The Morality of Money

I saw this here and had to pass this on.

"When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket, and then that society vanishes in a spread of ruins and slaughter. Do you wish to know whether that day is coming?

"Watch Money. Money is a barometer of a 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 permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see men get richer by graft and 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 - then 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." ~ Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
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Like it or not, this is exactly where we are. Force is now the standard. Individual rights (you know, those inadequate "negative rights" of the Constitution), any actions stemming from self-interest branded as unfair and selfish, money worth nothing if invested in government instruments, government thugs running every which way to scamper from the spotlight on their nefarious actions, government intrusion into healthy banks, welfare for the businesses that are incapable of surviving because they made poor judgments, ordinary unsuccessful local people calculating how they can get in on the government's largesse, laws more concerned to protect criminals and terrorists than the real victims, property expropriated and handed over to the man with political pull - all backed with the gun to force you, the taxpayer, to pay for it - are the "non-rules" of the game. Because the structure for men to deal with each other peacefully (voluntary, free trade) and resolve their differences by peaceful means (courts based on objective laws) has collapsed, it is every man for himself. And, this is exactly where we are in the process of our decline.

Obama, regarded by many as a god, marks the apotheosis of all of the negative, anti-life ideas that have ruined men through the ages. (I have yet to find an Obama voter who looked into his history insofar as the ideas, Marxism and religion - Islam and Christianity, that have fueled him for over 20 years and how he operated in the corrupt swamp of Chicago/Illinois politics. Not a single one!)

How can you stop it? Get rational. Find out how pro-life institutions, your agreements at your level, have to work and deal only with people who meet those standards. Protect your essential property and values the best way you can. Be mindful of your surroundings - the people and their mindset and attitudes - for a gauge of your physical safety. The rest of the herd will go over the cliff. Work to not be one of them.