Object

There was a debate/discussion/bickering episode on Bowlie the other week about the nature of wealth, some parties had it that wealth was finite and could only be acquired by taking it from other people. I objected. Wealth is something you create. But was shouted down before the discussion returned to whether Boris Johnson should or should not enact his manifesto committments.

A month or so ago, the artist Andy Hart got me reading Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. Its a hella long book, one of the longest, but after sinking to the depths of despair earlier today, I picked it up and continued readin from where I left off.

Francisco d'Anconia, at Jim Taggard's wedding, just overheard someone saying "money is the root of all evil - and he's the typical product if money..."

"So, you think money is the root of all evil? Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of excahnge, 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 the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce..."

Which far more eloquently puts the point I was trying to get across on Bowlie. But I'd been reduced to defending my view, that it was a valid position, and I wasn't a crank in economical philosopher, just adding the view as a footnote to wikipedia to give it authority.

If only I'd looked up Ayn Rand's Objectivism.

It even ties up the naked chicks on post-it notes philosophy

the role of art in human life is to transform man's widest metaphysical ideas, by selective reproduction of reality, into a physical form—a work of art—that one can comprehend and respond to.

And so with that I skip blissfully into the living room to watch TV and read newspapers.