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"Francisco's Money Speech" by Ayn Rand

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Re: "Francisco's Money Speech" by Ayn Rand

#11
post #10
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 i…

I pretty sure Paul would agree that love of sex with women is a root of much evil (not to mention love of sex with men which is even worse!).

Re: "Francisco's Money Speech" by Ayn Rand

#13
post #3

If 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)

Note that the heroes of Atlas Shrugged all voluntarily give up their monetary fortunes. The book's central theme is the reason that would cause them to do that.

Re: "Francisco's Money Speech" by Ayn Rand

#14
post #2

This 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.

What about the rest of the book seems ridiculous to you? The first time I read it, I thought that everything in Atlas Shrugged was perfect. Even with repeated readings, I never once thought anything was ridiculous. Be specific in your answer.

Re: "Francisco's Money Speech" by Ayn Rand

#15
post #2

This 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.

What about the rest of the book seems ridiculous to you? The first time I read it, I thought that everything in Atlas Shrugged was perfect. Even with repeated readings, I never once thought anything was ridiculous. Be specific in your answer.

Ayn Rand often overstates her case for the sake of art (her evil characters, for example, are mostly shallow caricatures). I find that people who don't share her views often mock her works and call her "ridiculous" because she treats some ideas that they hold completely without nuance or sympathy.

I can see why they do this, but I think Ayn's detractors overstate their case. She is valuable because she is the only major author that writes from her point of view. I read many books in high school with a feminist or socialist moral, I read many literary triumphs that exposed the "failure" of capitalism, only Ayn dared to be different. I think every teenager should have a run-in with Rand, if only to begin the process of developing critical thinking.

However, I do think her complete philosophical system has many more flaws then she would care to admit (the one laid out in the "BFS", "Big Frackin' Speech", at the end of Atlas Shrugged). She tries to lay out a case for the absolute, unassailable truth of her ethics, but absolute truth shall ever elude humans in this complex world.

Re: "Francisco's Money Speech" by Ayn Rand

#16
post #8

I 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. http://bit.ly/14idwP R…

I got about 20 minutes into that "Money as Debt" video -- that's when he starts departing from, let's say, generally accepted theories of money. I don't have time to watch the whole thing, but I gather from other descriptions of the video that he advocates a policy of fiat money and repayment of debt via deliberate inflation, which is exactly the theory of the old Social Credit movement in Western Canada. That self-destructed.

He's correct that banks create money through loans. He's totally wrong when he says that money represents servitude.

He's ignoring that the purpose of debt is to create value, specifically to be able to do things today that make us all wealthier in the future. Yes, banks create money from nothing. That's because things of value - real wealth - are being created all the time, "from nothing", or at least, from nothing that is represented in the economy. They're mined out of the ground or grown from the sun, soil, and rain, or some complex permutation of all the above. Which is why we allow banks to grow the amount of money to represent it. When we take out a loan, we are saying something like "I'm pretty sure I can mine some copper out of that hill. So give me some capital now because I need to get a shovel." Rather than say money is debt you might as well say that money is certitude of present or future wealth.

By the way, this is the hidden truism of Paul Graham's mantra, "make something people want". Because "something people want" is another name for "wealth", and "wealth" is, under normal circumstances, easy to turn into money. So someone who says "make something people want and you'll make money" is expressing a near-tautology. (One that escapes most people, so it is good that he says it.)

I'm not totally in favor of our current systems, but that's another topic. And you have to know how the system works now to change it.

Re: "Francisco's Money Speech" by Ayn Rand

#18
post #9

Wow. 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 wa…

There is some cleverness in there, and, I believe, some truth. Here is a quote that I liked:

"Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth--the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it."

Besides, wealth is often demonized by egalitarians. They see its distribution as a random function of the universe, and not as a function of the productive efforts of the earners. For one person to have more money than another is considered unjust. We hear so much about how the wealthy are evil, it is nice for a different point of view to be aired every now and then.

>"The saddest thing I've ever heard was from a friend who told me that his main goal in life was making money"

It would not be so sad if he said that his goal was producing something of value, which often results in making money. As Ayn says, "Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants: money will not give him a code of values".

> "Are people impressed by that article because of the sonorous prose?"

Yes, I do think the prose is quite nice. When Ayn hits a good stride, she reaches a style that is all her own. I think her talents are often under-appreciated because the literary establishment is very much opposed to her political views.

Re: "Francisco's Money Speech" by Ayn Rand

#19
post #9

Wow. 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 wa…

We are on Hacker News, aren't we? Most people here value the material world more then the spiritual world. This doesn't mean they completely ignore the latter, of course. But between discussing spirituality and creating something, I'd say most would choose creating.

As for making money, this is how our success is measured. Yes, you can do things for your soul, of for your friends, or for your family or for the society at large, but to be an entrepreneur means to accept to be judged, indeed, to judge yourself by your material success: money. It is not an easy thing to do. Money does not lie to you, does not tell you you're ok as you are now, that things will be better or that it will love you no matter what. Failure is clear to see, and so is success.

I probably needn't say it, but all this is worthless if you do not apply complete honesty to your work. Money is not an end in itself, it is the measure of your skill. To steal or cheat in any way makes it useless for this purpose.

Re: "Francisco's Money Speech" by Ayn Rand

#20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the rest of the book seems ridiculous to you? The first time I read it, I thought that everything in Atlas Shrugged was perfect. Even with repeated readings, I never once thought anything was ridiculous. Be specific in your answer.

Ayn Rand often overstates her case for the sake of art (her evil characters, for example, are mostly shallow caricatures). I find that people who don't share her views often mock her works and call her "ridiculous" because she treats some ideas that they hold completely without nuance or sympathy. I can see why they do this, but I think Ayn's detractors overstate their case. She is valuable because she is the only ma…

"but absolute truth shall ever elude humans in this complex world."

Why?

Do you think a grand unified field theory is impossible? Do you think that quantum mechanics is the final word in physics? Do you suppose that that truth is knowable to some hypothetical race of aliens? (You specifically say that humans can't attain any absolute truth.) Or do you simply think that some truths are unknowable, such as distant historical events?

Do you hold any superstitions (religious or otherwise)? (You probably don't, but it helps to cover all the bases.)

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