I was a General Business major during the first semester of my freshman year of college. At one point during that semester I thought to myself, “40 years from now, I don’t want to look back on my life and say ‘I made a bunch of money’. I want to say I helped people and made a difference.”
I changed my major to Math Education.
Later in college, I decided to change my major from Math Education to Math and Electrical Engineering (my eventual degrees) because I didn’t want to teach and I thought I could accept the “evil” of making money as an engineer until I had enough money to start my own business, at which point it would be “good” to hire workers.
Throughout most of college, I had this crazy idea that it was morally right to work for others (teaching or hiring others) but morally wrong to work for myself (make as much money as possible).
To Make Money is Virtuous
When I graduated college and started working, my views had changed. If someone is willing to pay me to perform a service, that means I am helping to produce a valuable product or service. By working, I was actually creating wealth for the people around me where there was none before.
The fact that someone is willing to pay me to do my job is proof that my work is valuable to at least one person (the person who hired me). And if I work for an honest company that provides a valuable product or service that others are willing to pay for, I’m creating value for all of the company’s customers as well.
When I was younger, society taught me that making lots of money is greedy. Now that I’m older and (hopefully) wiser, I have realized that making money, or generating wealth, is the most virtuous thing I could do with my life.
Any Honest Profession is Virtuous
I can make money by becoming an engineer. I can also be a teacher. I can be a janitor or I can be a brain surgeon. As long as there are people in the world who want or need the service I provide and/or the product my company produces, I am adding wealth in the world.
As long as money is made honestly (through open and consensual trade), it is a reward for being productive. For advancing society. For eliminating someone else’s wants and/or needs. What could be more virtuous than that?
It is not virtuous to sit on your butt and accept money from the government (also known as money taken from the producers) when you are mentally and physically capable of generating your own wealth. It is also not virtuous to obtain money by coercion, lying, theft, blackmail, government favors, or anything other than honest trade.
To Summarize…
To produce is good. Therefore, to earn any amount of money via honest production is virtuous. The more money you make from what you produce, the more valuable your production has been to society.
Below you’ll find a quote from the classic novel Atlas Shrugged, with my own emphasis added:
So you think that money is the root of all evil? 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 this what you consider evil?
Readers: At what point did you realize that making money is virtuous? How did you come to that conclusion in this world where the 1% are, to this day, being vilified for their production? If you disagree making money is virtuous, please explain why.
Kevin McKee is an entrepreneur, IT guru, and personal finance leader. In addition to his writing, Kevin is the head of IT at Buildingstars, Co-Founder of Padmission, and organizer of Laravel STL. He is also the creator of www.contributetoopensource.com. When he’s not working, Kevin enjoys podcasting about movies and spending time with his wife and four children.
I agree with you. There’s nothing wrong with the idea of making money, the problem with many comes about in how some choose to make it. If you’re stepping on people along the way, or taking from others so that you have money, there’s no virtue in that. Unfortunately, many people start off down the right path but once those temptations come into play, they find they can’t or don’t resist, and the examples of that are what lead to the disdain of the 1%. If you can find a way to stay true and virtuous, there is absolutely nothing wrong with making money.
I think the slight difference between the way I am saying it and the way you are saying it is that you say there’s nothing wrong with making lots of money. I say the more money you make, the more virtuous you are. It feels uncomfortable because society tells us that this is bad, but when you really think about it, when more money signifies you’ve been more valuable to people around you, it makes sense that more money = more virtue.
I don’t think that making money is evil– but the way you make money can be evil.
Likewise, I don’t think that making money is virtuous– but the way you make money can be virtuous.
Unlike making art or making music, in making money you are not actually creating money; you are earning money by outcome of another act. I think it is that act that has the potential to be virtuous (or not).
Thank you so much for the post! I agree with you on most points that you made, and you really made me think about my own perspective of making money.
I agree that making money can be evil if you do it dishonestly. But the more honest money you make, the more wealth you’ve created in the world for everyone around you. If what you were doing didn’t create wealth, then no one would be willing to pay you for it 🙂
That’s very interesting that you thought of working for yourself as morally wrong. I have a business degree myself, and that’s when I started realizing the logistics of making money/virtue. I truly think that people who do things the right way (morally right) then they will be rewarded. There’s nothing wrong with making a lot of money as long as you are trying to do the right thing, and I really appreciate businesses who follow that model.
I’m glad you came to the realization earlier than I did. I thought it was right to make money, but the world around me seemed to be telling me it was wrong.
I just watched the movie Atlas Shrugged part 1. Looking forward to the second one. I haven’t read the book yet but its on the list. I don’t think making money, no matter how much, should be construed as evil. Like others and yourself have said, its the way you do it. Stealing and lying your way to riches is worthless, earning it however, by honest and helpful ways, is something you should take pride in.
I just read Atlas Shrugged over my vacation last week. It’s very long and it belabors many points over and over again, but it’s still very good. I’m also looking forward to the second movie (the first one was very close to the actual book).
I just wish our society as a whole could see that honest money making is virtuous!
I sort of agree, but also disagree. What about the service of owning and running an ice cream shop? You give the service of ice cream to people who want a treat, which can be considered virtuous, but you also are providing ice cream to a country with an overweight rate of over 60%. Maybe not so virtuous and more exploitative. Know what I’m saying?
I think it is just as virtuous to run an ice cream shop as it is to run an gym. An ice cream store owner will have plenty of customers who are perfectly healthy and at a normal weight. Similarly, a gym will have lots of people who sign up for the membership but don’t use it, and even more people who show up to the gym but spend most of their time socializing instead of working out.
You can’t be held responsible for how people use your product. As long as you are providing people with something they want or need (and you’ll know if they want or need it by how many sales you make), then you’re providing them a service they want, which I say is virtuous regardless of how they use your product.
Like Jamie I don’t think that making money in itself is either virtuous or evil. It’s HOW you make it that counts… are you familiar with Corporate Social Responsibility? It’s about making transparent how goods are produced, concerning worker rights and environmental issues. I admit, it’s not really what you are talking about here, as it’s in practice more about where you put your money than how you get it, but the general principle behind it is that it matters more “how” than “how much”.
I’d say earning (more) money is rather valuable than virtuous in this context – by providing something/creating something/doing something which gives someone else what they want/need and getting paid for it, both are better off later, thus the value. Sorry if this seems nit-picky, but for me it’s an important differentiation. So to say, I agree completely with your headline, but would rather put the emphasis on “honestly” than “making money”.
Coming from this differentiation, it’s easier to understand why the richest are vilified: because it seems to be easier to get to huge amounts of money being dishonest and greedy (think “Wall Street” movie). Not that I think this is true, but there are certainly people out there who ARE using everything they can for their own benefit – as well as people who can’t seem to get ahead who’d rather blame others than see what they can do themselves. I’ll stop here, because this is complicated and can lead into long opinionated discussions, and I don’t want to get there. Hope you get my point, though.
On a sidenote: I’ve only ever seen Ayn Rand references on US blogs and had to look her up the first time someone quoted her… Not much of a classic to me. Do you read Atlas Shrugged in school or how come everybody in the US seems to know about it?
Let’s think about how you make something. You might say that it’s “wrong” to employ someone in a factory in a third world country for $3 a day, but that’s just according to your values. As long as that person is not coerced into working that job for $3 a day, then he or she obviously determined that working in that factory for that salary is the best way to earn a living.
If you have slaves working for you, then you’re not making money honestly. On the other hand, if you are honest about the working conditions and pay when hiring people and they choose to work for you in the conditions you’ve set, then you’re doing it right. If conditions or the pay were not acceptable, then no one would choose to work for you.
To answer your side note, I just read Atlas Shrugged over my vacation last week. I’ve known about it for a while but always wanted to read it. There’s also a relatively new movie that’s out on Netflix. It’s part 1 of 3, but you should check it out.
“As long as that person is not coerced into working that job for $3 a day”
Unfortunately, yes, there are people coerced into that kind of horrible job working for $3 a day 12 hours and more. Sometimes, people’s ID or passports are kept by their boss or they have to go into debt to pay for the lodging their factory provides (and can’t use anything else), having to repay it with their salaries. By the way, this is illegal under international conventions but still done, even for internationally known big brands. Sometimes people are “coerced” by having to work under these conditions because there aren’t any other jobs available, but that is the borderline case you could argue over. The point is, you can’t really know.
Apart from that, yes, in the end it comes down to personal values, what you value paying for.
I disagree with your definition of virtue and think it’s rather simplistic to say that someone who makes truckloads of money has more virtue than someone who is unemployed and collecting government benefits. To me, the definition of virtue is to do good work.
I agree that doing good work is virtuous, which is why I think making money is virtuous. If you do no work, you make no money (at least make none honestly). If you do bad work that adds little value to those around you, you make little or no money because no one wants what you’re selling. If you do good work, you make a fair amount of money. If you do the best work anyone has ever seen, you’re going to make lots and lots of money.
Sure you can do good work and choose not to be paid for it, such as volunteer work, but being unemployed and collecting benefits without doing any work doesn’t add wealth to the world.
So, by your definition, then, if you get paid, then the work you do is good.
If you get paid for honest work, then the work you do is good. The definition I use for honest is something that doesn’t infringe on someone else’s life, liberty or property.
If I build a hammer and sell it to someone, I’ve created something valuable and added wealth to the world where there was none before. If you build five hammers and make 5x more money than me, I think it’s fair to say that you were more virtuous because you added more wealth to the world.
Now, if someone pays me to use that hammer to assault someone they don’t like, I don’t consider that virtue because it infringes on someone else’s freedom to be safe from assault.
I was thinking about the money speech immediately after reading the title. I love the reference and use it on anyone who blames money for our societal issues.
Ultimately, money is a proxy for what people care about. In a society where creation of value is rewarded with money, markets set the value of everyone’s contribution to our economy. Of course there are decrepancies, and there will always be those who are better with money and better at getting it, but on the whole it is a very accurate, ideally hands off method for divining what value something has. With this world view, hard work to earn money results in a better world for everyone. Sounds virtuous to me.
Cheating and stealing: not so virtuous. Who would argue with that?
I think we both agree very much. Probably because it sounds like you’ve read Atlas Shrugged as well and took many of the same things from it that I did.
‘Making’ money is moral, creating value where none existed before. The more you make the more virtuous you are, couldn’t agree more. Great post, love the Ayn Rand angle, very relevant to discussing money and wealth in today’s culture.
I always wondered why those who made money were seen as evil and vilified. How can you help others if you don’t have anything to help them with (which makes it virtuous)? To me society contradicts itself when we work hard to gain but once we gain we are seen as “evil”. I agree with the comment of making money not necessarily being virtuous, but what you do with it in the end.
Great post! A thought provoking topic.
“Until and unless 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.” -Francisco d’Anconia (Atlas Shrugged)
Good movie, great book…My only complaint is the 70+ page “radio speech” was seemed to drag on and on.
FYI – if you want to read that section that Kevin started and I finished, you can find it here:
http://capitalismmagazine.com/2002/08/franciscos-money-speech/
This is very though provoking indeed.
I agree with the general sentiment that by doing good work you are creating wealth, that is a solid concept. The act of honest hard work is a virtuous one. However, I think you are very wrong to equate money as being the ultimate and only measure of how much value one’s work is worth.
You have not qualified the statement “To make money honestly is the highest of virtues” as being restricted to any one economy or country, so lets take an rural village economy where resources are shared. There may be no money being exchanged within the village. The some people work on the crops during the day, others tend to their animals, some walk to the well to fetch water, etc. No money has been created in this process, but through their work they have created enough food for the village for another day. You cannot say these people are less virtuous than someone in a different economy who works and earns money.
Another example I can think of is a full-time family member carer of a disabled or sick person. The carer may only be able to work part time and and be dependent on government welfare to survive, but in my opinion their job would be amongst the most selfless, challenging virtuous around.
Lets then take any person who engages in volunteer work, because that work does not generate money, is it not virtuous ?
The last point I would like to make which has not been mentioned here is the environment, who pays the price for much generation of money. Take a developer who clears an area of forest to build an estate of luxury houses complete with golf course. By your definition, he as created houses which people will happily pay to live in and that is virtuous, but what about all the plants and animals that died in the clearing and construction? What about the run on effects from pollution in creeks and ponds from the fertilisers used on the golf course? Australian mining businessman Clive Palmer comes to mind here. He is worth around $600 million from mining natural resources from the australian outback. What is the price of the environmental destruction these mines have caused? There is no dollar value for this. I would argue humans have a moral obligation to look after the environment and many forms of money generation are harmful to the environment, and therefor are not virtuous.
Money is not the root of all evil, it is the LOVE of money that is the root of all evil.
What, you’re supposed to HATE it? Why should you take something of value, that was produced in a way that adds value to the world, and then be ashamed of having it? Makes NO sense.
My life changed many years ago when, at 17, I read Atlas Shrugged. I have read it many times since, because no matter how many times I read it, there’s always something more to be gleaned from it. Rather than teach me new stuff, it brought out that which was already within me that I knew, but couldn’t name. I will always be grateful to Ms. Rand for that, even though in the end, she did herself and her cause many a disservice, due to her inability to admit error – ever.
Good post, Kevin!