I am fascinated by the world we live in today, America in particular…
What was once the shining beacon of hope, leadership, and freedom around the world, is fast becoming a wasteland divided - with looters on one side, and the sheeple who willingly trade-in their pride, their dreams, and their honor as men - in exchange for hand-outs like social security, unemployment, and food stamps, referred to as "benefits" by the looters.
The Land of the Free, and the Home of The Brave, has become the "Land of the Slaves and Home of The Victims".
I see this every day, as pleads for deals and freebies flood my inbox from moochers who name every excuse under the sun, as to why I should give my knowledge and my expertise to them from free, because "I owe them", just like the government owes them, their boss owes them, and their spouse owes them.
They blame money, and those who have it, for the problems of the world. They call money the root of all evil.
Is that the case?
Well today I'd like to share with you some of the most profound words I've ever experienced, which will stay with me for the rest of my life. If we're to hold onto the freedom, the ideas, and values they stand for, they represent the last great hope for our country, and our shrinking world…
And as for you… How you feel about the following story will determine your financial fate, and your life.
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Page 410 - "Atlas Shrugged"
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"Standing unnoticed on the edge of a group, Rearden heard a woman, who had large diamond earrings and a flabby, nervous face, ask tensely, "Senior d'Anconia, what do you think is going to happen to the world?"
"Just exactly what it deserves."
"Oh how cruel!"
Don't you believe in the operation of moral law, madame?" Francisco asked gravely.
"I do."
Rearden heard Bertram Scudder, outside the group, say to a girl who made some sound of indignation, "Don't let him distrub you. You know, money is the root of all evil - and he's the typical product of money."
Rearden did not think that Francisco could have heard it, but he saw Francisco turning to them with a gravely courteous smile.
“So you think that money is the root of all evil? Said Francisco d’ Anconia.
Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them.
Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade, and give value for value.
Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is that what you consider evil?
When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears nor all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into bread you will need to survive tomorrow.
Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor – your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money. Is that what you consider evil?
Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time.
Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions and you’ll learn that man’s mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.
But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of a man’s capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it?
Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made – before it can be looted or mooched – made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability.
- An honest man is the one who knows that he can’t consume more than he has produced.
To trade by means of money is the code of 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 permits 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 beats 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 performance, the man of best judgment and highest ability – and the degree of a man’s productiveness is the degree of his reward.
This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is that what you consider evil? But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.
It will give you the means for satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of men who attempt to reverse the law of causality – the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.
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, if he’s evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he’s evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent.
The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors.
The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?
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. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one, would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve the mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason you call it evil?
Money is your means of survival. The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life.
If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men’s vices or men’s stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment’s or a penny’s worth of joy.
Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you’ll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of money?
Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money?
Or did you say that 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 the 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.
Let me give you a tip on a clue to men’s characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it. Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil.
That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another – their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.
But money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or keep it. Men who have no courage, pride, or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich – will not remain rich for long.
They are the natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt – and his life, as he deserves.
Then you will see the rise of the men of the double standard – the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money – the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statues are written to protect you against them.
But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law – men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims – then money becomes its creator’ avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they’ve passed a law to disarm them.
But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. 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 the 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 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 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. Destroyers seize gold and leave it to its owners in 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.
Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked: Account overdrawn.
When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, ‘who is destroying the world?’ You are.
You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it’s crumbling around you, while you’re damning its life-blood – money.
You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities. Throughout men’s history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, whose names changed, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor.
That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves – slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody’s mind and left unimproved for centuries.
So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little con conquer. Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers – as industrialists.
To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money – and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement.
For the first time, man’s mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being – the self-made man – the American Industrialist.
Until you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction.
When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips, and guns – or dollars.
Take your choice – there is no other – and your time is running out."
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Ayn Rand - "Atlas Shrugged" : Pg 410 –>
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My fellow entrepreneurs…
We are the producers.
We are the blood of our nation.
We are the noblest representation of man-kind in the world.
This is the value I offer to you and the world, which you will buy not because you must - but because it will improve your life.
To our future…
Mike Dillard
P.S. Please leave your thoughts below, and Re-Tweet if you'd like to share this message with others…
January 18th, 2010 at 11:16 am
So then lets get back to the gold standard somehow. State governments can come together, buy and pool gold, and issue an alternate currency backed by it.
We, the people, are the law.
Land of the…
Home of the…
p.s. Thanks Mike, f***'n A!
January 18th, 2010 at 11:36 pm
I see the root of the problem as a PRIVATE Central Bank, aka Federal Reserve. If you remember in the early 60's during the Kennedy Presidency, United States Notes were issued (without usury) Coincidence, Kennedy was killed after issuing Executive Order requiring the issuance of United States Notes to cover the National Debt and replace Federal Reserve Notes (that carry interest). You won't see that in the history books.
A Public Central Bank backed by a percentage of substance (gold and silver as required by the Constitution for the united States of America) would take this country out of the control of International Banksters.
It's much deeper but that would be a good start.
January 19th, 2010 at 12:32 am
I've known about the so called Federal Reserve System and it was suppose
to be audited back in the early 1994 and two Congressmen were ahead of
the Committees to audit the Fed. Gonzaloes and Scott Hamilton lead and
Scott Hamilton died in a plane crash with eye witness saying the plane
blew up in the sky. Their was a recent try for this last year but I haven't
heard from this yet. The point in question is that Congress gave up their
Power to International Bankers when they were away on Christmas recess
and everyone in this country and the world are paying for because of a
few peoples greed trying to rule the World THE NEW WORLD ORDER.
January 19th, 2010 at 4:25 am
Money is not the problem. Government is not the problem. The real problem starts with the ego and it’s uncontrolled need for money, recognition, power, fame. It’s the need to achieve at any cost that is destructive. When you use people's greed, ego and ignorance against them for your personal gain, you may gain money but it pales when you consider the wounds you inflict on your soul. If you think you need to reach your goals to be happy think again. Joy and love are state of being that no thing can bring. Being truly grateful for what you have every moment is the way to find joy and fulfillment now. Be sure you motives are pure when you reach for more.
January 19th, 2010 at 7:20 am
Hi Mike,
No money is not Destroying the world , But What is Polatics & religion are two of the main factors , Take haiti for instance the earthqake now thats natural destruction, And now the world is donating vasts amounts of money to help these poor people so that they can try to get some sort of order back into there
lives, So you see without the money there would be no releaf,
So you see money is just a tool to get us through life ,
We human's make a good enough job of destroying the world.
January 20th, 2010 at 5:04 am
Hi Mike Money has never been the root of evil. As the good book says; "It's the love of money that is the root of evil." Money represents' "The Power To Do Good" as in the example of millions of people coming together around the world to help Hatti recover in this the time of their greatest need. I believe in THE SYMBIOYIC PHILOSOPHY AND LIVING EACH DAY TO THE FULLEST - namely interdependece while being dependent. It all centers around the proven statement that "Givers Win and Takers Loose". Whenever we work together to enhance each other we all win…. period. God Bless You!
January 20th, 2010 at 2:25 pm
Hi Mike…I've been trying to keep up with your videos but a couple has no sound!..I'am enjoying this article…"Is money
destroying the World?"…I think not! "People are destroying the world!"…There is are never have been a shortage of money
People that have money are sometimes not satisfied…The ones that need it often appear more Happy than the ones with it…When I visited North Morrocco the people that were poor, were the,nicest,sweetest most pleasant I have ever known. I was amazed at how they lived off of $3.00 a day an they lacked nothing…Money is everywhere..Even now! In the mist…Signs of People destroying people for money! "It's all so sad".
01/20/2010
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January 21st, 2010 at 5:47 pm
Money is a good thing. The love of money is not bad if you keep it in proper perspective. I do however believe that the love of money motivates people to do all sorts of evil. This is what happens when people put money ahead of everything else.People want power and wealth for themselves to be happy and fulfilled. I want money to be debt free, take care of my family,and help other people who are trying to do the same. I want to help deserving people become self sufficiant helpers of other deserving people. I'll need money to do it. Thank you for all you do to help people do exactly that. Thank you for an excellent article Mike,and may God bless you.
January 30th, 2010 at 3:35 am
Human greed, and human lust are what is destroying the world. The form of the currency has no bearing on it. Whether it be Ben Franklins, or Strawberry Tootsie Pops, whichever is held in highest regard by greed, and lust for power, that will be the tool behind the atrocity. Simply a tool. One to leverage the weaknesses of those without power. The tool that turns those very weaknesses in others, into power for self. We live in dark days. Your excerpt here today Mike fits right into modern society despite it's 53 year heritage. Good job!
February 3rd, 2010 at 6:18 am
I cannot stand when people say money is the root to all evil. It is the LOVE of money that is the root to all evil. The reason that is true is because it takes a selfish person to love money and selfishness is the root to a gang of evils. That is why I love your philosophies about adding value to the world and helping others in order to succeed.
February 5th, 2010 at 6:44 pm
Very informative text. I've found your blog via Bing and I'm really happy about the information you provide in your posts. Btw your sites layout is really messed up on the Chrome browser. Would be cool if you could fix that. Anyhow keep up the good work!
February 6th, 2010 at 8:34 am
Hi mike ,Tell me why is it in this world every time we meet some one in the street in a shop at the pub or where ever, And what ever the conversation may be , The subgect the almighty dolla seems to always wind its way into the conversation,
For a lot of different reasons,I recon in a lot of case's the greed factor comes into it, The old saying , The more they get the more they want, & Then the power factor comes into it ,So you see one seems to follow the other, It's a shame that a large amount of people get obsess'ed with money & then they start to out do each other, So sad,
The best things in life are free , Period.
February 7th, 2010 at 10:20 am
the only thing that you got my attention is i want to learn about business and to meet a deffirent people.. to learn more about our economy and how to make money….
thanks and god bless
February 7th, 2010 at 7:34 pm
There is nothing wrong with money. As was said many times, it is a tool. When used to improve your own life, and what good you can do.
February 8th, 2010 at 12:54 am
The love of money is not the root of evil. Selfishness is. I personally LOVE money and as a result money comes into my life to take care of me, to give me the things I desire and need. When it comes in I love it and thank it for coming. I do the same when I send it out. To me it is much more than a medium of exchange. It's energy. The ultimate "problem" with the world is that we don't know who we are. I'm going to say something bold here that will probably upset the Christians. Each person has the potential to become as Jesus was, a fully activated, Christ with full dominion over the plant, animal and mineral kingdom. We cannot change the world. It is in decline anyways. We can rise up and be who we are. There is a way to rise up by activating your Sacred Seals which are in the physical body. There are 12 Seals with 12 activations each. Each activation is a kundalini experience. The light of God comes alive and begins to teach you from within you. It will help you to dissolve your ego and all of the incorrect programs you have inside you, your selfishness. In between activations you are tested to see if you demonstrate in behavior what you have learned. The tests get harder and harder as they are temptations…your temptations. This is the path of enlightenment and it is not easy and not for everyone. As enough brave ones become who they really are, the game will be over, our "masters" will know we are no longer their "slaves". We are all much more than we have been told and believe. I don't mean to offend anyone. This has been my experience, not my belief but I what I know because I am experiencing it. Love and Success to All
February 8th, 2010 at 6:05 pm
Well Mike, and I do use the word well in many forms too. Mike as usual you are are good, active, healthy well for us. And as with any well like that, it is to share, not to horde or take advantage of in the sharing. This was great, in depth, length, and breadth.
Mike, even the posts,up till one at the end, on the tangent, and am suprised it was allowed, and not asked to be edited short, and away from any personal Philosophy class which can be open to subjective perspective.
Mike I am soo glad you deal more in facts when you share, when you teach and in your wares.
Thanks
February 11th, 2010 at 5:12 am
Hi Mike,no body will deny that money is the tool that we all need to make ends meet.The government, organizations and any other means of systems are not the problems of money and corruptions.It is the people that controlling these systems that have become the standing obstacles and cause grave consequecies.People need money to raise themself so that they can help others.Money is a good thing and there is nothing wrong with money.
Thanks
Delores
February 21st, 2010 at 12:15 pm
Bravo! Well said and well taken.
Thank you, Mike
March 11th, 2010 at 11:04 pm
Hi Mike and other members. My mentor is a great American R Buckminster Fuller whom we are all starting to hear more and more. Consider by many as the most important human of the 20th Century he invested 55 years of his life seeking to make human beings a physical success on this beautiful planet. He was clear that you can't make money and sense at the same time, they are mutually exclusive.
As a close colleague of Henry Ford senior he designed and built an amazing Dimaxion car (see on YouTube) and his Dimaxion house that took 15 minutes to complete all the housework … and this was in 1930's.
He also saw that the vast majority of people are being what he called 'unevidently selfish' … we look like we care, but underneath we're actually improving our lot even at the expense of others. And the critical point is that since around 1970 this is no longer integrity, i.e. it no longer works.
In 1952 Fuller proposed that we now had the resources and the knowhow to provide for every human being on earth at a very high standard of living. This was proven in 1971 by a group of some 1600 International Scientists, that for the first time in history we had the capacity to provide for everyone of earth. Fuller also said that when we actually understand that, and start working co-operatively we will create 4.5 billion billionaires (c1970).
Today that equates to ten billion billionaires (http://10billionbillionaires.org).
Fuller also proposed back in 1970's that the US economy would be better off, and the environment better off if the government paid 70% of the workers (the audititors and checkers and the checkers of the checkers) who produce no real wealth (wealth as life support systems) pay them $1000 a day to stay home.
Instead they spend hours travelling to work (that produces no life support) and pollute the environment when they could be home and looking for local problems they can go to work on to make human beings a physical success.
Finally, that point back in 1971 (or earlier) was a tipping point a little like in 400BC when Copurnicus I think it was discovered that the world was a sphere rotating around the sun … this was kept secret from 99% of the population for 1800 years. The fact today is that we have more than enough wealth, more than enough food, clothing, shelter to have everyone living a billionaires lifestyle within a very short time.
The real context of life on earth today is abundance … there is no scarcity, and it is no longer integrity for any person to live their life for themselves. It is no longer "you or me" but now it is "you and me", that's why there is chaos and it could happen very quickly that the message sweeps around the globe and as Fuller said, it may only take us ten years to transform the world and yes, make human beings a physical success.
Is it possible that is our mission here? I for one believe it is and if you've read this far and like to join me come onboard Your Healthy Planet.com (http://yourhealthyplanet.com).
All the best.