Money is the barometer of 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 men get richer from 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.

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.  Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it.

From Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.  This passage is from a long monologue from Franciso d’Anconia in response to a character who contended that money is the root of all evil.

HKO comment:

Capitalism is the function of economic self interest. Regulation and restriction of free enterprise substitutes political self interest for economic self interest. Individual liberty usually suffers as a result.  Note for example how many of the special interest groups who pushed for the Obama health insurance plan now seek and receive exemptions from the same government who is forcing it on everyone else.  Wealth is being less generated by competition in the market place and more generated by success in obtaining political power.

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