Money, Money, Money

An acquaintance recently wrote something on a public forum about how the problems in our society are a product of people 'just wanting to make money'. I'm disturbed by this notion that the desire to make money is somehow the root of all evil. Where did this ridiculous concept come from?

I don't believe money is the root of all evil. I believe that money is simply a symbol - a symbol of hard work. Ayn Rand, one of my scholarly heroes, said the following about this topic:

So you think that money is the root of all evil? 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?

I believe that the adversary of God, Satan himself, is the root of all evil and his work is to take things that were originally good and pervert them. My desire to own a bicycle, for example, is not an innately bad thing. If I decide to covet the bicycle that my neighbor has, however, and sneakily rob it from him, I have created a perversion of a desire that was originally good. Let's take sex for example. Sex is not an evil thing - this power was given to mankind that a man and wife may express pure love for one another and create bodies for God's spirit children. Satan takes this original good thing and perverts it by tempting humans to use sex improperly through selfish rape, adultery, and pornography.

Money is not exempt from Satan's perversions. As Rand taught, money is a simple symbol of an exchange of goods. In its ideal form, it is the evidence of honest hard work. The exchange of this symbol may be perverted, however, just like the previous three examples as humans decide to exchange goods for a value of money that exceeds the value of their work or steal money instead of using it as an exchange method. There are many ways to pervert the original goodness of money, but it's quite nonsensical to say that because of those potential perversions, money is innately bad.

To me it's like electricity that is produced by a water dam. Electricity, in this example, can be compared to money in our discussion above. Electricity is the byproduct or the symbol of the technological genius of the dam and the productive work of the employees at the dam. Let's suppose that a man named Harry at the Pineview Dam decides to slack off on the job one day. Instead of making the appropriate repairs to the dam, he leaves the job early and goes home. That night, the dam breaks and floods the entire city below. Hundreds of citizens are affected by the tragedy. The next day the Ogden Tribune prints the following on the front page:

"Electricity Is Evil!"
All citizens are encouraged to start buying candles. Electricity has been outlawed.

Of course this seems silly, right? Because of a man's decision to not work as he should have, electricity - or the symbol of the hard work of the dam - has been deemed evil. It's logical to all of us outside viewers that the real evil was the man's decision, but somehow in the mix of things, electricity (not the man) was judged as the root of the Pineview Dam Tragedy.

Despite the stupidity of the above analogy (please forgive me), this is exactly what we're saying when we claim that money is somehow evil - the root of all evil no less. Money is the natural byproduct of man's ability to work. If a man cannot trade his hard work for something else through the medium of money, what incentive is there to work hard? It's a wonderful thing money. But of course it will always be subject to Satan's tricks and perversions. That's just part of life. It's only important that we judge men's actions as evil rather than money as evil.

It's just paper. It's merely a symbol .

It's by no means the 'root of all evil'.

I'm sure Satan gets a kick out of that one!