human morality.

"Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters' continents. Now the looters' credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter 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-- as, I think, he will.

"Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns--or dollars. Take your choice--there is no other--and your time is running out."

The above is an excerpt from Atlas Shrugged, © Copyright, 1957, by Ayn Rand. It is reprinted with permission from the Estate of Ayn Rand.




Russian born American novelist Ayn Rand is author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead and is originator of the philosophy of Objectivism. You can learn more about her life and philosophy at the website of the Ayn Rand Institute.