Editor's note: In February 2012, master speculator Doug Casey sat down with senior editor Louis James to discuss the importance of money.
Two years later, the folks at Casey Research turned this interview – and dozens of others – into a book called Right on the Money, which contains many of Doug's key philosophical concepts and opinions on politics and the economy.
Today's essay is the first half of this interview. In it, Doug discusses whether there's more to life than money... and why robbing a bank is a less serious crime than stealing $5 from a candy store...
Doug Casey – The Morality of Money, Part I
Louis James: 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 Casey: No. 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?
Louis: 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.
Doug: 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 about; if you're freezing, then it's warmth, and so forth. If you have enough money, these basics aren't likely to be problems.
My most enjoyable times have had absolutely nothing to do with money. Like a couple times in the past when I hopped freight trains with a friend, once to Portland and once to Sacramento. Each trip took three days and nights, each was full of adventure and weird experiences, and each cost about zero. It was liberating to be out of the money world for a few days. But it was an illusion. Somebody had to get the money to buy the food we ate at missions. Still, it's nice to live in a dream world for a while.
Sure, I'd like more money, if only for the same genetic reason a squirrel wants more nuts to store for the winter. The one common denominator of all living creatures is one word: Survive! And, as a medium of exchange and store of value, money represents survival – it's much more practical than nuts.
Louis: Some people might say that if money was your highest value, you might become a thief or murderer to get it.
Doug: Not likely. I have personal ethics, and there are things I won't do.
Besides, crime – real crime, taking from or harming others, not law-breaking, which is an entirely different thing – is for the lazy, short-sighted, and incompetent. In point of fact, I believe crime doesn't pay, notwithstanding the fact that Jon Corzine of MF Global is still at large. Criminals are self-destructive.
Anyway, what's the most someone could take, robbing their local bank? Perhaps $10,000? That's only enough to make a wager with Mitt Romney, although I've always heard Mormons weren't allowed to gamble.
But that leads me to think about the subject. In the old days, when Jesse James or other thieves robbed a bank, all the citizens would turn out to engage them in a gun battle in the streets. Why? Because it was actually their money, not the banker's. It was just being stored in the bank; a robbed bank had immense personal consequences for everyone in a town.
Today, nobody gives a damn if a bank is robbed; they'll get their money back from a U.S. government agency. The bank has become impersonal; most aren't even locally owned. And your deposit has been packaged up into some unfathomable security nobody is responsible for. The whole system has become corrupt. It degrades the very concept of money. This relates to why kids don't save coins in piggy banks any more – it's because they're no longer coins with value, they're just tokens, essentially worthless. All of U.S. society is about as sound as the dollar now.
Actually, it can be argued that robbing a bank isn't nearly as serious a crime today as robbing a candy store of $5. Why? Nobody in particular loses in the robbery of today's socialized banks. But the candy merchant has to absorb the $5 loss personally. Anyway, if you want to rob a bank today, you don't use a gun. You become part of management and loot the shareholders through outrageous salaries, stock options, and bonuses, among other things. I truly dislike the empty suits that fill most boardrooms today.
But most people are mostly honest – it's the 80/20 rule again. So no, I think this argument is a straw man. The best way to make money is to create value. If I personally owned Apple as a private company, I'd be making more money – completely honestly – than many governments, and they are the biggest thieves in the world.
Editor's note: Doug believes that anyone living in the U.S. who owns assets priced in dollars is at serious risk right now. In his newest book – Going Global 2015 – he shares his top techniques for surviving a currency collapse... explains how to make some of your money "invisible" to the government... and predicts which asset is best to own in a time of crisis. Get your copy for more than 50% off the regular rate by clicking here.