On the July 8, 2012 episode of Exposing Faux Capitalism with Jason Erb, George Whitehurst-Berry, former host of GCN’s “Crash! Are You Ready?,” identified several misleading points that he labelled disinfo, which were made in the following passage from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged (starting at 49:50):
“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 an 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 it bounces, marked: ‘Account overdrawn.”‘
Ayn Rand:
- Failed to distinguish between debt money and sovereign, debt-free money.
- Claimed gold has an objective value, despite its value changing, like when Roosevelt’s Executive Order in 1933 seized gold at $20.67 USD an ounce, only for Congress to later increase its value to $35 an ounce.
- Falsely associated paper money with force, which doesn’t include local, voluntary currencies.
- Falsely identified debt-based paper money as a demand instrument — it’s a promise to pay.
- Failed to distinguish between privately issued debt-free money by individuals, and debt-based money by banks.
C.W.
“One small example, when she said that gold has an objective value she is referring to the fact that people value gold for itself, in that it is considered beautiful, that it is malleable, that it does not tarnish, etc. It has value besides its use as money.”
Except for the fact that she is talking about gold’s use of money as an exchange medium, your argument would almost make sense. People also valued tulips for their beauty, too, but it didn’t stop the great Tulip bubble of 1637. Valuing ideas “for themselves, in that it is considered beautiful, etc.” blah blah blah turns out to be a totally stupid and irrelevant argument.
.”Not one of your claims has any resemblance to Ayn Rand’s ideas”?
More like Ayn Rand’s ideas, and your awful interpretation of them. have no resemblance to reality.
Not one of your claims has any resemblance to Ayn Rand’s ideas. One small example, when she said that gold has an objective value she is referring to the fact that people value gold for itself, in that it is considered beautiful, that it is malleable, that it does not tarnish, etc. It has value besides its use as money. If in fact you want to make telling arguments against someone, you have to actually know what their position is, not just make up something that makes you feel good. Oh, wait. It is Ayn Rand who demands truth and objectivity, and no one wants to be associated with such a fool.
Quote: – Claimed gold has an objective value, despite its value changing, like when Roosevelt’s Executive Order in 1933 seized gold at $20.67 USD an ounce, only for Congress to later increase its value to $35 an ounce.
If Rand were here, she’d probably say that the value of the gold had not changed, but rather the value of the currency did, specifically the dollar deflated, meaning that more dollars were needed to buy the same gold that fewer dollars had bought earlier.
But Rand was, nonetheless, wrong. Gold isn’t an objective value. Gold is a substance whose value depends on how badly you want it. Paper is also a substance, though one much more common and with fewer uses, especially when it has already been cut to size and printed upon.
Someone who greatly admires the beauty of gold would be more willing to work in order to have that beauty near him, as compared with someone who considered gold to be less important than whatever it is he wanted more: food, electronic gadgets, a big house—whatever.
The so-called “market value” of gold is a weighted average of bids by those who seek to purchase it. It’s a collective judgment about the value of gold that Rand would have despised in any form she couldn’t cloak as the working of the law of supply and demand. To any individual, considering the purchase of gold, his own bid might be greater or less than this collective judgment, and if it is less he most likely won’t buy much, if any.
I fully agree. Even if gold had an objective or intrinsic value, it wouldn’t be of much use to us, coming from our subjective perspectives.
By the way: “for money is men’s protection and the base of a moral existence.”
What a sour witch Rand really was. I prefer Paul’s analysis of the situation when he wrote to Timothy ‘the love of money is root of all kinds of evil’
Memehunter was entirely on target when he analyzed the The Satanic Core of Libertarianism
Just the hysterical libertarian/austrian ‘oh my God it’s statist fiat money!’
Having all their dealers…..uh…leaders regurgitate this nonsense ad nauseam in all of their pamphplets was good brainwashing though. The purely pavlovian reactions that all the austrian addicts show when it comes to money (Statist! Fiat!) as if they’re actually saying something is living proof of their success.
Patient debunking like the article the only hope we have to reclaim those poor wandering sheep for opposition against the Money Power.