(Clint Siegner, Money Metals News Service) Ayn Rand thought a lot about the philosophy of money. She understood gold as money functioned beyond providing safe haven, a store of value, and a medium of exchange. It has moral and cultural implications. People refer to it as “honest money” for a reason.
Below is an excerpt from Francisco’s money speech in the novel Atlas Shrugged. It would be wonderful if the entire speech were read and understood widely. As American taxpayers wake up to how badly officials have treated their money, Rand’s words are timely:
“Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men’s protection and the base of a moral existence.
Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values.
Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it.”
Most Americans, particularly those in Washington, DC, have never considered the moral implications of our current monetary system. They aren’t good.
Money and those who earn it should garner more respect than they do today – especially among bureaucrats and politicians.
This respect was once commonplace. The dollar used to be as “good as gold.”
People proudly traded their labor and invested their capital in exchange for something real, beautiful, scarce, and valuable.
Their time and effort were precious, and they exchanged them for something equally as precious – gold (and silver) dollars.
Now, Americans exchange time and effort for fiat dollars, which get closer to their true value of zero every year. And they shoulder a portion of the perpetual servitude inherent in a system of debt-based money, income taxation, and unlimited government.
The rest of that burden will be shouldered by future generations when they inherit the paper IOU money, the mountain of debt, and the corrupt system backing it all, instead of gold.
What should we expect when so much money is simply borrowed into existence?
Americans have mostly stood by as the national debt exploded to $36 trillion. Would they have allowed that if all the borrowing had to be repaid with money which could not be printed and had to be earned?
Should we be surprised when bureaucrats, with no vested interest in the outcomes, treat the billions of borrowed and printed dollars like monopoly money?
Politicians and bureaucrats spent a lot less on boondoggles when dollars were backed by gold. That is no accident. Those dollars were hard to come by, even in government.
At one time, printing and borrowing was not an easy option for politicians. And few had the temerity to attempt a tax increase. Citizens would never have stood for it – handing over their precious coins to be spent on such nonsense.
If Americans want lasting honesty in Washington, DC, reinstituting honest money will have to be part of the answer.
Clint Siegner is a Director at Money Metals Exchange, a precious metals dealer recently named “Best in the USA” by an independent global ratings group. A graduate of Linfield College in Oregon, Siegner puts his experience in business management along with his passion for personal liberty, limited government, and honest money into the development of Money Metals’ brand and reach. This includes writing extensively on the bullion markets and their intersection with policy and world affairs.
