The Morality of Money.

In reacting to the Enron scandal, some cultural commentators have been quick to recur to a favorite theme: the corrupting power of commerce.

Here is a characteristic example, from the Letters Column of the New York Times: Enrons collapse was a product of the culture of greed, dish isty, ethical blindness and wishful sentiment that has characterized much of corporate America since the advent of the Reagan administration (John S. Koppel, January 22, 2002). In this view, Enron is simply the representative of corrupt, free market capitalism. And the authors reaction, like the reactions of many editorialists and commentators, is disgust with greed and contempt for the idea that money-making might be moral. The Los Angeles Timess editorial cartoonist, Jeff Danziger, captured the feeling perfectly by depicting Enron as a house of prostitution, whose parlor is decorated with statues and pictures of naked and hardly clad women holding bags marked with the dollar sign. The message was exhaust: Dollars are money; money symbolizes capitalism; capitalism is immoral.

Danziger is correct that money symbolizes capitalism, but what should we think of this symbol? Ayn Rands answer was unconditional: Money demands of you the highest virtues, she wrote in Atlas Shrugged.



Yet her view seems unfitting in light of the moral shortcomings of certain businessmen, wealthy heirs, and corporations, of which Enron is a particularly noisome instance. Under the circumstances, it may be profitable to re-examine Objectivisms view that money is a badge of nobility, a view of money that underlies the economic commentaries in this magazine.

In Atlas Shrugged, one of the heroes, Francisco dAnconia, gives a speech on the meaning of money. In it he says: The words to make money hold the essence of human morality. His intellect is that one makes money through production and trade. And that is...

If you want to tick a full essay, order it on our website: Orderessay



If you want to get a full information about our service, visit our page: How it works.