North is one of the few economists who are actually enjoyable to read. Regarding his legacy, he is being very smart to make all of his voluminous writings available to download free of charge.
What is Money?
- Thread starter Jefferson
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Like what?
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Magic pixie dust.
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I know that this is an old thread... but that is just silly.
Money is simply a commodity that allows for the exchange of things like labor and goods.
Using gold as the sum store for that "money" is as good as anything else.
Money should be "finite". People obtain money by providing other people with something valuable. It's not a zero sum game.
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No, it's not. That is completely ridiculous.
What you don't get about money is that there is no alternative. It cannot be done away with. No matter how hard someone might try, they would fail to get rid of money in any society with more than fifty people in it. If one form is outlawed, then another will sprout to take its place. If it isn't minted coins then it will be blocks of salt or a particular kind of sea shell or cigarettes. What ever commodity is rare and difficult to produce more of will become a form of money whether anyone actively tries to turn it into that or not. Trying to remove money from a functioning society would be like trying to remove waves from the beach.
One with two people, let alone fifty!
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I was also going to say that... but barter is much easier with just two people.
Well, when its just you and your family or tribe then converting one's time and talent into and exchangeable medium loses its necessity but the larger the group, the more such a need presents itself.
Gerborant
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I totally get what you mean about money. It's like a necessary evil, you know? No matter what society we're in, we always need some form of currency to function. It's just the way things are. Even if we try to do away with it, something else will take its place. It's like trying to stop waves from hitting the shore. Impossible
Money itself is not evil, nor is it good.
An economy is founded upon God's command to "serve one another" and the God-given right to life, which demands that if you want something from someone else, you must compensate him for it in some way.
Today, we use money, a transferrable I.O.U. But even if two men are stranded on a deserted island, there can still be an economy, so long as they agree upon an equivalent exchange of services.
The right to life is one of my favorite topics!
The right to life is the basis and source for all other rights. Nobody I know of ever said it better than Ayn Rand (of all people)...
A “right” is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context. There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man’s right to his own life. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action; the right to life means the right to engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action—which means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life. (Such is the meaning of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.)
The concept of a “right” pertains only to action—specifically, to freedom of action. It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men.
Thus, for every individual, a right is the moral sanction of a positive—of his freedom to act on his own judgment, for his own goals, by his own voluntary, uncoerced choice. As to his neighbors, his rights impose no obligations on them except of a negative kind: to abstain from violating his rights.
The right to life is the source of all rights—and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave.
Bear in mind that the right to property is a right to action, like all the others: it is not the right to an object, but to the action and the consequences of producing or earning that object. It is not a guarantee that a man will earn any property, but only a guarantee that he will own it if he earns it. It is the right to gain, to keep, to use and to dispose of material values.
The source of man’s rights is not divine law or congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A—and Man is Man. Rights are conditions of existence required by man’s nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product of his work. If life on earth is his purpose, he has a right to live as a rational being: nature forbids him the irrational. Any group, any gang, any nation that attempts to negate man’s rights, is wrong, which means: is evil, which means: is anti-life.
A right cannot be violated except by physical force. One man cannot deprive another of his life, nor enslave him, nor forbid him to pursue his happiness, except by using force against him. Whenever a man is made to act without his own free, personal, individual, voluntary consent—his right has been violated.
Therefore, we can draw a clear-cut division between the rights of one man and those of another. It is an objective division—not subject to differences of opinion, nor to majority decision, nor to the arbitrary decree of society. No man has the right to initiate the use of physical force against another man.
Those are multiple quotations from various publications of Rand's.
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Have you ever read Atlas Shrugged? If so, I'd be curious to know how you'd respond to Francisco d'Anconia's money speech and how you'd square what he says with 1 Timothy 6:10.
If you've not read or heard the speech, you can read it HERE. In fact, you should read the whole of Atlas Shrugged or better yet listen to it on audio book. If you get the audio book get the older version that is read by Christopher Hurt. It's so so much better than the newer one. It's available on Audible at the link below...
Atlas Shrugged By: Ayn Rand Narrated by: Christopher Hurt
For others reading this post, be very careful reading Ayn Rand's materials. She does not pull punches and is fully capable of severely shaking, even wrecking one's faith. Just know going in that every single point of Christianity that she attacks is false doctrine that the bible does not actually teach. The closest thing to an exception to that is Fancisco's money speech, which is why I'm interested in discussing it.
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