Posted on 11/27/2001 4:25:49 PM PST by Orion78
No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Matt 6:24
For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. 1 Tim 6:10
Score, goal, game over.
It should be also noted though that money can also be a powerful facilitator of good, but in order to get the good, one must give away the money for it.
Money by itself, it no more dangerous than a gun by itself. It is who has money and in what way that person can be use money is when it can be dangerous.
Money has nothing to do with the best power in us!
Do you wish to know wether that day is comming? Watch the money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion - when you seen that in order to produce, you need to obtain 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 that men get richer by 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 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.
Who out there in la la land can see that we are right in the middle of the same exact situation as the one above???
"To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money premits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss - the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery - that you must offer them values, not wounds - that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best that your money can find. And when men live by trade - with reason, not force, as their final arbiter - it is the best product that wins, the best preformance, the man of best judgment and hightest ability - and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existance whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?"
So, whenever someone points out that it is the LOVE of money that is the root of all evil, you refer them to post #9?
And the words in post #9 are "proof" that the love of money is NOT the root of all evil, is that correct?
Hmmm....whom should I believe? The Apostle Paul or Ayn Rand? Hmmm....the Word of God, or some dead philosopher? Hmmm...
No, I didn't read it. She gets somewhat belabored and fuzzy most of the time. I don't, for instance, by the nonsense of the equation that a person who will sell his soul for a nickel is the person who hates money. In fact, it is usually the person who is willing to sell his soul for a nickel who most loudly proclaims his love of money. In fact, there is only so much actual work anyone person can do to earn money, and beyond that point, the money gained is not earned by work, but by other means.
For instance, I know for a fact my lawyer does not earn his 400 dollars an hour, neither does he hesitate to charge me two hours for every one he does actually sit on his butt and talk on the phone. By the same token, he regularly gives away his soul for free. That's why I hire him.
1) A medium of exchange. That is, it can be exchanged for other things of value. Money takes many forms. I can be paper of a certain size printed with a particular design, a large stone on Easter island, or a coin of a particular size and weight of a particular element. It doesn't matter as long as the buyer and seller agree on the value of the money.
2) A store of value. That is, if you trade something for money, the money acts a store for the value of that which it was traded for. If you trade sheep (or anything else) for money, theoretically, it could be traded back for the same number of sheep at a later time, all other things being equal.
3) A means of accounting. Money provides a fungible (equally divisible into very small units) means of keeping track of economic activity. Try entering half a sheep onto an expense report for entertaining clients.
THESE ARE THE ONLY PROPERTIES OF MONEY. Everything else is derived from these. Money is a THING. It is neither good, nor bad. It is a tool just as a screwdriver, a knife, or a gun is a tool. The only thing that may be considered good, or bad, is the use the tool is put to. In and of itself, it is no different from Playdoh or Playboy.
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LoanPalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
No. See #35.
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