Is Money The Root of All Evil?

Is Money The Root of All Evil?

The comments below are an edited and abridged synopsis of an article by Mike Hewitt

Hewitt provides an excerpt from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged (1957). A passage is reproduced here:

“Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer ofa 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 those who produce nothing – when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favours – when you see people getting richer, by graft and by pull, than by work, when you see corruption, being rewarded, and honesty, becoming a self-sacrifice – and your laws, don’t protect you against criminals, but instead protect criminals, against you – then you may know, that your society is doomed.”

“Whenever destroyers appear among us, they start with the money. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners, a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards,and delivers us into 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.”