Lillian convinces Hank to go to Jim’s wedding on September 2. Jim is marrying Cherryl Brooks and we get the background on the courtship. At the reception, Orren and Jim fight about who has more power over Wesley Mouch through their use of favors. Mr. Mowen and Paul Larkin spend the reception trying to suck up to Jim. Lillian tells Jim she can “deliver” Hank anytime and wants credit for making it look like Hank has to be concerned with Jim. Rearden defends Dagny when Lillian wants the bracelet back. Francisco tells Jim he knows Jim and his friends have been putting all their money in d’Anconia Copper stock under assumed names. Francisco explains his beliefs regarding money during a speech. Francisco tells Hank, d’Anconia stock will plummet because of “accidents”. Francisco then lets the whole room know and panic ensues for everyone except Francisco, Hank, and Dagny.
SUBPLOT (loose ends)
Dagny can predict the “destroyer’s” next victim and now believes it is Roger Marsh.
The excellent people are leaving. No one knows where they are going and why.
Quentin Daniels has been sending Dagny monthly updates on the motor.
The cigarette guy tells Dagny “that cigarette was not made anywhere on earth”.
Rearden and Danagger form a pact to go down together if they’re caught breaking the Fair Share Law.
Francisco tells Dagny that John Galt has claimed his line.
Francisco tells Hank never to deal with d’Anconia Copper.
Francisco asks Rearden, “Who is the guiltiest man in this room tonight?”
COMMENTS
Money – This is the best speech in the book. It makes the “Greed is Good” speech from “Wall Street” look like a nursery rhyme. I think it would make a great monologue in a forensics competition. Also, considering the financial crisis of 2008 with the bailout, this speech is prophetic. It actually predicted what happened in 2008! There are so many great ideas, I will comment on the two giving us the beginnings of a model we will be developing for the rest of this novel.
First, here are the passages from Francisco's "money speech" whose themes form the basis of the model:
"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 the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with the desire. Money is the scourge of the 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 evade the choice of what to seek."
"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."
"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."
The causal model has four steps and proceeds according to causality. The negative people want to reverse this model and try to make it work in reverse.
Over the previous eleven chapters, there are three words Ayn keeps using to describe the barriers between each of the four steps. I've put those in parenthesis.
You Energy Action Purpose
Driver (Fear) Thinking (Pain) Means (Guilt) Meaning
Values -------------> Motive Power -----------> Achievement ------------> Happiness
Principle Desire Motion Enjoyment
It looks like money is under the Energy column when it is a storage of value (battery) and under Action when it is used to exchange value.
Notice, this progression goes from intangible/invisible to tangible/physical. Here are the rest of the areas of application for the Money Speech:
Violence – When a government doesn’t have value for value in place, then the winner is the most violent. Do we really want to demonize those who have money? People who demonize those who have money are REALLY endorsing violence.
Government – Why is power given to an organization that doesn’t follow value for value (consumes more than it produces)? “When you see that men get richer by graft and pull than by work…” This is what I try to determine when someone tells me a “success story”. HOW did they get rich? Did they produce? Did they follow “value for value”?
Scale – Francisco contrasts both sides of the scale during his speech to Hank.
Negative: evade good thoughts, avoid effort, indulge emotions, willing to bear nothing.
Positive: evade evil thoughts, won’t consider being spared, sacrifice emotions, willing to bear anything.
Hank - Hank meets with Danagger for a business deal and realizes: "He thought that he had been made to hide, as a guilty secret, the only business transaction he had enjoyed in a year's work - and that he was hiding, as a guilty secret, his nights with Dagny, the only hours that kept him alive. He felt that there was some connection between the two secrets, some essential connection which he had to discover. He could not grasp it, he could not find the words to name it, but he felt that the day when he would find them, he would answer every question of his life." Then Hank realizes about his marriage: "And then he thought suddenly that in business transactions the courts of law did not recognize a contract wherein no valuable consideration had been given by one party to the other."
Lillian - She tells Jim about Hank: "If you had the most powerful horse in the world, you would keep it bridled down to the gait required to carry you in comfort, even though this meant the sacrifice of its full capacity, even though its top speed would never be seen and its great power would be wasted. You would do it - because if you let the horse go full blast, it would throw you off in no time." and "Well, what I wanted you to know is that I can deliver him, any time I choose."
PRACTICAL APPLICATION (worth rereading)
Obviously, the money speech is worth rereading. As far as applications go:
The bottom line is money is an effect, not a cause. The Bible actually says, "For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil: which some reaching after have been led astray from the faith, and have pierced themselves through with many sorrows." Notice Paul is saying making money a cause ("which some reaching after") distracts people from the true cause (faith, belief, precepts, moral code) and actually results in sorrow. Francisco agrees with Paul.
“No man can be smaller than his money” – It’s amazing the number of people who inherit a large sum of money and end up worse off. This explains it.
“Verdict you pronounce on yourself” – I know people who look at all of their stuff and get depressed because it reminds them of the people they had to put up with and the things they had to do to get it.
“Watch money” – Because it is a measure of the impact of “value for value”, the treatment of money is a measure of how moral and understanding a society is. “The words ‘to make money’ hold the essence of human morality.” We’ll see why later.
“Money is made – before it can be looted or mooched.” There is a Right way and there are many wrong ways. The Right way is the origin, the created. The wrong way is described from the Right way; it is the corruption of the created. It’s amazing how the negative side of the scale uses a perverted version of the principles from the positive side. Jim and Orren talk about “value for value” and trading. This is proof their way is just a perversion of the Right way.
2008 Financial Crisis - "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." Our country encouraged people to acquire money by not producing anything tangible...and we are surprised the system would eventually fail? Money ought to have been an EFFECT of producing something tangible of value. Money isn't a cause.
Objective Truth - Look at how the speech ends...
-"Senior d'Anconia, I don't agree with you!"
-"If you can refute a single sentence I uttered, madame, I shall hear it gratefully."
-"Oh, I can't answer you. I don't have any answers, my mind doesn't work that way, but I don't feel that you're right, so I know that you're wrong."
-"How do you know it?"
-"I feel it. I don't go by my head, but by my heart. You might be good at logic, but you're heartless."
-"Madame, when we'll see men dying of starvation around us, your heart won't be of any earthly use to save them. And I'm heartless enough to say that when you'll scream, 'but I didn't know it!' - you will not be forgiven."
SUPPLEMENT
“Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gold, or the temple that sanctifieth the gold?” (Bible)
“If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon (money), who will commit to your trust the true riches?” (Bible)
“If Dualism is true, then the Bad Power must be a being who likes badness for its own sake. But in reality we have no experience of anyone liking badness just because it is bad. In other words badness cannot succeed even in being bad in the same way in which goodness is good. Goodness is, so to speak, itself: badness is only spoiled goodness. And there must be something good first before it can be spoiled."
"Put it more simply still. To be bad, he (the Bad Power) must exist and have intelligence and will. But existence, intelligence and will are in themselves good. Therefore he must be getting them from the Good Power: even to be bad he must borrow or steal from his opponent. All the things that enable a bad man to be effectively bad are in themselves good things – resolution, cleverness, good looks, existence itself. That is why Dualism in a strict sense will not work.” (CSL-MC)
Next Chapter: White Blackmail
No comments:
Post a Comment