| Letters to 666isMONEY.com |
| I thought these two letters were original but it turns out that Thistimeinneed sent me a Rant from Ayn Rand, which I included, unedited at the bottom of this page. My response in itallic |
| Date: Mon, 8 Mar 2004 20:45:28 -0800 (PST) From: Raquel Subject: Re: (no subject) To: ThistimeIneed@aol.com |
| So you think that money is the root of all evil? Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Yes, the root of money is slavery, enslavement. Money is a tool of enslavement exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and slaves 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. Money is made possible by magic. It is intrinsically inert, unnecessary or no real value (most of the gold and silver supply is consumed in jewlery). Is this what you consider evil? It is "evil" because it enslaves people, causes the production of unnecessary, unhealthy objects and is the cause of much unnecessary suffering. When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears nor all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, 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. You have Faith in you wallet. in those pieces of paper; you have Faith that the stupid goyim will accept your peices of paper, which "should have been gold"? Is this what you consider evil? An unnecessary evil. Have you ever looked for the root of production? The root of production is the urge to create, survive, thrive, create a better world for our children. 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. Brilliant! But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? Money served its purpose and is no longer necessary. It is superfluous. Modern machinery has made it unnecessary. 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. Wow, you really love money, you've composed a sonnet to your God. Nay an Opera.... Get to the point.... 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 by 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 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, then 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? Ugh. 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. Your mind is a gift of God, the products of your mind are free gifts of God. 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? Trite, Money is UNNECESSARY. 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 a mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil? God will provide money if it is necessary. Money is your means of survival. My brain, with the Grace of God is my means of survival. The verdict which 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? This is why money is a stumblingblock to human progress, spiritual evolution. 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? No, Money is unnecessary, a stumblingblock. Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, Ugh. 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? Sigh. 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 the 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. I never said money was evil or that Love of Money is the Root of All evil.... 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. Stupid generality. I got my money legally, the law is dishonorable, making money is a game, life is a game. Life sucks because of Money, open your eyes to the suffering! 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. No, civilization, education. 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. I got it legally. It's not worth dieing for. 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. For centuries? They are everywhere, like cockroaches in a sewer. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt - and of his life, as he deserves. Yes, "Your Money or your Life." Won't remain rich because of the corrupt lawyers and judges, who will steal it from her. Then you will see the rise 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. Like George Bush and his cronies. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. LOL. 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. All because people were corrupted by money: if there wasn't any money they wouldn't be corrupted by it. With modern machienery, we can produce enough necessities to share worldwide. I strongly believe in the Second Amendment to keep the plutocrats and petty criminals in check. Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. I do, especially the Euro and the value of oil. 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 it 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. I expect Babylon to fall soon. Things can not go on as they are! 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. Gold was given a magical value and can be debased, counterfieters were crucified. 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 becomes, marked: 'Account overdrawn.' Now we're on the same track. When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Money is the means of survival, men are evil therefore money is evil! (Or you could say they are evil because they are uneducated, uncultured, uncivilized but money was the stumblingblock, their tool, their holy grail, salvation happiness. 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. No, the moneylovers are destroying earth. Mining Gold is destroying the earth, polluting the rivers. 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. God (and oil) is the Life-Blood. 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. The "savages" did not need money. Throughout men's history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, 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, You're hearing things I never said. 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. We still have slaves. Wake up, open your eyes! The slaves are paid in Money, slave wages. 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. Stupid goyim. 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. America was a God-fearing nation but now it has been corrupted by money. 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. LOL. 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, I think the scientists, engineers and visionaries (like me) are the real creators of wealth/value. 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. When Babylon falls, people will realize that money is unnecessary and will NOT revert to the whip. 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." Either we abolish money, Law and the $tate (all created by Man) or Babylon will fall. I see you like quotes from famous philosophers, I think this one suits you quite well: "Till a man can judge whether they be truths or not, his understanding is but little improved, and thus men of much reading, though greatly learned, but may be little knowing." -- John Locke (1632 - 1704) You can't see the Truth so how can you judge it? You're the person who crucified Christ for upsetting the tables of the moneychangers! Read your Gospels. |
| Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2004 06:47:52 -0800 (PST) From: Raquel Subject: Re: Replies to your replies on money To: ThistimeIneed[@aol.com] [Remove Brackets] |
| . . . Money is made possible by magic. It is intrinsically inert, unnecessary or no real value (most of the gold and silver supply is consumed in jewelry). I suppose if you were to use the word magic loosely, I would agree; as long as it was magic in the sense of an unknown ability to grant importance to an object. It seems like fiat money (paper money) is just that, papers that by some method are ascribed value. But we should not hasten to pass such quick judgments. People have used all sorts of things for money, including wheat and tobacco, so it seems like an object is given its value by those who value it. Now I know that you will agree that valuing wheat is a good thing, being it's an agricultural product and so and so forth, but it seems like people like to have money be it wheat or gold. They like it because they can't imagine a society without it or they are cynical and believe everyone but themselves is capable of living in a civilization without money, where people work for the satisfaction of creating something beneficial. Now what sort of benefit does money offer us? Well, first and foremost it is a uniformed unit of measurement that allows us to escape the drudgeries of the barter system. If we abolish money, we have no option but to go back to the barter system to exchange goods or attempt to make every single product we want in house. . . . See what I mean, you can't imagine. Modern machinery produces an abundance, there is no need to barter and hoard. Can you imagine what Beethoven's piano would have sounded like if his father had made it and not the best piano builder in Europe?!!?!!? No, someone who appreciates good music would make Mozart a piano. So on top of a unit of exchange, money also allows us to specialize in things. If we were all farming, there would be little time to pursue knowledge, create music, create new cures for diseases, advance civilization, etc. That would mean that instead of writing meditations, Descartes would have been hard at work in the fields tilling the earth. . . which sounds like a better use of his time? Without money half the work force in America (bankers, bookkeepers, accountants, bureaucrats, salesmen, real-estate agents etc.) could share the work with the other half and only have to work 20 hours a week . . . It is "evil" because it enslaves people, causes the production of unnecessary, unhealthy objects and is the cause of much unnecessary suffering. I would be inclined to say that unhealthy objects are produced under our current mixed economy system. But although I would say they are unhealthy, I would not advocate for the abolishment of such goods. To abolish a successful product is to take a product away from people who are want it and are willing to spend (exchange) their money (surplus production) on (for) it. It seems like it would be a slippery slope to start taking away something like cigarettes (because of health reasons) and then fast food, and then snack foods. Eventually, one would be left with the least offensive and blandest of foods. It is not freedom to dictate what one can consume, and in the same right it is not freedom to dictate what one can produce. I think, and you would most likely agree, that man is happiest when he is freest. Without money, if you wanted to grow tobacco or marijuana, no one would stop you unless there were people starving and peanuts could be grown there instead or you were growing it in the desert wasting water. Or growing marijuana and wasting a lot of electricity with grow lights, fans and etc. How would they stop it? Shunning, rebuke, logic/reasoning and if that didn't work, we may have to cut off their water/electric supply. Now as for unnecessary suffering, I'm not sure how I feel about that. We have drug companies today and in their heart of hearts want nothing more than to make a profit(money). And because of their voracious appetite for money, they create all sorts of drugs that do all sorts of great things for society. So their quest for money has actually alleviated some of the world's unnecessary suffering. On the contrary, many drugs are unpatented and inexpensive, like vitamin A, which would save many from blindness in Africa but there is no profit in giving it to them. The drug manufacturers have no incentive to make drugs for the third world because they can't afford to buy the drugs. If people in America lived healthy lifestyles and weren't so crazy or stressed over money requiring psychological drugs and drugs to control their unhealthy lifestyles ... On top of all the good deeds the drug companies do, they have extremely good jobs for people; allowing families to be well fed and well read. Now let us examine a company that isn't in the business of helping people(so we are inclined to think). Now it is generally conceded (though immediate concision is hardly proof of anything) that cigarette companies make a product that is by nature harmful to a person. Their product leads to millions of deaths and yada yada yada, but! We've already conceded that humans are happiest when they are freest, and the use of cigarettes falls under this umbrella of freedom. If they get sick from smoking, then they enslave someone (wage slave) to take care of them. If they are willing to die because of their smoking, they are free to do that but don't expect me to take care of them because of their unhealthy choice. I'll help them commit suicide or quit smoking. Now one may be inclined to say that cigarettes are addictive and therefore, people are not free to choose weather or not to buy them; but the first time a smoker smokes, he is not under any compulsion by nicotine I was under the compulsion of my delinquent friends when I started smoking. Fortunately I quit a few years later. and therefore his consent is given upon his first drag. Let us not forget that these people willingly want these products and gladly exchange their surplus production (money) for it. But what of the factory workers, management, and various other peoples in the company? They too receive good salaries allowing them to provide for their families. But do they enjoy being wage slaves manufacturing tobacco so people get sick, become burdens to society and the health system and die early. . . . Enslavement Ok, so by enslavement we're saying basically people are forced to work for a living wage or else they'll die (starve to death, get the plague, whatever). And as a fair and open minded individual I have gone to great lengths to listen to your show and give a courteous ear to your critiques, for it would be rude, close minded, and lazy of me not to. Think about being on my show next Friday at 9pm or give me your phone number so I can call you from the studio. I watched a recent episode of your TV show where you advocated for a return to the Midwest (Nebraska, Kansas, etc) where people would farm their own staples of food (I believe you said soy beans and corn). When Babylon falls we will travel/travil to midwest because that is where an abundance of food (corn & soybeans) exists in silos, which will keep the grains whole for an undetermined (by me) amount of years. (Do you know how many years grain can be stored in a silo without a vacuum seal?) Now, obviously we would agree that farming is hard work, with the planting and the tilling and what not, and so to feed yourself you're going to have to work pretty hard. Farming is relatively easy with modern machinery. I have charts from the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture showing how productive agriculture is today. Maybe you remember in school how 100 years ago, 20 or 50 percent of the workforce was employed in Agriculture but today that is less than 1%, who manufacture all our food and half of that agriculture workforce is involved in the production of meat (growing corn, sorghum and other pearls tossed before swine), which is unhealthy and bad karma to eat (I'm a vegetarian). Now this may not sound so bad to all, but let us draw a comparison to say . . . . a 'slave' worker of McDonalds. They, like the farmer, must work quite hard at a job they may or may not like for enough to feed themselves and keep shelter over their heads. They are both driven by the desire to survive and to exchange their hard work for another day's free breath. When we then look for a real slave, we find that either both the farmer and the worker are slaves or that neither are slaves since they both act out of a need for survival. The majority of slaves in America had it pretty good wouldn't you agree, they probably had a better life on the plantation than in Africa? . . . Money served its purpose and is no longer necessary. It is superfluous. Modern machinery has made it unnecessary. The root of production is the urge to create, survive, thrive, and create a better world for our children. The soviets thought that, the sized the private property in the late teens, and were stuck with a country full of 1950s machinery when their government collapsed because they didn't believe that industrialization is a dynamic thing, requiring constant upgrading, retooling and improvement. Soviets had socialism, not communism. (A communist society will have no money.) The soviets were not ready yet for communism, read communism definitions here: 666ismoney.com/Satan.html Now some may be happy to live to be 79, but I intend to die at 100 I'd be interested to hear your theory on how you intend to do that. and so to do that, production must be made better and more efficient; something that just can not be done without the life blood that has spurred it from its birth (money). Life blood of "civilization" today is oil and the spigot is running dry. The government isn't telling us the truth that we are going to run out SOONI If they told the truth about the oil and assassination of JFK, there would be panic, disillusionment. I would liken it to a mother who stops feeding a baby because it is now one year old. The baby wants to live but it can never live without food. Man wants to create, but he can never do it well without the abilities (plant property and equipment) money provides him. For civilization to evolve, for Man to mature, we have to eliminate money, laws and international boundaries. I've taken the liberty of arranging your responses in an argument, adding a very basic premise I'm sure you will have no problem agreeing with and took the liberty of drawing the conclusion. Your mind is a gift of God (you) the products of your mind are free gifts of God. (you) God will provide money if it is necessary. (you) A long time ago, someone came up with the idea of money (me) Ergo God has given us the gift (provided) of money and therefore he believes it is necessary. For civilization to evolve, for Man to mature, we have to eliminate money, laws and international boundaries. Money served its purpose. God has given us brains to figure that out. |
| Ayn Rand on money From ATLAS SHRUGGED, by Ayn Rand, page 387: |
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