"Francisco's Money Speech" by Ayn Rand
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"Francisco's Money Speech" by Ayn Rand
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Re: "Francisco's Money Speech" by Ayn Rand
#2This is one of my favorite speeches from that book. It doesn't make false assumptions like many of the other speeches and plots do - it stays focused on debunking the idea of money as bad, and as such while a lot of the rest of the book seems slightly ridiculous, this speech remains quite powerful.
Re: "Francisco's Money Speech" by Ayn Rand
#3If this is supposed to be a rebuttal to the quote from the new testament, then it's a major strawman. The quote from Timothy 6:10 is "the love of money is the root of all evil." (my italics)
Re: "Francisco's Money Speech" by Ayn Rand
#4If this is supposed to be a rebuttal to the quote from the new testament, then it's a major strawman. The quote from Timothy 6:10 is "the love of money is the root of all evil." (my italics)
The "love of money" is also dealt with in the article:
"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 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."
To see men perform the most immoral of acts for money, it becomes easy to believe money to be a wretched thing.
Thus, it's not a far leap to consider the love (or insane lust) of money as evil.
Hence, the quote from the bible is there to protect men from performing acts of evil in the search for or in the name of money.
Re: "Francisco's Money Speech" by Ayn Rand
#5If this is supposed to be a rebuttal to the quote from the new testament, then it's a major strawman. The quote from Timothy 6:10 is "the love of money is the root of all evil." (my italics)
The "love of money" is also dealt with in the article: "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 loudest in p…
"No True Scotsman" fallacy, "the love of money" has a standard meaning quite apart from "the love of traditional capitalist values".
Re: "Francisco's Money Speech" by Ayn Rand
#6If this is supposed to be a rebuttal to the quote from the new testament, then it's a major strawman. The quote from Timothy 6:10 is "the love of money is the root of all evil." (my italics)
The "love of money" is also dealt with in the article: "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 loudest in p…
Note that the quote isn't "the love of money is evil", but that it is "the root of all evil". A small but important distinction.
Re: "Francisco's Money Speech" by Ayn Rand
#7If this is supposed to be a rebuttal to the quote from the new testament, then it's a major strawman. The quote from Timothy 6:10 is "the love of money is the root of all evil." (my italics)
The quote from Timothy 6:10 is actually something like "ριζα γαρ παντων των κακων εστιν η φιλαργυρια ης τινες ορεγομενοι απεπλανηθησαν απο της πιστεως και εαυτους περιεπειραν οδυναις πολλαις", if you're going to get technical.
The New American Standard Bible renders the relevant piece of that quote as "For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil".
In context (http://nasb.scripturetext.com/1_timothy/6.htm), it is clearly being shown as dangerous because it can distract you from God, and in the full context of Jesus' similar quote it is even more explicit that way (http://nasb.scripturetext.com/luke/16.htm).
Please note this is by way of information. If a thing is to be damned or praised, let it be damned or praised for what it truly is, not for what is left after a three-level Telephone game. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_game)
Re: "Francisco's Money Speech" by Ayn Rand
#8I read _AS_ when I was 18 and I've thought about this quotation a lot through the last 20 months, as Reddit frothed about Ron Paul, Gold Standard, Banking collapse, etc.
As I've thought more and more about it, something seems off about Francisco's speech, namely: Money is _no longer_ the representation of value in green paper; no, it is the representation of transferrable obligation, i.e. debt.
Rand's philosophical position, expressed through D'Anconia, is that money is an expression of _value_, created by a man through his labor and that through its exchange, a rational process, a rational means for motivating and directing men's labor exists, "their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun."
I don't think this works quite as cleanly if you start consider that you're selling tokens of servitude, or indebtedness.
Re: "Francisco's Money Speech" by Ayn Rand
#9Wow. Are people impressed by that article because of the sonorous prose? Because the content definitely isn't impressive.
Rand's first mistake is not realizing that the love of money quote speaks to individuals and not to societies. An individual who loves the material world more than the spiritual world (not god necessarily, maybe just the world inside his own head), is pitiable.
The saddest thing I've ever heard was from a friend who told me that his main goal in life was making money -- he wanted that more than anything. I asked him if I wanted the money for anything in particular, and he couldn't answer me.
Re: "Francisco's Money Speech" by Ayn Rand
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
The "love of money" is also dealt with in the article: "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 loudest in p…
"No True Scotsman" fallacy, "the love of money" has a standard meaning quite apart from "the love of traditional capitalist values".
"[T]he love of traditional capitalist values"! The meaning of money, which she explained, is the same quite apart from your "traditional capitalist values" -- didn't want to let that rhetorical slap zip by unchallenged.
If you can understand the meaning of money and claim that love of money, which embodies that meaning, is the root of all evil, fine. But then, you might as well say that love of ANYTHING that's good is the root of all evil. In the same way that this maxim exaggerates its claim, I can plausibly argue that love of sex with women is the root of all evil, because men commit most evil and, one way or another, most of it has its roots in pursuing women.