“I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money” — VOICES for REASON

Obama recently gave a speech pushing for increased regulation of the financial industry in which he said, “Now, what we’re doing, I want to be clear, we’re not trying to push financial reform because we begrudge success that’s fairly earned.” He then went on to begrudge it: “I mean, I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.”

Coming from one who is on record advocating “spreading the wealth around,” this paean to egalitarianism is not particularly surprising. But unfortunately that sentiment is common even among alleged defenders of the free market. They’re uncomfortable with the idea that some people are earning tens of millions (or hundreds of millions) of dollars a year. Even if they can point out the economic reasons why great producers earn so much, they can think of no admirable motivation that would lead someone who made twenty-million last year to want to earn thirty-million next year. (You can see this in the ongoing debate over CEO pay.)

In the book Ayn Rand Answers: The Best of her Q&A, Ayn Rand addresses a similar issue. Asked why it is to a successful businessman’s interest to continue producing she responds in part:

When I say man survives by means of his mind, I mean that man’s first moral virtue is to think and to be productive. That is not the same as saying: “Get your pile of money by hook or by crook, and then sit at home and enjoy it.” You assume rational self-interest is simply ensuring one’s physical luxury. But what would a man do with himself once he has those millions. He would stagnate. No man who has used his mind enough to achieve a fortune is going to be happy doing nothing. His self-interest does not lie in consumption but in production–in the creative expansion of his mind.

To go deeper, observe that in order to exist, every part of an organism must function; if it doesn’t, it atrophies. This applies to a man’s mind more than to any other faculty. In order actually to be alive properly, a man must use his mind constantly and productively. That’s why rationality is the basic virtue according to my morality. Every achievement is an incentive for the next achievement. What for? The creative happiness of achieving greater and more ambitious values in whatever field a man is using his mind. For a man to conclude, “I have enough, so I don’t have to think,” would be the same as deciding, “I am rich now and can get around in a wheelchair, so why use my legs?”

You can listen to the original answer in its entirety here.

The motive to earn unlimited rewards need not come from the hedonist’s mindless pursuit of “more” or the secondhander’s desire to one-up the Joneses. It can and often does come from a producer’s desire for unlimited achievement. That is a profoundly moral motivation. The same cannot be said of the motivation of those who would like to decide when others have achieved “enough.”

Image: Wikimedia Commons