Overwhelmed by emotions shown here

[dogechode]

Yeah almost every religion takes a shit view of money yet most of the religious organizations are flush with cash. And for a long time (arguably still true in some places) one of the main functions of religion was to legitimize the government and/or rulers/monarchs/dictators/etc. Kind of funny how that works out.

[sporket]

...
Why should a rational person get his morality from the Bible?

It's not "why should" but (at least in my corner of the world) ethics *are* Judeo-Christian.  It doesn't particularly matter if ethical maxims were passed down from Heaven or if Heaven was imagined in concordance with our ethics, what we consider "good" and "moral" is pretty much Judeo-Christian (in most of the western world).

Alluding to religious texts also makes a nice "shorthand" for morality. That way, you don't constantly have to add "i think" or "i feel" to every sentence you say.  We even say "canon, gospel" when we mean immutable, something that can't be questioned.  If you try to do without some meta-touchstone like religious texts, ethics become uselessly subjective.  "Thou shalt not kill"?  Why not?

As I said, ethics are pretty meh.  The Faithful don't need them, and atheists can bend them to suit their needs.

[Pente]

This thread reminds me of something that I read when I was about 9 years old:


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?

When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears nor all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor – your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money. Is this what you consider evil?

Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions – and you'll learn that man's mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.

But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made – before it can be looted or mooched – made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.

To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except by the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss – the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery – that you must offer them values, not wounds – that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best your money can find. And when men live by trade – with reason, not force, as their final arbiter – it is the best product that wins, the best performance, then man of best judgment and highest ability – and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?

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 desires. 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 evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth – the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve that mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

Money is your means of survival. The verdict which you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men's vices or men's stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? 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. Then you'll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of money?

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. Is this the root of your hatred of money?

Or did you say it's the love of money that's the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know and love its nature. 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. It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is the loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money – and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it.

Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.

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. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another – their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.

But money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or to keep it. Men who have no courage, pride, or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich – will not remain rich for long. They are the natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt – and of his life, as he deserves.

Then you will see the rise of the double standard – the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money – the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law – men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims – then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. 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. Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.

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 the 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 when it becomes, marked: 'Account overdrawn.'

When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world?' You are.

You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it's crumbling around you, while you're damning its life-blood – money. You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities. Throughout men's history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor. That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves – slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody's mind and left unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer. Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers – as industrialists.

To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money – and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man's mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being – the self-made man – the American industrialist.

If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose – because it contains all the others – the fact that they were the people who created the phrase 'to make money'. No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity – to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted, or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality.

Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters' continents. Now the looters' credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide – as, I think, he will.

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.

[Newfeeling]

...
No, making money through usury is unethical. At least if we are going by typical biblical ethics, otherwise all we are left with is personal opinion. In which case, screw your ethics.

The Bible has a much wider interpretation of "usury."  Religious law, both Jewish and Christian, prohibits lending money with interest -- that's usury.  Which pretty much precludes "making money by having money" (though there's nothing there about deflationary currencies, which could be seen as making the holder wealthier).

There's very interesting theological loopholes/acrobatics that allowed both Jews and Christians (and Muslims) to make money by lending money.

For a Christian who can't lend money and charge interest (per Jesus' teachings), there's nothing preventing him/her from charging a preset commission/fee for lending money to someone and including the fee in the repayment or by doing something like this for example:

You want a car but can't afford it. I have lots of money, enough money to buy the car you want in fact, but since charging interest rustles my lord's jimmies, I have no incentive or security in lending you money. To get around charging interest and still make it worth my while - here's what I do: I'll buy the car for say $5000, sell it to you for my asking price of $5500 (10% above what I bought it for), but since you don't have $5500, I conveniently have exactly $5500 for you to borrow from me which you agree to pay back. Wam bam, no interest, no usury per new testament definitions of usury.

For a Jew on the other hand, (in addition to the one mentioned for Christians) there's a different loophole which resulted in a lot of awful stereotypes. Usury was forbidden in the old testament....as it applies to your brother, or your people, or in other words, other Jews...as stated here Deuteronomy 23:21 - it's perfectly okay to lend with interest as long as you're not doing it to another fellow Jew. I'm sure you can connect the dots as to what happened when Jewish communities were the only ones allowed to offer straightforward banking services to people who needed them but couldn't because their big dude in the sky said "Nah brah, sorry".

[sporket]

@Newfeeling:  In the secular sphere, laws could be circumvented with creative interpretations, like your car example.*  The thing with Christianity (I'll stick with Christianity for convenience) is it's a religion of intent.  What's behind the deed is more important than the deed itself.  You'll agree that an omniscient God won't be stumped by your car example, though many "religious" people would like to think He would.

@Newfeeling:  Ayn Rand is as moving and impressive as Christian Rock
Also:

... I personally love money, don't get me wrong, but money is intrinsically evil, and those who have it can not be saintly by definition, or Christian-saintly at least.  Christ tells a rich young man to give away all of his possessions to be more like Him.

*Though not quite to the extent many here assume.  IRL law, unlike its theoretical ideal, also looks at the intent, not the letter.  They don't think it be like it is, but it do

[XxionxX]

OP, all I am reading here is that you would feel guilty for making money when you add liquidity and trust into a market which desperately craves it.

If you don't understand why people buy gold, stocks, or land and hope they increase in value; Then you won't understand why people buy bitcoin and hope it gains value without guilt.

Do you know how hard it is to hold onto $70k+ you never had and watch it plummet into the floor? I do, and it is heart attack inducing. I have doubled what I have invested in fiat and I am still holding the rest so it's not like i'm losing a dime.

I have put my entire future on the line here, I have had far more than 10 years worth of savings in my hands at certain points and I did not sell. I NEED THAT MONEY, SO FUCKING BAD. There are days when I just want to sell out and walk away because I just want to keep my leg up in life. But I am not giving up on bitcoin, not just because I might be rich but because I believe in the change it will bring. For me bitcoin isn't about the money, it is about freedom and ideals. I will NEVER sell a portion of my stash, I would rather watch it go to $0. And if I have to deal with all of the shit I get from everyone calling me crazy and the roller coaster ride that is bitcoin, I want to get paid for it. I feel absolutely no shame.

Don't you tell me I am doing nothing, bitcoin has given me hope to gtfo of my shitty job and be able to do all of the things I have dreamed of.

inb4 so brave, such moon, & whatever

[rebel24]

ITT: OP doesn't understand economics or investing.


Some economic cliffnotes:
Investing is a RISK.
Money is a zero-sum game. It hurts EVERYONE to lose it, even the most wealthy people in the world.

Thus, when an individual, or group takes a risk and invests, they are investing the money in hopes of gaining a larger pie of the total money pool (again, money is a zero-sum game).

And here's a deep concept that many people never realize even to death-- ultimately, money and power is about responsibility.
And money should flow to those who are responsible, and altruistic (thinking of others, their family, their extended family, the health of the world, animals, planet, everything they love) (And I'm not saying the leaders of the world are perfect, nobody is, but they do a decent job (no nukes have been fired off in the past 50 years) ((and finally- if you think you can do a better job, then there's motivation and drive for you to get money and power--- and to make it go full circle- thats why I invest in bitcoin and dogecoin(most of my holdings are dogecoin-- because with strong confidence I believe I can gain a larger part of the zero-sum amount of money in the world by investing in those)

[Newfeeling]

@Newfeeling:  In the secular sphere, laws could be circumvented with creative interpretations, like your car example.*  The thing with Christianity (I'll stick with Christianity for convenience) is it's a religion of intent.  What's behind the deed is more important than the deed itself.  You'll agree that an omniscient God won't be stumped by your car example, though many "religious" people would like to think He would.

Sure, and an omniscient and omnibenevolent god would surely never leave such loopholes included in the first place right?

People might get really confused and unintentionally do something wrong by doing things literally by the book - especially when he says we need to be careful and follow all of his rules in James 2:10 AND Deuteronomy 28:1-12. I mean god is such a swell guy that if he didn't like what I'm doing he would have said so - he even told me that in 1 John 2:18-29. On top of that, I have to recognize passages like Matthew 5:42 that say I need to let my fellow man borrow from me. I can't charge interest to secure my loan, but Psalms 37:21 gives me some hope because it says that you're wicked if you don't pay me back and that it's good to be generous in general! So if I lend you the money to get your car - you'll surely pay it back and be righteous enough to pay me back a little something extra as a sign of goodwill! Or better yet - I don't even have to get involved in the messy business of lending money to you and trying to work with very complicated rules, I can just buy the car and you can rent it from me and once you've made 11 payments of $500, I'll just go ahead and give you the car . In the end we'll both walk from this happier and in a better position than we started - me being up $500 and you being up a car! How can the lord be upset with us improving each other's lives simultaneously?

@Newfeeling:  Ayn Rand is as moving and impressive as Christian Rock

Which is to say - not very moving or impressive at all while at the same time being overrated and unoriginal.

Also:

... I personally love money, don't get me wrong, but money is intrinsically evil, and those who have it can not be saintly by definition, or Christian-saintly at least.  Christ tells a rich young man to give away all of his possessions to be more like Him.

I'm confused as to why you think money is intrinsically evil. What makes that so? How it's used? How it's produced?

*Though not quite to the extent many here assume.  IRL law, unlike its theoretical ideal, also looks at the intent, not the letter.  They don't think it be like it is, but it do

What a relief, because that means all of these pyramid sch... I mean multi-level marketing businesses will get shut down by the government because they're totally violating the spirit of the law even though they follow the letter of the law!

 **sees that Amway  has been in business since 1959 and had the FTC rule in 1979 that they're not doing anything illegal**

Oh, nevermind..

[bitcoinsrus]

OP, all I am reading here is that you would feel guilty for making money when you add liquidity and trust into a market which desperately craves it.

If you don't understand why people buy gold, stocks, or land and hope they increase in value; Then you won't understand why people buy bitcoin and hope it gains value without guilt.

Do you know how hard it is to hold onto $70k+ you never had and watch it plummet into the floor? I do, and it is heart attack inducing. I have doubled what I have invested in fiat and I am still holding the rest so it's not like i'm losing a dime.

I have put my entire future on the line here, I have had far more than 10 years worth of savings in my hands at certain points and I did not sell. I NEED THAT MONEY, SO FUCKING BAD. There are days when I just want to sell out and walk away because I just want to keep my leg up in life. But I am not giving up on bitcoin, not just because I might be rich but because I believe in the change it will bring. For me bitcoin isn't about the money, it is about freedom and ideals. I will NEVER sell a portion of my stash, I would rather watch it go to $0. And if I have to deal with all of the shit I get from everyone calling me crazy and the roller coaster ride that is bitcoin, I want to get paid for it. I feel absolutely no shame.

Don't you tell me I am doing nothing, bitcoin has given me hope to gtfo of my shitty job and be able to do all of the things I have dreamed of.

inb4 so brave, such moon, & whatever

wow man that was passionate
+1

[bitebits]

OP, all I am reading here is that you would feel guilty for making money when you add liquidity and trust into a market which desperately craves it.

If you don't understand why people buy gold, stocks, or land and hope they increase in value; Then you won't understand why people buy bitcoin and hope it gains value without guilt.

Do you know how hard it is to hold onto $70k+ you never had and watch it plummet into the floor? I do, and it is heart attack inducing. I have doubled what I have invested in fiat and I am still holding the rest so it's not like i'm losing a dime.

I have put my entire future on the line here, I have had far more than 10 years worth of savings in my hands at certain points and I did not sell. I NEED THAT MONEY, SO FUCKING BAD. There are days when I just want to sell out and walk away because I just want to keep my leg up in life. But I am not giving up on bitcoin, not just because I might be rich but because I believe in the change it will bring. For me bitcoin isn't about the money, it is about freedom and ideals. I will NEVER sell a portion of my stash, I would rather watch it go to $0. And if I have to deal with all of the shit I get from everyone calling me crazy and the roller coaster ride that is bitcoin, I want to get paid for it. I feel absolutely no shame.

Don't you tell me I am doing nothing, bitcoin has given me hope to gtfo of my shitty job and be able to do all of the things I have dreamed of.

inb4 so brave, such moon, & whatever

wow man that was passionate
+1

Indeed, great post! Thanks for sharing your roller coaster story

@OP Why don't you just consider it as buying shares into a new disruptive technology you truly believe in? If it succeeds, by far not only the shareholders will benefit. For example, the 10-15% fee by Western Union is currently taken from the poorest people in the world. By investing in Bitcoin, a few are putting their fiat on the line, a whole lot more will potentially benefit from it's new cost saving technology and opportunities.

[Peter R]

This thread reminds me of something that I read when I was about 9 years old:

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? …

I've always wanted to memorize Francisco's speech you quoted and recite it at some opportune time at a party.  I think it would be quite entertaining.  

[Bit_Happy]

I don't really understand you folks....

Markets are driven by Greed and Fear, that fact is based on human nature.
Talking about the weather (for example) has no chance of actually changing the weather; Discussing how "crazy we are" probably will not do much to change human nature.

You might teach a couple people to "calm down", but the markets will still go nuts ASAP. 

[Peter R]

I don't really understand you folks. Why you want so much that it goes to the moon? If I had bitcoins I wouldn't feel this way. If the value of my assets increased that much as you all want and expect, I wouldn't feel good about it. It would feel to me like an undeserved reward. My deeply held belief is that you have to work hard to become rich, and not just sit down and watch your wealth increase.

If you have more and truly want less, then you could just donate the money you didn't want to a cause that you supported.  Is this not preferable?


Let's consider your next points below:

I think potential big increase in value of bitcoin is not good for anyone.
It's not good for economy, because people would spend less, hoping their bitcoins would become even more valuable.
Less spending = less economic activity.

Let's say you are correct that people would have more freedom (money) to purchase goods and yet would abstain from doing so.  This seems sort of ideal as then we would be exploiting our natural resources at a slower rate, while still remaining satisfied with what we have.  

WIN.

People would also work less. Why work, if you can just do nothing and watch your bitcoins become more valuable.
Less work = less economic activity.

Let's say you are correct that people would have more freedom (time) to pursue their own interests.  I expect those with industrial ambitions to pursue them, while those with arts or music passions to make music and art, and those with an interest in lying on the beach to … lie on the beach.  

WIN.

People would also invest less in real companies. Why invest in something that grows slow, when you can invest in bitcoin which grows fast?
Less investments = less economic activity.

Let's say you are correct that people would have more freedom (control) to direct their wealth as they choose.  Some would hoard it like you said, but others would look to direct it towards building their vision of a better tomorrow.  If demand for money increases, so will interest rates and it will motivate "hoarders" to become "lenders."  Seems like a good way to kill inefficient businesses while letting efficient businesses thrive.  

WIN.


It seems that you are worried about people having more money, time and control over their lives.  I find this puzzling.

[moravian]

Those who have bitcoin would just be getting richer and richer without doing any real work.

But you can't just get rich out of thin air? All the others would be losers.

And if a lot of people had bitcoin, they would decrease all their economic activities because the most profitable thing is simply hoarding.

And this is not good, because without activity, economy collapses. We would get Great Depression 2.0.

(or 3.0. if you count late 2000s recession as 2.0)

[Ryota]

Those who have bitcoin would just be getting richer and richer without doing any real work.

But you can't just get rich out of thin air? All the others would be losers.

Just like in the real life.  That word is “rentier”, which means to live off rents.