Francisco's Money Speech (from Atlas Shrugged)

In fact, it has contempt for what it describes as fools, and seems to equate monetizable value creation with moral righteousness; as such, it works well as a justification for selfishness for those well placed in the nexus of supply and demand, whether by luck or skill.

Of course, relatively little value creation is monetizable, and that creation which is is generally not rewarded in full according to its value. because of transaction costs. Much as we'd all like to be independent short-term contractors selling our valuable output to the highest bidder at every moment, we can't - the ancillary costs are too high, most of the time. So, most of us undersell our skills for a longer term contract, and the surplus is collected in proportion by those who own the most capital.

It's my personal suspicion that Ayn Rand is held in such high regard largely because of the guilt it assuages in people who would otherwise be uncomfortable feeling "greedy". It doesn't seem to work that way for me though, as it seems to be transparently flattering to the reader, with flimsy, threadbare arguments. That's all besides the tedious writing.

>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.

Again and again she exhorts people to feel disgust and hatred for people with different opinions, and to shun them. This is the black&white and us&them thinking common in religious cults.

> 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.

Those I've met who love money the most are those who have experienced deprivation. Money represents safety to them. It has very little to do with the creativity, intelligence or passion in creating. And in fact, since some of them (now I speak in the general sense, not people I know) believe their survival depends on it, they are willing to do all sorts of stuff to get hold of it.

One I particularly liked was Francisco explaining to Dagney's brother that 'making money' has a literal meaning. We're fortunate enough to live in an age where creating new wealth from thin air is fundamental basis of the global economy, rather than sending the Conquistadors overseas to steal somebody else's.

Wealth is created in two ways - harvest raw materials, apply labor+capital+innovation+time to turn them into finished products, then sell them for more than the total cost of the inputs. Voila, the difference is wealth created from thin air.

We used to take wood and iron and turn it into ships and trains. Now we take sand and aluminum and turn it into billions of dollars worth of microchips. The profit margin is the measure of wealth literally created.

The other way is to provide some service that saves people time, since that is a key input in the wealth creation process.

Everything else is either a wealth transfer of some form (trading wealth for something of value like leisure activities) or wealth destruction.

That's what Francisco was getting at in his speech. I knew it before reading Atlas, but liked his turn of phrase 'words have a literal meaning' when referring to 'making money'.

Another of Rand's recurring points I've liked is that philosophy is an applied science. There's very little about our day-to-day lives and modern world that hasn't been influenced by philosophy, for better or worse, intentionally or incidentally. But most people go about their lives completely oblivious to this, or at best with a vague sense of it.