Right on the Money: Doug Casey on Economics, Investing, and the Ways of the Real World with Louis James

Chapter 22

Doug Casey on the Morality of Money

February 8, 2012

Louis: Doug, every time we have a conversation, I ask you about the investment implications of your ideas, and we consider ways to turn the trends you see into profits. The assumption is that’s what people want to hear from you, since you’re the guru of financial speculation. But this, your known status as a wealthy man, the fact that you have no children, and other things may lead some people to form an incorrect conclusion about you—that “all you care about is money.” So let’s talk about money. Is it all you care about?

Doug: I think anyone who has read our conversation giving advice to people just starting out in life (or re-starting) knows that the answer is no. Or the conversation we had in which we discussed Scrooge McDuck, one of the great heroes of literature. However, I have to stop before we start and push back: If money were all I cared about, so what? Would that really make me a bad person?

L: I’ve grokked Ayn Rand’s “money speech,” so you know I won’t say yes, but maybe you should expand on that for readers who haven’t absorbed Rand’s ideas.

D: I’m a huge fan of Rand; she was an original and a genius. But just because someone like her, or me, sees the high moral value of money, that doesn’t mean that it’s all that important to them. In fact, I find money less and less important as time goes by, the older I get. Perhaps that’s a function of Maslow’s hierarchy: If you’re hungry, food is all you really care ...