a speech on value of money

“Francisco’s Money Speech”

by Ayn Rand | Aug 30, 2002 | Philosophy

The following is an excerpt from Atlas Shrugged, © Copyright, 1957, by Ayn Rand . It is reprinted in Capitalism Magazine by permission of the Estate of Ayn Rand. May not be reproduced elsewhere without the permission of her Estate.

“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 not 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 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 that 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, the 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 the mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

“Money is your means of survival. The verdict 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 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 men 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 bounces, 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, whose names changed, 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.”

The views expressed above represent those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the editors and publishers of Capitalism Magazine . Capitalism Magazine sometimes publishes articles we disagree with because we think the article provides information, or a contrasting point of view, that may be of value to our readers.

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The Meaning of Money

The theme of Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged is the role of the mind in man’s existence. This is a speech by copper industrialist Francisco d’Anconia, heir to an enormous fortune.

“So you think that money is the root of all evil?” said Francisco d’Anconia. “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.

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. Share “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 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 that 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, the 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 the mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

“Money is your means of survival. The verdict 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 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. Share “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 men 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 bounces, 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, whose names changed, 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. Share 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." class="twitter"> 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." class="pinterest"> “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.”

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Ayn Rand, "Francisco's Money Speech"

Executive Summary

In this passage from Rand’s Atlas Shrugged , a charismatic and mysterious character in the novel, Francisco d’Anconia,  gives an impromptu speech at a party about the nature of money after being told that it is “the root of all evil.”

• Francisco disagrees with the moral condemnation of money and argues that it is a healthy tool people use to exchange values. Its worth and meaning are inseparably tied to humans’ productive ability.
• To say that money is evil is to imply that production is evil. But nothing can be produced without reason —that is, without analysis and integration of the facts of reality. Thus, to say that money is the root of all evil implies that reason, as the root of production and money, is the ultimate root of all evil.
• Money is evil is refuted by anyone who imagines trying to live without thinking or being productive. Francisco asks us to consider agriculture or electric generators: mere physical action would never create them. They depend on the objective use of reason, which is a profoundly moral commitment.
• Trade between different individuals who produce different goods and services represents the only moral method of social interaction. Trade respects the independent rationality and humanity of both parties, since they engage in it voluntarily and both gain from it.
• By contrast, in a society characterized by looter-victim interactions—where thieves and corrupt politicians are prominent—money loses its objective value. If money can be stolen or fraudulently manipulated, rather than produced, its value diminishes.
• Only those who value money for what it genuinely represents and who are willing to work for it are “able to deserve it.” And only they can really love money. All other people actually detest or even hate money because they know they do not deserve it.
• Francisco concludes that money is a society’s moral “barometer.” Humans can interact in only two ways—voluntarily or by force—by money or by compulsion—“blood, whips and guns—or dollars.” The moral verdict we give to money is the verdict we give to our society and our individual lives.

Read the whole speech at Capitalism Magazine . Summary by Andrei Volkov and Stephen Hicks, 2019.

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9 of the most fascinating TED Talks about money

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Money matters are complicated, and there's far more to finances than balancing a checkbook.

Fortunately, there are plenty of resources to turn to, from podcasts to books to personal finance gurus, that will teach you the basics and then some.

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Using modern cryptocurrency, like Bitcoin, we can take this concept a step further,  Narula says, and redefine how we value, and ultimately exchange, money.  Narula illustrates a  world where we use "programmable money," effectively removing the responsibility and power from big institutions and returning it to the individual. 

David Burkus: Why you should know how much your coworkers get paid

In  his talk at TEDxUniversityofNevada , David Burkus poses the question: "What would happen if we had total pay transparency?"

As a management researcher and the author of " Under New Management: How Leading Organizations Are Upending Business As Usual ," Burkus has spent several years studying pay transparency and found that employees at companies that are open about salary tend be more engaged, work harder to improve, and are less likely to quit.  At companies where salary is kept secret, employees generally feel they're being underpaid and discriminated against.

In this talk, Burkus presents compelling research to back up his claim that keeping salary secret within an organization could lead to what economists call a "total market failure."

Courtney Martin: The new American Dream

For the first time in US history, across all demographics, the majority of parents don't think their kids will be better of than they were, says journalist Courtney Martin in her talk .

Martin explores the new American Dream, where we're "not finding steady employment, not earning as much money, and not living in big fancy houses." But that doesn't really matter, she says, because the dream that treasures these marks of success isn't shared by everyone. 

By answering two key questions — how we should work and how we should live — Martin wonders if there's a smarter way to define "better off" and how we can arrive there.

Shlomo Benartzi: Saving for tomorrow, tomorrow

There's a difference between knowing you should save and actually doing it. "We think about saving," says economist Shlomo Benartz in his TED talk . "We know we should be saving. We know we'll do it next year, but today let us go and spend ... This issue of present bias causes us to think about saving, but end up spending."

As a result, just one-third of Americans end up saving in a 401(k) retirement plan, he reveals — and only 10% of Americans are saving a sufficient amount for the future.

Benartz delves into the why of our decision not to plan for the future. He identifies the behavioral challenges that prevent people from saving, and then discusses how to flip these behavioral challenges into behavioral solutions.

Keith Chen: Could your language affect your ability to save money?

Keith Chen, behavioral economist and economics professor at UCLA Anderson School of Management, discusses how the language we speak could be holding us back from getting rich.

Languages can either be "futureless" or "futured," he explains in his TED talk . His research has found that languages without a concept for the future — "It rains tomorrow," instead of "It will rain tomorrow" — correlate strongly with high savings rates.

If the future feels more distant from the present, that's going to make it harder to save money, he explains. On the other hand, if you speak a futureless language — where the present and future are spoken about the same way — you're going to feel the same way about them, making it easier to save in the present moment for the future.

According to Chen, this subtle difference in grammar could help explain why citizens of the US (English is a futured language) save much less than people in other countries.

Cameron Herold: Let's raise kids to be entrepreneurs

If you want to teach your kids to be rich, entrepreneur Cameron Herold's TED talk will give you something to chew on. "I think we should be raising kids to be entrepreneurs instead of lawyers," Herald says. "I think we miss an opportunity to find these kids who have the entrepreneurial traits, and to groom them or show them that being an entrepreneur is actually a cool thing."

He shares his own childhood entrepreneurial endeavors, from starting a caddy business to buying and reselling soda pops to a bridge club of 70-year-old women. He also shares smart money habits to pass along to your kids, and touches on the contentious topic of allowances — and why you should not use them.

Daniel Goldstein: The battle between your present and future self

We have "two selves": the present self and the future self, behavioral economist Daniel Goldstein explains in his TED Talk . Every day, we make decisions that have good or bad consequences for our future selves — oftentimes, our decisions satisfy the present self and "trounce all over the dreams" of the future self, he says.

"Saving is a classic two-selves problem," Goldstein explains. "The present self does not want to save at all. It wants to consume. Whereas the future self wants the present self to save."

He then discusses how we can stop neglecting our future selves and start making decisions that will result in future financial success.

Geoff Mulgan: Post-crash, investing in a better world

Not sure how to invest in a post-economic crash world? Social commentator Geoff Mulgan answers just that in his TED Talk .

He explains how a financial crisis can actually evoke positive change and how we can use it to our advantage. "I think one of the lessons of history is that even the deepest crises can be moments of opportunity," he says. "They bring ideas from the margins to the mainstream."

Michael Norton: How to buy happiness

"A lot of us resonate with this phrase that money can't buy happiness," social science researcher Michael Norton says in his talk at TEDxCambridge . "And I want to suggest that, in fact, that's wrong. And in fact, if you think that, you're actually just not spending it right."

Money often makes us feel selfish, he explains, and he proposes that the reason money doesn't make us happy is because we're spending it on the wrong things — in particular, on ourselves.

He put this hypothesis to the test by having one group of people spend money on themselves and a separate group of people give money away. He then measured their happiness. He found that pro-social spending not only benefits others, but it can benefit you and your work.

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Speech On Money | Money Speech for Students and Children in English

February 8, 2024 by Prasanna

Speech On Money: The term money usually refers to the commodity in exchange for which products and services are consumed or sold. There are different types of money used as a commodity like convertible money inconvertible money, electronic money, etc. which serves as a medium of exchange.

Money is the most important aspect of our lives. Everybody wants to lead a prosperous life, although it is true that money cannot buy all the happiness. But money is the reason behind the cause of happiness. It can get us to buy all the natural products and services like flats, bungalows, cars, gold, diamonds, etc.

Thus, it can be said that money can be earned by those who know how to value it. It might not be everything one wants to own, but it is a thing that one must own to survive.

Students can also find more  English Speech Writing  about Welcome Speeches, Farewell Speeches, etc

Long And Short Speeches On Money for Kids And Students in English

This article provides a long speech of 500 words and a short speech of 150 words on the topic’ money.’ It offers its readers ten lines on the topic to help them understand the subject better.

This article will help students, teachers, kids, and other people who will be giving a speech on money on a public platform.

A Short Speech On Money is helpful to students of classes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. A Long Speech On Money is helpful to students of classes 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12.

Long Speech On Money 500 Words In English

Good morning/ Good afternoon/ Good evening to my respected teachers and Principal. A very warm welcome to everyone present here. Today I am here to deliver a speech on the topic ‘Money.’

Money is such a thing which is a necessity and not a luxury in today’s world. The other names given to money are currency or cash. Different countries use different money to run their tasks. The USA uses the dollar, Britain uses pound, India uses Rupee.

Money is an essential commodity that has a significant influence on our lives. It is the amount of money that decides whether the person will be able to live or die. Rich people who have plenty of money have access to all the luxuries of life. But the poor, who barely owns any of the money, have to face hardships on an everyday basis.

Earlier, people used to use the barter system to buy and sell goods and services with the invention of money that completely changed. Now, money is used as a medium of exchange. If a person buys or sells, any commodity one needs to give or take exchanged for it.

Money has the power to change one’s social status. A person who owns a lot of money gets immense respect from society; people look up to them. Whereas, if a person is weak, in the majority of the cases, they are exploited. Society refuses to accept them and pushes away.

While growing up years, many children have to face discrimination if their financial status is not functional. Other children make fun of them, and they are cornered, laughed at due to their dirty clothes or torn shoes. This affects their mental health to a great extent, which no one bothers to notice.

Children who do not own enough money are forced to work to feed their families. This leads to child labor, and as a result, they have to give up on their education. This is how society works.

Inspite all these, it is also true that money helps many people who have done proper planning to save their hard-earned money. In Indian society, the importance of the middle class is immense. Usually, this section of people earns in the initial years of their lives, while their body permits, accumulating a lump sum amount of money as savings for their future. This helps to live a tension free life after retirement.

Thus, money is proved to be a crucial aspect of life. One must make sure to use it wisely before it is gone. It is essential to think about how we spend our money. If we earn more than enough money, then it should become our responsibility to help others who do not have it.

lastly, I would like to Thank you, everyone, for your time and attention. It was a pleasure delivering this speech in front of your people. I hope you liked it and have a good day.

Short Speech On Money 150 Words In English

A very warm welcome to everyone presents here today. Today I will be representing my school (name of the school) on the topic ‘money.’

Money can be defined in several ways. In terms of economics, money may be defined as an economic unit that functions as a medium of exchange in an economyuld. In general terms, money can be defined as an item that is generally accepted as payment in exchange for the goods and services consumed.

Money is mainly concerned with its three essential functions. They are as follows: 1. The medium of exchange: this refers to the exchange that takes place between the goods and services and the money. 2. Unit of account: in economics, this refers to the value of a commodity or a service in monetary terms. 3. Store of value means an asset can be stored for future use and sold at a higher value to earn profit in monetary terms.

Thank you for giving the speech an ear.

10 Lines On Speech On Money

• Money is manufactured in all the countries in factories called mints. The very first U.S. mint had run on power harnessed from horses to print money.
• The collection of money or its study is called “numismatics.”
• Rome was the first-ever country to print a living person’s image on a coin.
• The first U.S. currency came into existence after Martha Washington donated her silverware.
• Many countries of the world share the same currency; as in Europe, all European countries use the Euro.
• The ink used to make the markings on money is high tech- so much so that it has traceable, color-changing, and magnetic properties.
• The serial numbers used in case of money are not just mere numbers; they also use alphabets as a part of the alphanumeric codes for 12 Reserve Banks.
• Earlier in various countries, coins were made of valuable metals; the more prosperous the country, the valuable metal used to make coins.
• Ben Franklin’s day, people in U.S. repair torn bills as U.S. money is not paper but cloth.
• With the continually changing world, today we have almost more than 1.6 million ATMs in the world.

FAQ’s On Speech On Money

Question 1. What does “credit score” mean?

Answer: To assess the debtors, credit scores are used to make lending decisions. It is numeric rating creditors use to assess the borrower risks. This rating is defined by the amount of debt one has.

Question 2. What is the meaning of Investing?

Answer: By Investing money, we mean sinking our money into a project or venture- in the form of companies, industries, or even real estates. People invest money to grow it faster and in a more efficient way.

Question 3. What does the word “good debt” mean?

Answer: The word good debt can be explained in various ways depending on the situation. Good debts are generally smart investments that ensure investing in something that will be helpful to a person (like a house in case of a person).

Question 4. How can I get money from India to the USA?

Answer: To transfer money from India to the U.S., the NRI should get a C.A. certificate in India. The CA will then issue the information in form 15CB, and the proceedings will begin.

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Speech On Money [1,2,3 Minutes]

Do you know the richest man on the planet? I guess you do. But no one knows the poorest man on the planet. This is the power of money. Money is a means of running life effortlessly. Not only money makes your life easy but it also gets you recognition in society.

In this article, we shared some examples of speech on the money with a time duration of 1, 2 and 3 minutes for presenting in any speech competition. In this speech, you will get to know about the importance, advantages and disadvantages of money.

1 Minute Speech On Money

Hello and welcome all of you gathered here. I am here to present a speech on money.

We need a number of things to run our lives. These things have different natures. We can not store them at once for use because of a lot of factors. To tackle this problem, money was invented. We can store money without any conditions and use it to fulfil our needs in exchange for money.

Now it is very clear that money is a means for running life easily. People earn money to fulfil their daily needs and accumulate it for future use. But money has become an obsession for people. People want to accumulate money as much as they can.

The reason behind this is money represents power and strength in today’s world. Yes! money is essential in life. But giving too much attention to it can prevent you from balancing other aspects of life such as health, relationships etc. Hence, everyone needs to live life wisely. Thank you!

2-Minute Speech On Money

I warmly welcome all of you gathered here. I am here to deliver a speech on money. Before I start my speech, I would like to wish you a good day. Also, I want to thank you for having me this valuable opportunity.

Transactions are one of the most important aspects of human society. This is because we can not create or produce everything we need. Hence, we need to transact with others. In earlier times, people used to exchange articles with one another. This type of exchange is called the barter system.

The barter system was not so efficient. It was very difficult to find people who can mutually fulfil each other’s needs. Then, money was invented to tackle this problem. Money gave people to transact at an efficient level. Money was invented to solve a problem but nowadays money has become an obsession for people.

Different people have different beliefs about money. Some people believe money is a means to enjoy all happiness while others believe it to be the root cause of all evils.

Even if money is only a means for running life easily, people consider money superior to anything else. Everyone is obsessed with money. Some say money is everything. Everyone is rushing after accumulating more money without giving it a thought.

People forget about other aspects of life for the sake of earning more money. This is not a good way of living life. One needs to understand that life is all about balancing each aspect of life. If you do not pay attention to other aspects of life, you will end up messing up your life.

This is the reason behind the saying money can’t buy happiness . Anything in excess is not good and harms you in one way or another. Hence, It is very necessary to understand the right place for money in one’s life.

This is all I wanted to say about money. I hope it was helpful. Thank you!

3-Minute Speech On Money Can’t Buy You Happiness

“ Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of filling a vacuum, it makes one “. This is one of my favourite quotes about money which was written by Benjamin Franklin, an American polymath, who had written tons of books.

Good morning! All of you. Before heading ahead to my speech on Money, I would like to wish you all the best wishes and also want to pay thanks for having me this valuable opportunity.

But wait! Is it worth earning money if it can’t buy you happiness ? No doubt, money can buy you everything that is helpful to bring happiness in life. Nevertheless creating happiness in life is an art. If you don’t know this art, money can’t help you enough.

Let me tell you an interesting fact. A study was conducted on two groups of people. One of them gave more importance to money and the other group gave more importance to relationships. The second group was happier. Hence, according to this study, happiness is more related to how your relationships are .

I Reiterate, money can help you bring happiness but only money is not enough. First of all, one needs to understand the right place for money in life. Money is a means just like fuel in the vehicle. The vehicle is useless without fuel but when you are concerned only about fuel, your journey will become lifeless.

Furthermore, one should learn the art of money management which explains many lessons such as:

• How to spend money wisely: Spending money is an imperative task and it needs attention. Most people spend money on unnecessary things. This way, they waste money.
• How to cover your future risks: The accumulation of money is done for fighting future needs and risks. But is also done through various other means such as insurance.
• How to grow your money : Instead of earning more money, one must learn how to grow his money. Many people grow their money intelligently by investing in various instruments such as real estate, stocks etc.
• How to save money: If you don’t know how to save money, all the money on the planet is less for you. In fact, a penny saved is a penny earned.

To sum it up, People forget about other aspects of life for the sake of earning more money. This is not a good way of living life. One needs to understand that life is all about balancing each aspect of life. If you do not pay attention to other aspects of life, you will end up messing up your life. And then you will say, “money can’t buy you happiness”. Thank you! I hope you liked my thoughts.

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Francisco's 'Money' Speech from "Atlas Shrugged"

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Philosophy of Money and Finance

Finance and philosophy may seem to be worlds apart. But they share at least one common ancestor: Thales of Miletus. Thales is typically regarded as the first philosopher, but he was also a financial innovator. He appears to have been what we would now call an option trader. He predicted that next year’s olive harvest would be good, and therefore paid a small amount of money to the owners of olive presses for the right to the next year’s use. When the harvest turned out to be as good as predicted, Thales earned a sizable amount of money by renting out the presses (Aristotle, Politics , 1259a).

Obviously, a lot has changed since Thales’ times, both in finance and in our ethical and political attitudes towards finance. Coins have largely been replaced by either paper or electronic money, and we have built a large infrastructure to facilitate transactions of money and other financial assets—with elements including commercial banks, central banks, insurance companies, stock exchanges, and investment funds. This institutional multiplicity is due to concerted efforts of both private and public agents, as well as innovations in financial economics and in the financial industry (Shiller 2012).

Our ethical and political sensitivities have also changed in several respects. It seems fair to say that most traditional ethicists held a very negative attitude towards financial activities. Think, for example, of Jesus’ cleansing of the temple from moneylenders, and the widespread condemnation of money as “the root of all evil”. Attitudes in this regard seem to have softened over time. However, the moral debate continues to recur, especially in connection with large scandals and crises within finance, the largest such crisis in recent memory of course being the global financial crisis of 2008.

This article describes what philosophical analysis can say about money and finance. It is divided into five parts that respectively concern (1) what money and finance really are (metaphysics), (2) how knowledge about financial matters is or should be formed (epistemology), (3) the merits and challenges of financial economics (philosophy of science), (4) the many ethical issues related to money and finance (ethics), and (5) the relationship between finance and politics (political philosophy).

1.1 What is Money?

1.2 what is finance, 2. epistemology, 3. philosophy of science, 4.1.1 the love of money, 4.1.2 usury and interest, 4.1.3 speculation and gambling, 4.2.1 deception and fraud, 4.2.2 avoiding conflicts of interest, 4.2.3 insider trading, 4.3.1 systemic risk and financial crises, 4.3.2 microfinance, 4.3.3 socially responsible investment, 5.1 financialization and democracy, 5.2 finance, money, and domestic justice, 5.3 finance and global justice, other internet resources, related entries, 1. metaphysics.

Money is so ever-present in modern life that we tend to take its existence and nature for granted. But do we know what money actually is? Two competing theories present fundamentally different ontologies of money.

The commodity theory of money: A classic theory, which goes back all the way to Aristotle ( Politics , 1255b–1256b), holds that money is a kind of commodity that fulfills three functions: it serves as (i) a medium of exchange, (ii) a unit of account, and (iii) a store of value. Imagine a society that lacks money, and in which people have to barter goods with each other. Barter only works when there is a double coincidence of wants ; that is, when A wants what B has and B wants what A has. But since such coincidences are likely to be uncommon, a barter economy seems both cumbersome and inefficient (Smith 1776, Menger 1892). At some point, people will realize that they can trade more easily if they use some intermediate good—money. This intermediate good should ideally be easy to handle, store and transport (function i). It should be easy to measure and divide to facilitate calculations (function ii). And it should be difficult to destroy so that it lasts over time (function iii).

Monetary history may be viewed as a process of improvement with regard to these functions of money (Ferguson 2008, Weatherford 1997). For example, some early societies used certain basic necessities as money, such as cattle or grain. Other societies settled on commodities that were easier to handle and to tally but with more indirect value, such as clamshells and precious metals. The archetypical form of money throughout history are gold or silver coins—therefore the commodity theory is sometimes called metallism (Knapp 1924, Schumpeter 1954). Coinage is an improvement on bullion in that both quantity and purity are guaranteed by some third party, typically the government. Finally, paper money can be viewed as a simplification of the trade in coins. For example, a bank note issued by the Bank of England in the 1700s was a promise to pay the bearer a certain pound weight of sterling silver (hence the origin of the name of the British currency as “pounds sterling”).

The commodity theory of money was defended by many classical economists and can still be found in most economics textbooks (Mankiw 2009, Parkin 2011). This latter fact is curious since it has provoked serious and sustained critique. An obvious flaw is that it has difficulties in explaining inflation, the decreasing value of money over time (Innes 1913, Keynes 1936). It has also been challenged on the grounds that it is historically inaccurate. For example, recent anthropological studies question the idea that early societies went from a barter economy to money; instead money seems to have arisen to keep track of pre-existing credit relationships (Graeber 2011, Martin 2013, Douglas 2016).

The credit theory of money: According to the main rival theory, coins and notes are merely tokens of something more abstract: money is a social construction rather than a physical commodity. The abstract entity in question is a credit relationship; that is, a promise from someone to grant (or repay) a favor (product or service) to the holder of the token (Macleod 1889, Innes 1914, Ingham 2004). In order to function as money, two further features are crucial: that (i) the promise is sufficiently credible, that is, the issuer is “creditworthy”; and (ii) the credit is transferable, that is, also others will accept it as payment for trade.

It is commonly thought that the most creditworthy issuer of money is the state. This thought provides an alternative explanation of the predominance of coins and notes whose value is guaranteed by states. But note that this theory also can explain so-called fiat money, which is money that is underwritten by the state but not redeemable in any commodity like gold or silver. Fiat money has been the dominant kind of money globally since 1971, when the United States terminated the convertibility of dollars to gold. The view that only states can issue money is called chartalism , or the state theory of money (Knapp 1924). However, in order to properly understand the current monetary system, it is important to distinguish between states’ issuing versus underwriting money. Most credit money in modern economies is actually issued by commercial banks through their lending operations, and the role of the state is only to guarantee the convertibility of bank deposits into cash (Pettifor 2014).

Criticisms of the credit theory tend to be normative and focus on the risk of overexpansion of money, that is, that states (and banks) can overuse their “printing presses” which may lead to unsustainable debt levels, excessive inflation, financial instability and economic crises. These are sometimes seen as arguments for a return to the gold standard (Rothbard 1983, Schlichter 2014). However, others argue that the realization that money is socially constructed is the best starting point for developing a more sustainable and equitable monetary regime (Graeber 2010, Pettifor 2014). We will return to this political debate below ( section 5.2 ).

The social ontology of money: But exactly how does the “social construction” of money work? This question invokes the more general philosophical issue of social ontology, with regard to which money is often used as a prime example. In an early philosophical-sociological account, Georg Simmel (1900) describes money as an institution that is a crucial precondition for modernity because it allows putting a value on things and simplifies transactions; he also criticizes the way in which money thereby replaces other forms of valuation (see also section 4.1 ).

In the more recent debate, one can distinguish between two main philosophical camps. An influential account of social ontology holds that money is the sort of social institution whose existence depends on “collective intentionality”: beliefs and attitudes that are shared in a community (Searle 1995, 2010). The process starts with someone’s simple and unilateral declaration that something is money, which is a performative speech act. When other people recognize or accept the declaration it becomes a standing social rule. Thus, money is said to depend on our subjective attitudes but is not located (solely) in our minds (see also Lawson 2016, Brynjarsdóttir 2018, Passinsky 2020, Vooys & Dick 2021).

An alternative account holds that the creation of money need not be intentional or declarative in the above sense. Instead money comes about as a solution to a social problem (the double coincidence of wants) – and it is maintained simply because it is functional or beneficial to us (Guala 2016, Hindriks & Guala 2021). Thus what makes something money is not the official declarations of some authority, but rather that it works (functions) as money in a given society (see also Smit et al. 2011; 2016). (For more discussion see the special issue by Hindriks & Sandberg 2020, as well as the entries on social ontology and social institutions ).

One may view “finance” more generally (that is, the financial sector or system) as an extension of the monetary system. It is typically said that the financial sector has two main functions: (1) to maintain an effective payments system; and (2) to facilitate an efficient use of money. The latter function can be broken down further into two parts. First, to bring together those with excess money (savers, investors) and those without it (borrowers, enterprises), which is typically done through financial intermediation (the inner workings of banks) or financial markets (such as stock or bond markets). Second, to create opportunities for market participants to buy and sell money, which is typically done through the invention of financial products, or “assets”, with features distinguished by different levels of risk, return, and maturation.

The modern financial system can thus be seen as an infrastructure built to facilitate transactions of money and other financial assets, as noted at the outset. It is important to note that it contains both private elements (such as commercial banks, insurance companies, and investment funds) and public elements (such as central banks and regulatory authorities). “Finance” can also refer to the systematic study of this system; most often to the field of financial economics (see section 3 ).

Financial assets: Of interest from an ontological viewpoint is that modern finance consists of several other “asset types” besides money; central examples include credit arrangements (bank accounts, bonds), equity (shares or stocks), derivatives (futures, options, swaps, etc.) and funds (trusts). What are the defining characteristics of financial assets?

The typical distinction here is between financial and “real” assets, such as buildings and machines (Fabozzi 2002), because financial assets are less tangible or concrete. Just like money, they can be viewed as a social construction. Financial assets are often derived from or at least involve underlying “real” assets—as, for example, in the relation between owning a house and investing in a housing company. However, financial transactions are different from ordinary market trades in that the underlying assets seldom change hands, instead one exchanges abstract contracts or promises of future transactions. In this sense, one may view the financial market as the “meta-level” of the economy, since it involves indirect trade or speculation on the success of other parts of the economy.

More distinctly, financial assets are defined as promises of future money payments (Mishkin 2016, Pilbeam 2010). If the credit theory of money is correct, they can be regarded as meta-promises: promises on promises. The level of abstraction can sometimes become enormous: For example, a “synthetic collateralized debt obligation” (or “synthetic CDO”), a form of derivative common before the financial crisis, is a promise from person A (the seller) to person B (the buyer) that some persons C to I (speculators) will pay an amount of money depending on the losses incurred by person J (the holder of an underlying derivative), which typically depend on certain portions (so-called tranches) of the cash flow from persons K to Q (mortgage borrowers) originally promised to persons R to X (mortgage lenders) but then sold to person Y (the originator of the underlying derivative). The function of a synthetic CDO is mainly to spread financial risks more thinly between different speculators.

Intrinsic value: Perhaps the most important characteristic of financial assets is that their price can vary enormously with the attitudes of investors. Put simply, there are two main factors that determine the price of a financial asset: (i) the credibility or strength of the underlying promise (which will depend on the future cash flows generated by the asset); and (ii) its transferability or popularity within the market, that is, how many other investors are interested in buying the asset. In the process known as “price discovery”, investors assess these factors based on the information available to them, and then make bids to buy or sell the asset, which in turn sets its price on the market (Mishkin 2016, Pilbeam 2010).

A philosophically interesting question is whether there is such a thing as an “intrinsic” value of financial assets, as is often assumed in discussions about financial crises. For example, a common definition of an “asset bubble” is that this is a situation that occurs when certain assets trade at a price that strongly exceed their intrinsic value—which is dangerous since the bubble can burst and cause an economic shock (Kindleberger 1978, Minsky 1986, Reinhart & Rogoff 2009). But what is the intrinsic value of an asset? The rational answer seems to be that this depends only on the discounted value of the underlying future cash flow—in other words, on (i) and not (ii) above. However, someone still has to assess these factors to compute a price, and this assessment inevitably includes subjective elements. As just noted, it is assumed that different investors have different valuations of financial assets, which is why they can engage in trades on the market in the first place.

A further complication here is that (i) may actually be influenced by (ii). The fundamentals may be influenced by investors’ perceptions of them, which is a phenomenon known as “reflexivity” (Soros 1987, 2008). For example, a company whose shares are popular among investors will often find it easier to borrow more money and thereby to expand its cash flow, in turn making it even more popular among investors. Conversely, when the company’s profits start to fall it may lose popularity among investors, thereby making its loans more expensive and its profits even lower. This phenomenon amplifies the risks posed by financial bubbles (Keynes 1936).

Given the abstractness and complexity of financial assets and relations, as outlined above, it is easy to see the epistemic challenges they raise. For example, what is a proper basis for forming justified beliefs about matters of money and finance?

A central concept here is that of risk. Since financial assets are essentially promises of future money payments, a main challenge for financial agents is to develop rational expectations or hypotheses about relevant future outcomes. The two main factors in this regard are (1) expected return on the asset, which is typically calculated as the value of all possible outcomes weighted by their probability of occurrence, and (2) financial risk, which is typically calculated as the level of variation in these returns. The concept of financial risk is especially interesting from a philosophical viewpoint since it represents the financial industry’s response to epistemic uncertainty. It is often argued that the financial system is designed exactly to address or minimize financial risks—for example, financial intermediation and markets allow investors to spread their money over several assets with differing risk profiles (Pilbeam 2010, Shiller 2012). However, many authors have been critical of mainstream operationalizations of risk which tend to focus exclusively on historical price volatility and thereby downplay the risk of large-scale financial crises (Lanchester 2010, Thamotheram & Ward 2014).

This point leads us further to questions about the normativity of belief and knowledge. Research on such topics as the ethics of belief and virtue epistemology considers questions about the responsibilities that subjects have in epistemic matters. These include epistemic duties concerning the acquisition, storage, and transmission of information; the evaluation of evidence; and the revision or rejection of belief (see also ethics of belief ). In line with a reappraisal of virtue theory in business ethics, it is in particular virtue epistemology that has attracted attention from scholars working on finance. For example, while most commentators have focused on the moral failings that led to the financial crisis of 2008, a growing literature examines epistemic failures.

Epistemic failings in finance can be detected both at the level of individuals and collectives (de Bruin 2015). Organizations may develop corporate epistemic virtue along three dimensions: through matching epistemic virtues to particular functions (e.g., diversity at the board level); through providing adequate organizational support for the exercise of epistemic virtue (e.g., knowledge management techniques); and by adopting organizational remedies against epistemic vice (e.g., rotation policies). Using this three-pronged approach helps to interpret such epistemic failings as the failure of financial due diligence to spot Bernard Madoff’s notorious Ponzi scheme (uncovered in the midst of the financial crisis) (de Bruin 2014a, 2015).

Epistemic virtue is not only relevant for financial agents themselves, but also for other institutions in the financial system. An important example concerns accounting (auditing) firms. Accounting firms investigate businesses in order to make sure that their accounts (annual reports) offer an accurate reflection of the financial situation. While the primary intended beneficiaries of these auditing services are shareholders (and the public at large), accountants are paid by the firms they audit. This remuneration system is often said to lead to conflicts of interest. While accounting ethics is primarily concerned with codes of ethics and other management tools to minimize these conflicts of interests, an epistemological perspective may help to show that the business-auditor relationship should be seen as involving a joint epistemic agent in which the business provides evidence, and the auditor epistemic justification (de Bruin 2013). We will return to issues concerning conflicts of interest below (in section 4.2 ).

Epistemic virtue is also important for an effective governance or regulation of financial activities. For example, a salient epistemic failing that contributed to the 2008 financial crisis seems to be the way that Credit Rating Agencies rated mortgage-backed securities and other structured finance instruments, and with related failures of financial due diligence, and faulty risk management (Warenski 2008). Credit Rating Agencies provide estimates of credit risk of bonds that institutional investors are legally bound to use in their investment decisions. This may, however, effectively amount to an institutional setup in which investors are forced by law partly to outsource their risk management, which fails to foster epistemic virtue (Booth & de Bruin 2021, de Bruin 2017). Beyond this, epistemic failures can also occur among regulators themselves, as well as among relevant policy makers (see further in section 5.1 ).

A related line of work attests to the relevance of epistemic injustice to finance. Taking Fricker’s (2009) work as a point of departure, de Bruin (2021) examines testimonial injustice in financial services, whereas Mussell (2021) focuses on the harms and wrongs of testimonial injustice as they occur in the relationship between trustees and fiduciaries.

Compared to financial practitioners, one could think that financial economists should be at an epistemic advantage in matters of money and finance. Financial economics is a fairly young but well established discipline in the social sciences that seeks to understand, explain, and predict activities within financial markets. However, a few months after the crash in 2008, Queen Elizabeth II famously asked a room full of financial economists in London why they had not predicted the crisis (Egidi 2014). The Queen’s question should be an excellent starting point for an inquiry into the philosophy of science of financial economics. Yet only a few philosophers of science have considered finance specifically (Vergara Fernández & de Bruin 2021). [ 1 ]

Some important topics in financial economics have received partial attention, including the Modigliani-Miller capital structure irrelevance theorem (Hindriks 2008), the efficient market hypothesis (Collier 2011), the Black-Scholes option pricing model (Weatherall 2017), portfolio theory (Walsh 2015), financial equilibrium models (Farmer & Geanakoplos 2009), the concept of money (Mäki 1997), and behavioral finance (Brav, Heaton, & Rosenberg 2004), even though most of the debate still occurs among economists interested in methodology rather than among philosophers. A host of topics remain to be investigated, however: the concept of Value at Risk (VaR) (and more broadly the concept of financial risk), the capital asset pricing model (CAPM), the Gaussian copula, random walks, financial derivatives, event studies, forecasting (and big data), volatility, animal spirits, cost of capital, the various financial ratios, the concept of insolvency, and neurofinance, all stand in need of more sustained attention from philosophers.

Most existing work on finance in philosophy of science is concerned with models and modelling (see also models in science and philosophy of economics ). It seems intuitive to view financial markets as extremely complex systems: with so many different factors at play, predicting the price of securities (shares, bonds, etc.) seems almost impossible. Yet mainstream financial economics is firmly committed to the idea that market behavior should be understood as ultimately resulting from interactions of agents maximizing their expected utility. This is a direct application of the so-called neoclassical school of economics that was developed during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While this school continues to dominate textbooks in the field, there is a growing scholarly trend that seeks to criticize, complement or even replace some of its main assumptions. We can see how the problems play out in both corporate finance and asset pricing theory.

Corporate finance concerns the financing of firms. One question concerns a firm’s capital structure: should a firm obtain funding through equity (that is, from shareholders expecting dividends) or through debt (that is, from bondholders who lend money to the firm and have a contractual right to receive interest on the loans), or through a combination of the two. A key result in corporate finance is the Modigliani-Miller theorem, which says that a firm’s capital structure is irrelevant to its market value (Modigliani & Miller 1958). This theorem makes a number of highly unrealistic assumptions, among them the assumption that markets are efficient, and that there are no taxes. Alongside many other results in economics, it may therefore be considered as useless for predictive purposes; or even as dangerous, once used for such purposes nonetheless (Egidi 2014). In a detailed study of the Modigliani-Miller theorem, Hindriks (2008) has argued, however, that the value of highly idealized models in economics may lie in their providing counterfactual insights, just as in physics. Galileo’s law of free fall tells us what happens in a vacuum. Despite the fact that vacuum is rare in reality, the law is not uninformative, because it allows us to associate observed phenomena to the extent to which an unrealistic assumption must be relaxed. Similarly, if one of the assumptions that the Modigliani-Miller theorem makes is the absence of taxes, the observed relevance of capital structure may well have to be explained as resulting from particular tax regimes. The explanation obtained by relaxing unrealistic assumptions is called “explanation by concretization” (Hindriks 2008).

Explanation by concretization works if models and reality share at least a few concrete features. This is arguably the case for many extant models in finance, including models of bubbles and crises that are immediately relevant to explaining the 2008 crisis (Abreu & Brunnermeier 2003). A fairly recent development called “econophysics” may, however, be an exception. Econophysics uses physics methods to model financial markets (see Rickles 2007 for an overview). Where traditional models of crises include individual investors with beliefs and desires modelled by probability distributions and utility functions, econophysics models capture crises the way physicists model transitions of matter from fluid to solid state (Kuhlmann 2014).

Next, consider asset pricing theory. Ever since Bachelier’s groundbreaking mathematical treatment of asset pricing, financial economists have struggled to find the best way to determine the price developments of securities such as shares, bonds, and derivative instruments such as options. The mathematics of financial returns has received some attention in the literature (de Bruin & Walter 2017; Ippoliti & Chen 2017). Most models assume that returns follow Gaussian random walks, that is, stochastic processes in discrete time with independent and identically distributed increments. Empirical studies show, however, that returns are more peaked than Gaussian distributions, and that they have “fat tails”. This means that extreme events such as financial crises are far less improbable than the models assume. An exception with regards to these assumptions is Benoît Mandelbrot’s (1963) well-known contribution to financial mathematics, and work in this direction is gaining traction in mathematical finance.

A third aspect of financial models concerns the way they incorporate uncertainty (Bertolotti & Magnani 2017). Some of the problems of contemporary financial (and macroeconomic) models are due to the way they model uncertainty as risk, as outlined above (Frydman & Goldberg 2013). Both neo-classical models and behavioral economics capture uncertainty as probabilistic uncertainty, consequently ignoring Knightian uncertainty (Knight 1921 see also decision theory ). The philosophy of science literature that pertains to financial economics is, however, still fairly small (Vergara Fernández & de Bruin 2021).

Having considered the epistemic and scientific challenges of finance, we now turn to the broad range of compelling ethical challenges related to money and finance. The present part is divided into three sections, discussing 1) the claim that financial activities are always morally suspect, 2) various issues of fairness that can arise in financial markets, and 3) discussions about the social responsibilities of financial agents.

4.1 Money as the Root of All Evil?

Throughout cultural history, activities that involve money or finance have been subject to intense moral scrutiny and ethical debate. It seems fair to say that most traditional ethicists held a very negative attitude towards such activities. We will here discuss three very sweeping criticisms, respectively directed at the love of money (the profit motive), usury (lending at interest), and speculation (gambling in finance).

At the heart of many sweeping criticisms of money and finance lies the question of motive. For instance, the full Biblical quotation says that “the love of money is the root of all [kinds of] evil” (1 Timothy 6:10). To have a “love of money”, or (in less moralistic words) a profit motive, means to seek money for its own sake. It has been the subject of much moral criticism throughout history and continues to be controversial in popular morality.

There are three main variations of the criticism. A first variation says that there is something unnatural about the profit motive itself. For example, Aristotle argued that we should treat objects in ways that are befitting to their fundamental nature, and since money is not meant to be a good in itself but only a medium of exchange (see section 1.1 ), he concluded that it is unnatural to desire money as an end in itself ( Politics , 1252a–1260b). A similar thought is picked up by Marx, who argues that capitalism replaces the natural economic cycle of C–M–C (commodity exchanged for money exchanged for commodity) with M–C–M (money exchanged for commodity exchanged for money). Thus the endless accumulation of money becomes the sole goal of the capitalist, which Marx describes as a form of “fetishism” (Marx 1867, volume I).

A second variation of the criticism concerns the character, or more precisely the vice, that the profit motive is thought to exemplify (see also virtue ethics ). To have a love for money is typically associated with selfishness and greed, i.e., a desire to have as much as possible for oneself and/or more than one really needs (McCarty 1988, Walsh & Lynch 2008). Another association is the loss of moral scruples so that one is ready to do anything for money. The financial industry is often held out as the worst in this regard, especially because of its high levels of compensation. Allegations of greed soared after the 2008 crisis, when financial executives continued to receive million-dollar bonuses while many ordinary workers lost their jobs (Piketty 2014, McCall 2010, Andersson & Sandberg 2019).

A third variation of the criticism says that the profit motive signals the absence of more appropriate motives. Kant argued that actions only have moral worth if they are performed for moral reasons, or, more specifically, for the sake of duty. Thus it is not enough that we do what is right, we must also do it because it is right (Kant 1785). Another relevant Kantian principle is that we never should treat others merely as means for our own ends, but always also as ends in themselves (see also Kant’s moral philosophy ). Both of these principles seem to contrast with the profit motive which therefore is rendered morally problematic (Bowie 1999, Maitland 2002). It should come as no surprise that Kant was a strong critic of several examples of “commodification” and other market excesses (see also markets ).

There are two main lines of defensive argumentation. The most influential is Adam Smith’s well-known argument about the positive side-effects of a self-interested pursuit of profits: although the baker and brewer only aim at their own respective good, Smith suggested, they are “led by an invisible hand” to at the same time promote the public good (Smith 1776, see also Mandeville 1732). This argument is typically viewed as a consequentialist vindication of the profit motive (see also consequentialism ): positive societal effects can morally outweigh the possible shortcomings in individual virtue (Flew 1976).

A second argument is more direct and holds that the profit motive can exemplify a positive virtue. For example, there is the well-known Protestant work ethic that emphasizes the positive nature of hard work, discipline and frugality (Long 1972, Wesley 1771). The profit motive can, on this view, be associated with virtues such as ambition, industry, and discipline (see also Brennan 2021). According to Max Weber (1905), the Protestant work ethic played an important role in the development of capitalism. But it is not clear whether any of these arguments can justify an exclusive focus on profits, of course, or rather give permission to also focus on profits under certain circumstances.

If having a love of money seems morally suspect, then the practice of making money on money—for instance, lending money at interest—could seem even worse. This is another sweeping criticism directed at finance that can be found among the traditional ethicists. Societies in both Ancient and Medieval times typically condemned or banned the practice of “usury”, which originally meant all charging of interest on loans. As the practice started to become socially acceptable, usury came to mean the charging of excessive rates of interest. However, modern Islam still contains a general prohibition against interest, and many countries still have at least partial usury laws, most often setting an upper limit on interest rates.

What could be wrong with lending at interest? Some of the more obscure arguments concern the nature of money (again): Aristotle argued that there is something unnatural with “money begetting money”. While he allowed that money is a useful means for facilitating commercial exchange, Aristotle thought that it has no productive use in itself and so receiving interest over and above the borrowed amount is unnatural and wrong ( Politics , 1258b). A related argument can be found in Aquinas, who argued that money is a good that is consumed on use. Although a lender can legitimately demand repayment of an amount equivalent to the loan, it is illegitimate to demand payment for the use of the borrowed amount and so adding interest is unnatural and wrong ( Summa Theologica , II–II, Q78).

Some more promising arguments concern justice and inequality. For example, as early as Plato we see the expression of the worry that allowing interest may lead to societal instability ( The Republic , II). It may be noted that the biblical condemnations of usury most straightforwardly prohibit interest-taking from the poor. One idea here is that we have a duty of charity to the poor and charging interest is incompatible with this duty. Another idea is that the problem lies in the outcome of interest payments: Loans are typically extended by someone who is richer (someone with capital) to someone who is poorer (someone without it) and so asking for additional interest may increase the inequitable distribution of wealth (Sandberg 2012, Visser & MacIntosh 1998). A third idea, which is prominent in the protestant tradition, is that lending often involves opportunism or exploitation in the sense of offering bad deals to poor people who have no other options (Graafland 2010).

The Islamic condemnation of interest, or riba , adds an additional, third line of argument which holds that interest is essentially unearned or undeserved income: Since the lender neither partakes in the actual productive use of the money lent, nor exposes him- or herself to commercial risk, the lender cannot legitimately share in the gains produced by the loan (Ayub 2007, Birnie 1952, Thomas 2006). Based on this argument, contemporary Islamic banks insist that lenders and borrowers must form a business partnership in order for fees on loans to be morally legitimate (Ayub 2007, Warde 2010). Economists have over the years given several retorts to this argument. Some economists stress that lending also involves risk (e.g., that the borrower defaults and is unable to repay); others stress the so-called opportunity costs of lending (i.e., that the money could have been used more profitably elsewhere); and yet again others stress the simple time-preference of individuals (i.e., that we value present more than future consumption, and therefore the lender deserves compensation for postponing consumption).

The gradual abandonment of the medieval usury laws in the West is typically attributed to a growing acknowledgment of the great potential for economic growth unleashed by easy access to capital. One could perhaps say that history itself disproved Aristotle: money indeed proved to have a productive use. In a short text from 1787, Bentham famously poked fun at many of the classical anti-usury arguments and defended the practice of charging interest from a utilitarian standpoint (Bentham 1787). However, this does not mean that worries about the ethics of charging interest, and allegations of usury, have disappeared entirely in society. As noted above, usury today means charging interest rates that seem excessive or exorbitant. For instance, many people are outraged by the rates charged on modern payday loans, or the way in which rich countries exact interest on their loans from poor countries (Baradaran 2015, Graeber 2011, Herzog 2017a). These intuitions have clear affinities with the justice-based arguments outlined above.

A sweeping criticism of a more contemporary nature concerns the supposed moral defects of speculation. This criticism tends to be directed towards financial activities that go beyond mere lending. Critics of the capitalist system often liken the stock market to a casino and investors to gamblers or punters (Sinn 2010, Strange 1986). More moderate critics insist on a strict distinction between investors or shareholders, on the one hand, and speculators or gamblers, on the other (Bogle 2012, Sorell & Hendry 1994). In any case, the underlying assumption is that the similarities between modern financial activities and gambling are morally troublesome.

On some interpretations, these concerns are similar to those raised above. For example, some argue that speculators are driven by the profit motive whereas investors have a genuine concern for the underlying business enterprise (Hendry 2013). Others see speculation as “parasitic”, that is, to be without productive use, and solely dependent on luck (Borna & Lowry 1987, Ryan 1902). This latter argument is similar to the complaint about undeserved income raised in particular by Islamic scholars (Ayub 2007, Warde 2010).

A more distinct interpretation holds that speculation typically includes very high levels of risk-taking (Borna & Lowry 1987). This is morally problematic when the risks not only affect the gambler him or herself but also society as a whole. A root cause of the financial crisis of 2008 was widespread speculation on very risky derivatives such as “synthetic collateralized debt obligations” (see section 1.2 ). When the value of such derivatives fell dramatically, the financial system as a whole came to the brink of collapse. We will return to this issue below (in section 4.3.1 ). In this regard, the question of risk imposition becomes important too (Moggia 2021).

A related interpretation concerns the supposed short-sightedness of speculation. It is often argued that financial agents and markets are “myopic” in the sense that they care only about profits in the very near term, e.g., the next quarter (Dallas 2012). Modern disclosure requirements force companies to publish quarterly earnings reports. The myopia of finance is typically blamed for negative effects such as market volatility, the continuous occurrence of manias and crashes, inadequate investment in social welfare, and the general shortsightedness of the economy (e.g., Lacke 1996).

Defenders of speculation argue that it can serve a number of positive ends. To the extent that all financial activities are speculative in some sense, of course, the ends coincide with the function of finance more generally: to channel funds to the individuals or companies who can use them in the most productive ways. But even speculation in the narrower sense—of high-risk, short-term bets—can have a positive role to play: It can be used to “hedge” or off-set the risks of more long-term investments, and it contributes to sustaining “market liquidity” (that is, as a means for providing counterparties to trade with at any given point of time) which is important for an efficient pricing mechanism (Angel & McCabe 2009, Koslowski 2009).

4.2 Fairness in Financial Markets

Let us now assume that the existence of financial markets is at least in general terms ethically acceptable, so that we can turn to discuss some of the issues involved in making them fair and just for all parties involve. We will focus on three such issues: deception and fraud (honesty), conflicts of interest (care for customers), and insider trading (fair play).

Some of the best-known ethical scandals in finance are cases of deception or fraud. Enron, a huge US corporation, went bankrupt after it was discovered that its top managers had “cooked the books”, i.e., engaged in fraudulent accounting practices, keeping huge debts off the company’s balance sheet in an effort to make it look more profitable (McLean & Elkind 2003). Other scandals in the industry have involved deceptive marketing practices, hidden fees or costs, undisclosed or misrepresented financial risks, and outright Ponzi schemes (see section 2 ).

While these examples seem obvious, on further examination it is not easy to give an exact definition of financial deception or fraud. The most straightforward case seems to be deliberately misrepresenting or lying about financial facts. However, this assumes that there is such a thing as a financial fact, i.e., a correct way of representing a financial value or transaction. In light of the socially constructed nature of money and finance (see section 1 ), this may not always be clear. Less straightforward cases include simply concealing or omitting financial information, or refraining from obtaining the information in the first place.

A philosophical conception of fraud, inspired by Kant, defines it as denying to the weaker party in a financial transaction (such as a consumer or investor) information that is necessary to make a rational (or autonomous) decision (Boatright 2014, Duska & Clarke 2002). Many countries require that the seller of a financial product (such a company issuing shares) must disclose all information that is “material” to the product. It is an interesting question whether this suggestion, especially the conception of rationality involved, should include or rule out a consideration of the ethical nature of the product (such as the ethical nature of the company’s operations) (Lydenberg 2014). Furthermore, there may be information that is legitimately excluded by other considerations, such as the privacy of individuals or companies commonly protected by “bank secrecy” laws.

But is access to adequate information enough? A complication here is that the weaker party, especially ordinary consumers, may have trouble processing the information sufficiently well to identify cases of fraud. This is a structural problem in finance that has no easy fix, because financial products are often abstract, complex, and difficult to price. Therefore, full autonomy of agents may not only require access to adequate information, but also access to sufficient know how, processing ability and resources to analyze the information (Boatright 2014). One solution is to require that the financial services industry promotes transparent communication in which they track the understanding of ordinary consumers (de Bruin 2014b, Endörfer & De Bruin 2019, Shiller 2012).

Due to the problems just noted, the majority of ordinary consumers refrain from engaging in financial markets on their own and instead rely on the services of financial intermediaries, such as banks, investment funds, and insurance companies. But this opens up new ethical problems that are due to the conflicts of interest inherent in financial intermediation. Simply put, the managers or employees of intermediaries have ample opportunity, and often also incentives, to misuse their customers’ money and trust.

Although it is once again difficult to give an exact definition, the literature is full of examples of such misuse—including so-called churning (trading excessively to generate high fees), stuffing (selling the bank’s undesired assets to a client), front-running (buying an asset for the bank first and then reselling it to the client at a higher price) and tailgating (mimicking a client’s trade to piggyback on his/her information) (Dilworth 1994; Heacock, Hill, & Anderson 1987). Interestingly, some argue that the whole industry of actively managed investment funds may be seen as a form of fraud. According to economic theory, namely, it is impossible to beat the average returns of the market for any given level of financial risk, at least in the long term. Therefore, funds who claim that they can do this for a fee are basically cheating their clients (cf. Hendry 2013, Kay 2015).

A legal doctrine that aims to protect clients is so-called fiduciary duty, which imposes obligations on fiduciaries (those entrusted with others’ money) to act in the sole interest of beneficiaries (those who own the money). The interests referred to are typically taken to be financial interests, so the obligation of the fiduciary is basically to maximize investment returns. But some argue that there are cases in which beneficiaries’ broader interests should take precedence, such as when investing in fossil fuels may give high financial returns but pose serious risks to people’s future (Lydenberg 2014; Sandberg 2013, 2016). In any case, it is often thought that fiduciary duties go beyond the ideal of a free market to instead give stronger protection to the weaker party of a fragile relationship.

As an alternative or compliment to fiduciary duty, some argue for the adoption of a code of ethics or professional conduct by financial professionals. A code of ethics would be less arduous in legal terms and is therefore more attractive to free market proponents (Koslowski 2009). It can also cover other fragile relationships (including those of bank-depositor, advisor-client, etc.). Just as doctors and lawyers have a professional code, then, so finance professionals could have one that stresses values such as honesty, due care and accuracy (de Bruin 2016, Graafland & Ven 2011). But according to critics, the financial industry is simply too subdivided into different roles and competencies to have a uniform code of ethics (Ragatz & Duska 2010). It is also unclear whether finance can be regarded as a profession in the traditional sense, which typically requires a body of specialized knowledge, high degrees of organization and self-regulation, and a commitment to public service (Boatright 2014, Herzog 2019).

Probably the most well-known ethical problem concerning fairness in finance, and also perhaps the one on which philosophers most disagree, is so-called insider trading. Put simply, this occurs when an agent uses his or her position within, or privileged information about, a company to buy or sell its shares (or other related financial assets) at favorable times and prices. For example, a CEO may buy shares in his or her company just before it announces a major increase in earnings that will boost the share price. While there is no fraud or breach of fiduciary duty, the agent seems to be exploiting an asymmetry of information.

Just as in the cases above, it is difficult to give an exact definition of insider trading, and the scope of its operative definition tends to vary across jurisdictions. Most commentators agree that it is the information and its attendant informational asymmetry that counts and, thus, the “insider” need not be inside the company at all—those abusing access to information could be family, friends or other tippees (Irvine 1987a, Moore 1990). Indeed, some argue that even stock analysts or journalists can be regarded as insiders if they trade on information that they have gathered themselves but not yet made publicly available. It is also debatable whether an actual trade has to take place or whether insider trading can consist in an omission to trade based on inside information, or also in enabling others to trade or not trade (Koslowski 2009).

Several philosophical perspectives have been used to explain what (if anything) is wrong with insider trading. A first perspective invokes the concept of fair play. Even in a situation with fully autonomous traders, the argument goes, market transactions are not fair if one party has access to information that the other has not. Fair play requires a “level playing field”, i.e., that no participant starts from an unfairly advantaged position (Werhane 1989, 1991). However, critics argue that this perspective imposes excessive demands of informational equality. There are many asymmetries of information in the market that are seemingly unproblematic, e.g., that an antiquary knows more about antiques than his or her customers (Lawson 1988, Machan 1996). So might it be the inaccessibility of inside information that is problematic? But against this, one could argue that, in principle, outsiders have the possibility to become insiders and thus to obtain the exact same information (Lawson 1988, Moore 1990).

A second perspective views insider trading as a breach of duty, not towards the counterparty in the trade but towards the source of the information. US legislation treats inside information as the property of the underlying company and, thus, insider trading is essentially a form of theft of corporate property (often called the misappropriation theory) (Lawson 1988). A related suggestion is that it can be seen as a violation of the fiduciary duty that insiders have towards the company for which they work (Moore 1990). However, critics argue that the misappropriation theory misrepresents the relationship between companies and insiders. On the one hand, there are many normal business situations in which insiders are permitted or even expected to spread inside information to outside sources (Boatright 2014). On the other hand, if the information is the property of the company, why do we not allow it to be “sold” to insiders as a form of remuneration? (Engelen & van Liedekerke 2010, Manne 1966)

A third perspective deals with the effects, both direct and indirect, of allowing insider trading. Interestingly, many argue that the direct effects of such a policy might be positive. As noted above, one of the main purposes of financial markets is to form (or “discover”) prices that reflect all available information about a company. Since insider trading contributes important information, it is likely to improve the process of price discovery (Manne 1966). Indeed, the same reasoning suggests that insider trading actually helps the counterparty in the trade to get a better price (since the insider’s activity is likely to move the price in the “right” direction) so it is a victimless crime (Engelen & Liedekerke 2010). However, others express concern over the indirect effects, which are likely to be more negative. Allowing insider trading may erode the moral standards of market participants by favoring opportunism over fair play (Werhane 1989). Moreover, many people may be dissuaded from even participating in the market since they feel that it is “rigged” to their disadvantage (Strudler 2009).

4.3 The Social Responsibility of Finance

We will now move on to take a societal view on finance, and discuss ideas relating to the broader social responsibilities of financial agents, that go beyond their basic role as market participants. We will discuss three such ideas here, respectively focusing on systemic risk (a responsibility to avoid societal harm), microfinance (a responsibility towards the poor or unbanked), and socially responsible investment (a responsibility to help address societal challenges).

One root cause of the financial crisis of 2008 was the very high levels of risk-taking of many banks and other financial agents. When these risks materialized, the financial system came to the brink of collapse. Many banks lost so much money that their normal lending operations were hampered, which in turn had negative effects on the real economy, with the result that millions of “ordinary” people around the world lost their jobs. Many governments stepped in to bail out the banks and in consequence sacrificed other parts of public spending. This is a prime example of how certain financial activities, when run amok, can have devastating effects on third parties and society in general.

Much subsequent debate has focused on so-called systemic risk, that is, the risk of failures across several agents which impairs the functioning of the financial system as such (Brunnermeier & Oehmke 2013, Smaga 2014). The concept of systemic risk gives rise to several prominent ethical issues. To what extent do financial agents have a moral duty to limit their contributions to systemic risk? It could be argued that financial transactions always carry risk and that this is “part of the game”. But the important point about systemic risk is that financial crises have negative effects on third parties (so-called externalities). This constitutes a prima facie case for a duty of precaution on the part of financial agents, based on the social responsibility to avoid causing unnecessary harm (James 2017, Linarelli 2017). In cases where precaution is impossible, one could add a related duty of rectification or compensation to the victims of the harm (Endörfer 2022). It is, however, a matter of philosophical dispute whether finance professionals can be held morally responsible for these harms (de Bruin 2018, Moggia 2021).

Two factors determine how much an agent’s activity contributes to systemic risk (Brunnermeier & Oehmke 2013, Smaga 2014). The first is financial risk of the agent’s activity in the traditional sense, i.e., the probability and size of the potential losses for that particular agent. A duty of precaution may here be taken to imply, e.g., stricter requirements on capital and liquidity reserves (roughly, the money that the agents must keep in their coffers for emergency situations) (Admati & Hellwig 2013). The second factor is the agent’s place in the financial system, which typically is measured by its interconnectedness with—and thereby potential for cascading effects upon—other agents. This factor indicates that the duty of precaution is stronger for financial agents that are “systemically important” or, as the saying goes, “too-big-to-fail” institutions (Stiglitz 2009).

As an alternative to the reasoning above, one may argue that the duty of precaution is more properly located on the collective, i.e., political level (James 2012, 2017). We return to this suggestion below (in section 5.1 ).

Even in normal times, people with very low income or wealth have hardly any access to basic financial services. Commercial banks have little to gain from offering such services to them; there is an elevated risk of loan losses (since the poor lack collateral) and it is costly to administer a large amount of very small loans (Armendáriz & Morduch 2010). Moreover, there will likely be cases where some bank officers discriminate against underprivileged groups, even where extensive legal protection is in place. An initiative that seeks to remedy these problems is “microfinance”, that is, the extension of financial services, such as lending and saving, to poor people who are otherwise “unbanked”. The initiative started in some of the poorest countries of the world, such as Bangladesh and India.

The justifications offered for microfinance are similar to the justifications offered for development aid. A popular justification holds that affluent people have a duty of assistance towards the poor, and microfinance is thought to be a particularly efficient way to alleviate poverty (Yunus 1998, 2007). But is this correct? Judging from the growing number of empirical “impact studies”, it seems more correct to say that microfinance is sometimes helpful, but at other times can be either ineffective or have negative side-effects (Hudon & Sandberg 2013, Roodman 2012). Another justification holds that there is a basic human right to subsistence, and that this includes a right to savings and credit (Hudon 2009, Meyer 2018). But critics argue that the framework of human rights is not a good fit for financial services that come with both benefits and challenges (Gershman & Morduch 2015, Sorell 2015).

Microfinance is of course different from development aid in that it involves commercial banking relations. This invites the familiar political debate of state- versus market-based support. Proponents of microfinance argue that traditional state-led development projects have been too rigid and corrupt, whereas market-based initiatives are more flexible and help people to help themselves (Armendáriz & Morduch 2010, Yunus 2007). According to critics, however, it is the other way around: Markets will tend to breed greed and inequality, whereas real development is created by large-scale investments in education and infrastructure (Bateman 2010, H. Weber 2004).

In recent years, the microfinance industry has witnessed several “ethical scandals” that seemingly testify to the risk of market excesses. Reports have indicated that interest rates on microloans average at 20–30% per annum, and can sometimes be in excess of 100%, which is much higher than the rates for non-poor borrowers. This raises questions about usury (Hudon & Ashta 2013; Rosenberg, Gonzalez, & Narain 2009). However, some suggest a defense of “second best”, or last resort, when other sources of aid or cheaper credit are unavailable (Sandberg 2012). Microfinance institutions have also been accused of using coercive lending techniques and forceful loan recovery practices (Dichter & Harper (eds) 2007; Priyadarshee & Ghalib 2012). This raises questions about the ethical justifiability of commercial activity directed at the desperately poor, because very poor customers may have no viable alternative to accepting deals that are both unfair and exploitative (Arnold & Valentin 2013, Hudon & Sandberg 2013).

Socially responsible investment refers to the emerging practice whereby financial agents give weight to putatively ethical, social or environmental considerations in investment decisions—e.g., decisions about what bonds or stocks to buy or sell, or how to engage with the companies in one’s portfolio. This is sometimes part of a strictly profit-driven investment philosophy, based on the assumption that companies with superior social performance also have superior financial performance (Richardson & Cragg 2010). But more commonly, it is perceived as an alternative to mainstream investment. The background argument here is that market pricing mechanisms, and financial markets in particular, seem to be unable to promote sufficient levels of social and environmental responsibility in firms. Even though there is widespread social agreement on the evils of sweatshop labor and environmental degradation, for instance, mainstream investors are still financing enterprises that sustain such unjustifiable practices. Therefore, there is a need for a new kind of investor with a stronger sense of social responsibility (Sandberg 2008, Cowton & Sandberg 2012).

The simplest and most common approach among these alternative investors is to avoid investments in companies that are perceived to be ethically problematic. This is typically justified from a deontological idea to the effect that it is wrong to invest in someone else’s wrongdoing (Irvine 1987b, Langtry 2002, Larmer 1997). There are at least three interpretations of such moral “taint”: (1) the view that it is wrong in itself to profit from others’ wrongdoings, or to benefit from other people’s suffering; (2) the view that it is wrong to harm others, or also to facilitate harm to other; or (3) the view that there is a form of expressive or symbolic wrongdoing involved in “morally supporting” or “accepting” wrongful activities.

The deontological perspective above has been criticized for being too black-and-white. On the one hand, it seems difficult to find any investment opportunity that is completely “pure” or devoid of possible moral taint (Kolers 2001). On the other hand, the relationship between the investor and the investee is not as direct as one may think. To the extent that investors buy and sell shares on the stock market, they are not engaging with the underlying companies but rather with other investors. The only way in which such transactions could benefit the companies would be through movements in the share price (which determines the companies’ so-called cost of capital), but it is extremely unlikely that a group of ethical investors can significantly affect that price. After all, the raison d’être of stock exchanges is exactly to create markets that are sufficiently liquid to maintain stable prices (Haigh & Hazelton 2004, Hudson 2005). In response to this, the deontologist could appeal to some notion of universalizability or collective responsibility: perhaps the right question to ask is not “what happens if I do this?” but instead “what happens if we all do this?”. However, such more complicated philosophical positions have problems of their own (see also rule consequentialism and collective responsibility )

A rival perspective on socially responsible investment is the (more straightforward) consequentialist idea that investors’ duty towards society consists in using their financial powers to promote positive societal goods, such as social justice and environmental sustainability. This perspective is typically taken to prefer more progressive investment practices, such as pushing management to adopt more ambitious social policies and/or seeking out environmentally friendly technology firms (Mackenzie 1997, Sandberg 2008). Of course, the flip side of such practices, which may explain why they are less common in the market, is that they invite greater financial risks (Sandberg 2011). It remains an open question whether socially responsible investment will grow enough in size to make financial markets a force for societal change.

Recent work has started exploring whether concrete sustainable finance policies (such as those suggested by the European Commission’s Sustainable Finance Action Plan) will generate sufficient funds to pay for climate change mitigation and adaptation, based as they are on policies of information provision only (De Bruin 2023).

5. Political Philosophy

Discussions about the social responsibility of finance are obviously premised on the observation that the financial system forms a central infrastructure of modern economies and societies. As we noted at the outset, it is important to see that the system contains both private elements (such as commercial banks, insurance companies, and investment funds) and public elements (such as central banks and regulatory bodies). However, issues concerning the proper balance between these elements, especially the proper role and reach of the state, are perennially recurrent in both popular and philosophical debates.

The financial system and the provision of money indeed raise a number of questions that connect it to the “big questions” of political philosophy: including questions of democracy, justice, and legitimacy, at both the national and global levels (on the history of political thinking about money see Eich 2019, 2020, 2022; Ingham 2004, 2019; Martin 2013). The discussions around finance in political philosophy can be grouped under three broad areas: financialization and democracy; finance, money and domestic justice; and finance and global justice. We consider these now in turn.

Many of the questions political philosophy raises about finance have to do with “financialization”. The phenomenon of “financialization”, whereby the economic system has become characterized by the increasing dominance of finance capital and by systems of financial intermediation (Ertürk et al. 2008; Davis 2011; Engelen et al. 2011; Palley 2013), is of potentially substantial normative significance in a number of regards. A related normative concern is the potential growth in political power of the financial sector, which may be seen as a threat to democratic politics.

These worries are, in effect, an amplification of familiar concerns about the “structural power” or “structural constraints” of capital, whereby capitalist investors are able to reduce the freedom of action of democratic governments by threatening “investment strikes” when their preferred political options are not pursued (see Lindblom 1977, 1982; Przeworski & Wallerstein 1988; Cohen 1989; B. Barry 2002; Christiano 2010, 2012; Furendal & O’Neill 2022). To take one recent version of these worries, Stuart White argues that a republican commitment to popular sovereignty is in significant tension with the acceptance of an economic system where important choices about investment, and hence the direction of development of the economy, are under the control of financial interests (White 2011).

In many such debates, the fault-line seems to be the traditional one between those who favor social coordination by free markets, and hence strict limitations on state activities, and those who favor democratic politics, and hence strict limitations on markets (without denying that there can be intermediate positions). But the current financial system is not a pure creature of the free market. In the financial system that we currently see, the principle that individuals are to be held financially accountable for their actions, and that they will therefore be “disciplined” by markets, is patchy at best. One major issue, discussed above, is the problem of banks that are so large and interconnected that their failure would risk taking down the whole financial system—hence, they can anticipate that they will be bailed out by tax-payers’ money, which creates a huge “moral hazard” problem (e.g., Pistor 2013, 2017). In addition, current legal systems find it difficult to impose accountability for complex processes of divided labor, which is why there were very few legal remedies after the financial crisis of 2008 (e.g., Reiff 2017).

The lack of accountability intensifies worries about the power relations between democratic politicians and individuals or corporations in the financial realm. One question is whether we can even apply our standard concept of democracy to societies that have the kinds of financial systems we see today. We may ask whether societies that are highly financialized can ever be true democracies, or whether they are more likely to be “post-democracies” (Crouch 2004). For example, states with high levels of sovereign debt will need to consider the reaction of financial markets in every significant policy decision (see, e.g., Streeck 2013 [2014], see also Klein 2020) Moreover “revolving doors” between private financial institutions and supervising authorities impact on the ability of public officials to hold financial agents accountable. This is similar to the problems of conflicts of interest raised above (see sections 2 and 4.2.2 ). If financial contracts become a central, or maybe even the most central, form of social relations (Lazzarato 2012), this may create an incompatibility with the equal standing of citizens, irrespective of financial position, that should be the basis of a democratic society and its public sphere of deliberation (see also Bennett 2020 from an epistemic perspective).

While finance has, over long stretches of history, been rather strictly regulated, there has been a reversed trend towards deregulation since roughly the 1970s. After the financial crisis of 2008, there have been many calls for reregulation. Proposals include higher capital ratios in banks (Admati & Hellwig 2013), a return to the separation of commercial banking from speculative finance, as had been the case, in the US, during the period when the Glass-Steagall Act was in place (Kay 2015), or a financial transaction tax (Wollner 2014). However, given that the financial system is a global system, one controversial question is whether regulatory steps by single countries would have any effect other than capital flight.

When it comes to domestic social justice, the central question relating to the finance system concerns the ways in which the realization of justice can be helped or hindered by how the financial system is organized.

A first question here, already touched upon in the discussion about microfinance above ( section 4.3.2 ), concerns the status of citizens as participants in financial markets. Should they all have a right to certain financial services such as a bank account or certain forms of loans, because credit should be seen as a primary good in capitalist economies (see, e.g., Hudon 2009, Sorell 2015, Meyer 2018)? More broadly, how does the pattern of access to credit affect the distribution of freedom and unfreedom within society? (see Dietsch 2021; Preiss 2021). These are not only issues for very poor countries, but also for richer countries with high economic inequality, where it becomes a question of domestic justice. In some countries all residents have the right to open a basic bank account (see bank accounts in the EU in Other Internet Resources ). For others this is not the case. It has been argued that not having access to basic financial services creates an unfairness, because it drives poorer individuals into a cash economy in which they are more vulnerable to exploitative lenders, and in which it is more difficult to build up savings (e.g., Baradaran 2015). Hence, it has been suggested either to regulate banking services for individuals more strictly (e.g., Herzog 2017a), to consider various forms of household debt relief (Persad 2018), or to offer a public banking service, e.g., run by the postal office, which offers basic services at affordable costs (Baradaran 2015).

Secondly, financialization may also have more direct effects on socio-economic inequality. Those with managerial positions within the financial sector are disproportionately represented among the very top end of the income distribution, and so the growth of inequality can in part be explained by the growth in the financial sector itself (Piketty 2014). There may also be an effect on social norms, whereby the “hypermeritocratic” norms of the financial sector have played a part in increasing social tolerance for inequality in society more broadly (Piketty 2014: 265, 2020; see also O’Neill 2017, 2021). As Dietsch et al. point out, the process of increasing financialization within the economies of the advanced industrial societies has been encouraged by the actions of central banks over recent decades, and so the issue of financialization also connects closely to questions regarding the justice and legitimacy of central banks and monetary policy (Dietsch, Claveau, & Fontan 2016, 2018; see also Jacobs & King 2016).

Thirdly, many debates about the relation between distributive justice and the financial system revolve around the market for mortgages, because for many individuals, a house is the single largest item for which they need to take out a loan, and their mortgage their main point of interaction with the financial system. This means that the question of who has access to mortgage loans and at what price can have a major impact on the overall distribution of income and wealth. In addition, it has an impact on how financial risks are distributed in society. Highly indebted individuals are more vulnerable when it comes to ups and downs either in their personal lives (e.g., illness, loss of job, divorce) or in the economy as a whole (e.g., economic slumps) (Mian & Sufi 2014). The danger here is that existing inequalities—which many theories of justice would describe as unjust—are reinforced even further (Herzog 2017a).

Here, however, a question about the institutional division of labor arises: which goals of distributive justice should be achieved within markets—and specifically, within financial markets—and which ones by other means, for example through taxation and redistribution? The latter has been the standard approach used by many welfare systems: the idea being to let markets run their course, and then to achieve the desired patterns of distribution by taxation and redistribution. If one remains within that paradigm, questions arise about whether the financial sector should be taxed more highly. In contrast, the approach of “pre-distribution” (Hacker 2011; O’Neill & Williamson 2012; O’Neill 202), or what Dietsch calls “process redistribution” (2010), is to design the rules of the economic game such that they contribute to bringing about the distributive pattern that is seen as just. This could, for example, mean regulating banking services and credit markets in ways that reduce inequality, for example by imposing regulations on payday lenders and banks, so that poor individuals are protected from falling into a spiral of ever higher debt. A more radical view could be to see the financial problems faced by such individuals as being caused by more general structural injustices the solution of which does not necessarily require interventions with the financial industry, but rather more general redistributive (or predistributive) policies.

Money creation: Another alternative theoretical approach is to integrate distributive concerns into monetary policy, i.e., when it comes to the creation of money. So far, central banks have focused on the stability of currencies and, in some cases, levels of employment. This technical focus, together with the risk that politicians might abuse monetary policy to try to boost the economy before elections, have been used in arguments for putting the control of the money supply into the hands of technical experts, removing monetary policy from democratic politics. But after the financial crisis of 2008, many central banks have used unconventional measures, such as “quantitative easing”, which had strongly regressive effects, favoring the owners of stocks or of landed property (Fontan et al. 2016, Dietsch 2017); they did not take into account other societal goals, e.g., the financing of green energy, either. This raises new questions of justice: are such measures justified if their declared aim is to move the economy out of a slump, which presumably also helps disadvantaged individuals (Haldane 2014)? Would other measures, for instance “helicopter money” that is distributed to all citizens, have been a better alternative? And if such measures are used, is it still appropriate to think of central banks as institutions in which nothing but technical expertise is required, or should there be some form of accountability to society? (Fontan, Claveau, & Dietsch 2016; Dietsch 2017; Riles 2018; see also Tucker 2018; van ’t Klooster 2020; James & Hockett 2020, Downey 2021). [ 2 ]

We have already discussed the general issue of the ontological status of money ( section 1.1 above). But there are also significant questions in political philosophy regarding the question of where, and by what sorts of institutions, should the money supply be controlled. One complicating factor here is the extensive disagreement about the institutional basis of money creation, as described above. One strand of the credit theory of money emphasizes that in today’s world, money creation is a process in which commercial banks play a significant role. These banks in effect create new money when they make new loans to individual or business customers (see McLeay, Radia, & Thomas 2014; see also Palley 1996; Ryan-Collins et al. 2012; Werner 2014a,b). James Tobin refers to commercial bank-created money, in an evocative if now dated image as “fountain pen money”, that is, money created with the swish of the bank manager’s fountain pen (Tobin 1963).

However, the relationship between private commercial banks and the central bank is a complicated one, such that we might best think of money creation as a matter involving a kind of hybrid public-private partnership. Hockett and Omarova refer to this relationship as constituting a “finance franchise”, with private banks being granted on a “franchise” basis the money-creating powers of the sovereign monetary authority, while van ’t Klooster describes this relation between the public and private as constituting a “hybrid monetary constitution” (Hockett & Omarova 2017; van ’t Klooster 2017; see also Bell 2001). In this hybrid public-private monetary system, it is true that private commercial banks create money, but they nevertheless do so in a way that involves being regulated and subject to the authority of the central bank within each monetary jurisdiction, with that central bank also acting as “lender of last resort” (Bagehot 1873) when inter-bank lending dries up. [ 3 ]

When the curious public-private nature of money creation is brought into focus, it is not surprising that there should exist views advocating a shift away from this hybrid monetary constitution, either in the direction of a fully public option, or a fully private system of money creation.

Advocates of fully public banking envisage a system in which private banks are stripped of their authority to create new money, and where instead the money supply is directly controlled either by the government or by some other state agency; for example by the central bank lending directly to firms and households. Such a position can be defended on a number of normative grounds: that a public option would allow for greater financial stability, that a fully public system of money creation would allow a smoother transmission of democratic decisions regarding economic governance; or simply because of the consequences of such a system with regards to socioeconomic inequality and environmental sustainability (see Jackson & Dyson 2012; Wolf 2014a,b; Lainà 2015; Dyson, Hodgson, & van Lerven 2016a,b; Ingham, Coutts, & Konzelmann 2016; Dow 2016; Wodruff 2019; van’t Klooster 2019, Mellor 2019, Dietsch 2021; for commentary and criticism see Goodhart & Jensen 2015; Fontana & Sawyer 2016, Larue et al. 2020).

In stark contrast, a number of libertarian authors have defended the view that the central bank should have no role in money creation, with the money supply being entirely a matter for private suppliers (and with the consumers of money able to choose between different rival suppliers), under a system of “free banking” (e.g., Simons 1936; Friedman 1962; von Hayek 1978; Selgin 1988). Advocacy of private money creation has received a more recent stimulus with the rise of Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies, with some of Bitcoin’s advocates drawing on similar libertarian arguments to those offered by Hayek and Selgin (see Golumbia 2016, Robison 2022). One can also mention the “alternative currencies” movement here which defends private money creation on entirely different grounds, most often by appeal to the value of community (see Larue 2022, Larue et al. 2022).

Finally, a number of issues relate questions about finance to questions about global justice. The debate about global justice (see also global justice ) has weighed the pros and cons of “statist” and “cosmopolitan” approaches, that is, approaches to justice that would focus on the nation state (maybe with some additional duties of beneficence to the globally poor) or on the global scale. The financial system is one of the most globalized systems of social interaction that currently exist, and global entanglements are hard to deny (e.g., Valentini 2011: 195–8). The question thus is whether this creates duties of justice on the financial system, and if so, whether it fulfills these duties, i.e., whether it contributes to making the world more globally just, or whether it tends in the opposite direction (or whether it is neutral).

There are a number of institutions, especially the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), that constitute a rudimentary global order of finance. Arguably, many countries, especially poorer ones, cannot reasonably opt out of the rules established by these institutions (e.g., Hassoun 2012, Krishnamurthy 2014). It might therefore appear to be required by justice that these institutions be governed in a way that represents the interests of all countries. But because of historical path-dependencies, and because a large part of their budget comes from Western countries, the governance structures are strongly biased in their favor (for example, the US can veto all important decisions in the IMF). Miller (2010: 134–41) has described this situation as “indirect financial rule” by the US (see also Herzog 2021).

An issue worth noting in this context is the fact that the US dollar, and to a lesser degree the Euro, function as de facto global currencies, with a large part of global trade being conducted in these currencies (e.g., Mehrling 2011, Eichengreen 2011). This allows the issuing countries to run a current account deficit, which amounts to a redistribution from poorer to richer countries for which compensation might be owed (Reddy 2005: 224–5). This fact also raises questions about the distribution of power in the global sphere, which has often been criticized as favoring Western countries (e.g., Gulati 1980, United Nations 2009). However, global financial markets serve not only to finance trade in goods and services; there are also questions about fluctuations in these markets that result exclusively from speculations (see also sect.1.4.3 above). Such fluctuations can disproportionately harm poorer countries, which are more vulnerable to movements of capital or rapid changes in commodity prices. Hence, an old proposal that has recently been revived and defended from a perspective of global justice is that of a “Tobin tax” (Tobin 1978), which would tax financial transactions and thereby reduce volatility in international financial markets (Reddy 2005, Wollner 2014).

A second feature of the current global order that has been criticized from a perspective of justice is the “borrowing privilege”. As Pogge describes (e.g., 2008: chap. 4), the governments of countries can borrow on international financial markets, no matter whether they have democratic legitimacy or not. This means that rogue governments can finance themselves by incurring debts that future generations of citizens will have to repay.

Sovereign debt raises a number of questions that are related to global justice. Usually, the contracts on which they are based are considered as absolutely binding (e.g., Suttle 2016), which can threaten national sovereignty (Dietsch 2011), and raises questions of the moral and political responsibilities both of citizens of debtor nations, and of creditor countries themselves (Wiedenbrüg, 2018a, 2018b). These problems obtain in particular with regard to what has been called “odious” debt (Sack 1927, Howse 2007, Dimitriu 2015, King 2016): cases in which government officials sign debt contracts in order to enrich themselves, with lenders being aware of this fact. Such cases have been at the center of calls for a jubilee for indebted nations. At the moment, there are no binding international rules for how to deal with sovereign bankruptcy, and countries in financial distress have no systematic possibility of making their claims heard, which is problematic from a perspective of justice (e.g., Palley 2003; Reddy 2005: 26–33; Herman 2007; C. Barry & Tomitova 2007; Wollner 2018). The IMF, which often supports countries in restructuring sovereign debt, has often made this support conditional upon certain requirements about rearranging the economic structures of a country (for a discussion of the permissibility of such practices see C. Barry 2011).

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the issue of financial regulation has a global dimension in the sense that capital is mobile across national boundaries, creating the threats to democracy described above. This fact makes it difficult for individual countries, especially smaller ones, to install the more rigid financial regulations that would be required from a perspective of justice. Just as with many other questions of global justice (see, e.g., Dietsch 2015 on taxation), we seem to see a failure of coordination between countries, which leads to a “race to the bottom”. Making global financial institutions more just is therefore likely to require significant levels of international cooperation.

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• Speech Topics For Kids
• Speech on Value Of Time

Speech on Value of Time

We all have heard the aphorism, “Time and tide wait for none”. Undoubtedly, it is the most precious thing in our lives. Every life on earth is for a short period of time; everyone has to utilise it productively and enjoy it to the most. Do you want to know more about the value of time? Go through the article and prepare a thought-provoking speech on the topic.

Table of Contents

Top quotes to use in a speech on value of time, value of time speech for students, value of time speech in english, one-minute speech on the value of time, frequently asked questions on value of time.

• “Never leave ’till tomorrow, which you can do today.” – Benjamin Franklin.
• “Don’t spend a dollar’s worth of time on a ten-cent decision.” – Peter Turla.
• “Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.” – William Penn.
• “People often complain about lack of time when lack of direction is the real problem.” – Zig Ziglar.
• “It’s really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time.” – Steve Jobs.
• “It’s not that we have little time, but more that we waste a good deal of it.” – Seneca.
• “Do we need more time? Or do we need to be more disciplined with the time we have?” – Kerry Johnson.
• “Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness, no laziness, no procrastination; Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.” – Lord Chesterfield.
• “Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.” – Rodin.
• “A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.” – Charles Darwin.

Sample Speeches on Value of Time

A couple of sample speeches on the value of time are given below. Go through them and utilise the resource to better understand the topic.

We all are familiar with the proverb, “We cannot step into the same river twice”, right? Everything is continuously changing over time. We cannot retrieve lost time in our lives; once lost, it is lost forever. So the necessity to value it more than anything is really high. We should seize the opportunities we have and utilise it for the betterment of others.

Just like the words told by Stephen R. Covey, “The key is in not spending time, but in investing it”. People have to value and manage time wisely. To effectively utilise time, one has to set goals and work for them. We have to understand the situation and apply time accordingly. Setting long-term and short-term goals will drive us to accomplish great heights and to understand the purpose of our lives. Time management is another crucial skill needed for the smooth sailing of human life. We have to prioritise our tasks and complete them accordingly. Following such a plan will favour an individual in multiple ways. People will stop procrastinating and stay updated in their lives. Such a regular update boosts the confidence of the individuals and will help them to encounter all troubles in their lives.

Even though we are well aware of all these points, we keep on repeating the same mistake – we think we have enough time left with us. Buddha once said, “The trouble is, you think you have time.” This is the only reason why we disparage time and procrastinate. It’s high time to realise the value of time in our lives. Start valuing your time; you will eventually start valuing your life.

The power of time is boundless; it can rule over all material things. No human power can control its journey or defeat it.

“And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

These are the words from the poem ‘Ozymandias’, written by P. B. Shelley. With these lines, the poet is trying to depict the power of time and shows how human energy is ultimately lost in the battle with time. No matter how powerful a human being is, time will always win in the battle of life. People have to accept the reality that, by living, we all are playing a game in which the winner is already decided. Time is doubtlessly a powerful force that has an overwhelming effect on human life. Let’s remember the words told by Mother Teresa, “Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.” So let’s realise the value of time and start living. Seize the day.

Time is the most valued limited resource on earth. We only have a finite amount of time in our lives. Every single one has the same 24 hours of time in a day. The productive utilisation of it determines the success of a person. Do you know what our life is made up of? It’s made of time, so losing time means losing a life. Everything that we enjoy today is the gift of time, still, many people prioritise money over time. Money can be made by anyone who has got time in their life. According to the words of Jim Rohn, “Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time”. People do not realise the fact that it’s time that provides the opportunity to earn it. Just like how wealth is brought, time brings happiness, sorrows, success, and depression into our lives. And this is how our lives are made of time.

What is the value of time in life?

Time is the most valued limited resource on earth. The productive utilisation of it determines the success of a person. We only have a finite amount of time in our lives. Every single one has the same 24 hours of time in a day.

How can we effectively utilise our time?

To effectively utilise time, one has to set goals and work for them. We have to understand the situation and apply time accordingly. Setting long term and short term goals will drive us to accomplish various heights in our lives and to understand the purpose of our lives. Time management is another crucial skill needed for the smooth sailing of human life. We have to prioritise our tasks and complete the list accordingly.

List some quotes to use in a speech on the value of time.

• “The trouble is, you think you have time.” – Buddha.

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Finance and capital markets

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Video transcript

More From Forbes

Top 100 money quotes of all time.

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Great quotes encapsulate big ideas in few words.  They inspire, motivate, and encourage in a memorable way.  In my book, Retire Before Mom and Dad , I use quotes to help drive home important principles of personal finance and investing. In that spirit, I've assembled the top 100 quotes about money.

• Too many people spend money they earned..to buy things they don't want..to impress people that they don't like. --Will Rogers
• A wise person should have money in their head, but not in their heart. --Jonathan Swift
• Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants. --Epictetus
• Money often costs too much. --Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Everyday is a bank account, and time is our currency. No one is rich, no one is poor, we've got 24 hours each. --Christopher Rice
• It's how you deal with failure that determines how you achieve success. --David Feherty
• Frugality includes all the other virtues. --Cicero
• I love money. I love everything about it. I bought some pretty good stuff. Got me a $300 pair of socks. Got a fur sink. An electric dog polisher. A gasoline powered turtleneck sweater. And, of course, I bought some dumb stuff, too. --Steve Martin
• An investment in knowledge pays the best interest. --Benjamin Franklin
• I will tell you the secret to getting rich on Wall Street. You try to be greedy when others are fearful. And you try to be fearful when others are greedy. --Warren Buffett
• Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery. --Charles Dickens
• Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. --Thomas Edison
• What we really want to do is what we are really meant to do. When we do what we are meant to do, money comes to us, doors open for us, we feel useful, and the work we do feels like play to us. --Julia Cameron
• I never attempt to make money on the stock market. I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for ten years. --Warren Buffett
• A nickel ain't worth a dime anymore. --Yogi Berra
• Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of filling a vacuum, it makes one. --Benjamin Franklin
• Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it, and others do just the same with their time. --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune. --Jim Rohn
• Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. --Ayn Rand
• Financial peace isn't the acquisition of stuff. It's learning to live on less than you make, so you can give money back and have money to invest. You can't win until you do this. --Dave Ramsey
• It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor. --Seneca
• It’s not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It’s the customer who pays the wages. --Henry Ford
• He who loses money, loses much; He who loses a friend, loses much more; He who loses faith, loses all. --Eleanor Roosevelt
• Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. --Franklin D. Roosevelt
• Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that. --Norman Vincent Peale
• It’s good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it’s good, too, to check up once in a while and make sure that you haven’t lost the things that money can’t buy. --George Lorimer
• You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead, pursue the things you love doing, and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off you. --Maya Angelou
• Buy when everyone else is selling and hold until everyone else is buying. That’s not just a catchy slogan. It’s the very essence of successful investing. --J. Paul Getty
• If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability. --Henry Ford
• If all the economists were laid end to end, they’d never reach a conclusion. --George Bernard Shaw
• How many millionaires do you know who have become wealthy by investing in savings accounts? I rest my case. --Robert G. Allen
• I made my money the old-fashioned way. I was very nice to a wealthy relative right before he died. --Malcolm Forbes
• Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower. --Steve Jobs
• The real measure of your wealth is how much you'd be worth if you lost all your money. --Anonymous
• Money is a terrible master but an excellent servant. --P.T. Barnum
• Try to save something while your salary is small; it’s impossible to save after you begin to earn more. --Jack Benny
• Wealth is the ability to fully experience life. --Henry David Thoreau
• The individual investor should act consistently as an investor and not as a speculator. --Ben Graham
• I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it. --Thomas Jefferson
• You must gain control over your money or the lack of it will forever control you. --Dave Ramsey
• Investing should be more like watching paint dry or watching grass grow. If you want excitement, take $800 and go to Las Vegas. --Paul Samuelson
• Every time you borrow money, you're robbing your future self. --Nathan W. Morris
• Rich people have small TVs and big libraries, and poor people have small libraries and big TVs. --Zig Ziglar
• Never spend your money before you have it. -- Thomas Jefferson
• The stock market is filled with individuals who know the price of everything, but the value of nothing. --Phillip Fisher
• Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it. --Benjamin Franklin
• It's not how much money you make, but how much money you keep, how hard it works for you, and how many generations you keep it for. --Robert Kiyosaki
• I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. --Thomas A. Edison
• If you don’t value your time, neither will others. Stop giving away your time and talents. Value what you know & start charging for it. --Kim Garst
• Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do. --Steve Jobs
• The habit of saving is itself an education; it fosters every virtue, teaches self-denial, cultivates the sense of order, trains to forethought, and so broadens the mind. --T.T. Munger
• Don't tell me what you value, show me your budget, and I'll tell you what you value.” --Joe Biden
• If you live for having it all, what you have is never enough. --Vicki Robin
• Before you speak, listen. Before you write, think. Before you spend, earn. Before you invest, investigate. Before you criticize, wait. Before you pray, forgive. Before you quit, try. Before you retire, save. Before you die, give. --William A. Ward
• We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give. --Winston Churchill
• Wealth after all is a relative thing since he that has little and wants less is richer than he that has much and wants more. --Charles Caleb Colton
• Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. --Albert Einstein
• It is time for us to stand and cheer for the doer, the achiever, the one who recognizes the challenge and does something about it. --Vince Lombardi
• It's not the situation, but whether we react (negative) or respond (positive) to the situation that's important. --Zig Ziglar
• A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him. --David Brinkley
• Let him who would enjoy a good future waste none of his present. --Roger Babson
• Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway. --John Wayne
• Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. --Mahatma Gandhi
• Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. --Mark Twain
• It is our choices, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities. --J. K Rowling
• The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus. --Bruce Lee
• Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success. --Dale Carnegie
• The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me. --Ayn Rand
• Don’t let the fear of losing be greater than the excitement of winning. --Robert Kiyosaki
• You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. --Steve Jobs
• Let no feeling of discouragement prey upon you, and in the end you are sure to succeed. --Abraham Lincoln
• Screw it, Let’s do it! --Richard Branson
• If your ship doesn’t come in, swim out to meet it! --Jonathan Winters
• People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily. --Zig Ziglar
• A real entrepreneur is somebody who has no safety net underneath them. --Henry Kravis
• As long as you’re going to be thinking anyway, think big. --Donald Trump
• The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary. --Vidal Sassoon
• Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm. --Winston Churchill
• Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning. --Benjamin Franklin
• If plan A fails, remember there are 25 more letters. --Chris Guillebeau
• Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. --Ralph Waldo Emerson
• A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step. --Lao Tzu
• Do the one thing you think you cannot do. Fail at it. Try again. Do better the second time. The only people who never tumble are those who never mount the high wire. This is your moment. Own it. --Oprah Winfrey
• Believe you can and you’re halfway there. --Theodore Roosevelt
• The Stock Market is designed to transfer money from the Active to the Patient. --Warren Buffett
• I’m only rich because I know when I’m wrong…I basically have survived by recognizing my mistakes. --George Soros
• Persist – don’t take no for an answer. If you’re happy to sit at your desk and not take any risk, you’ll be sitting at your desk for the next 20 years. --David Rubenstein
• If you took our top fifteen decisions out, we’d have a pretty average record. It wasn’t hyperactivity, but a hell of a lot of patience. You stuck to your principles and when opportunities came along, you pounced on them with vigor. --Charlie Munger
• When buying shares, ask yourself, would you buy the whole company? --Rene Rivkin
• If you have trouble imagining a 20% loss in the stock market, you shouldn’t be in stocks. --John Bogle
• My old father used to have a saying:  If you make a bad bargain, hug it all the tighter. --Abraham Lincoln
• It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan. --Eleanor Roosevelt
• The four most expensive words in the English language are, ‘This time it’s different.’ --Sir John Templeton
• I'd like to live as a poor man with lots of money. --Pablo Picasso
• Fortune sides with him who dares. --Virgil
• Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become; and the same is true of fame. --Arthur Schopenhauer
• If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free. If our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed. --Edmund Burke
• No wealth can ever make a bad man at peace with himself. --Plato
• My formula for success is rise early, work late and strike oil. --JP Getty
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Speech on Value of Time

Time is a treasure that you own, but it’s always ticking away. It’s precious, yet unlike other treasures, you can’t save it for later. Each second that passes is a piece of this treasure you’ll never get back. Understand its value, and you understand the secret to a fulfilling life.

1-minute Speech on Value of Time

Dear friends, today I am here to talk about a topic that is universally acknowledged yet often ignored – ‘The Value of Time’. Let me begin by saying that time is an invaluable asset. Though intangible, it is more precious than any luxury in the world, because once lost, it can never be regained.

Every tick of the clock signifies that we are a moment closer to the end of our journey. It is an undeniable fact that life is short and uncertain. Therefore, it is crucial to make the most out of every moment we have. The significance of time can best be understood by the phrase, “Time and tide wait for none”. It does not matter who you are or what you do, time will not stop for you.

To sum up, learning to respect time and use it wisely is a key to success. It is said that the wisest are those who make the best use of their time. So, let us not waste any more of this precious resource. Let’s make every second count, for the sands of time wait for no one.

2-minute Speech on Value of Time

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I’m here to talk about something we all possess, yet often fail to acknowledge the importance of – Time. The value of time is immeasurable and it’s the one thing we all have in common, regardless of our age, profession, or nationality.

Time, it is said, is the most valuable thing a person can spend. But unlike money or material possessions, the time you have today cannot be saved for tomorrow. It is continuously moving, and once a moment has passed, it is gone forever. We often hear phrases like “there’s always tomorrow” or “maybe next time”, but the truth is, the time we have at this moment is the only time we’re certain of.

Every tick of the clock gives us an opportunity to create something valuable, something meaningful. Time is the canvas on which we paint the picture of our lives. Our achievements, our knowledge, our character – they are all products of the time we’ve invested. It is important to understand that time is not just about the ticking of seconds, minutes, and hours, but about the quality of how we spend those moments.

Making the most of our time doesn’t necessarily mean being busy every single moment. It means being productive, being mindful of how we use our time. It means setting clear goals and making sure we take steps every day towards achieving them. It means ensuring we set aside time for rest, for loved ones, for the things we love to do.

Moreover, we must also learn to respect others’ time. Just as we don’t want our time to be wasted, we should not waste others’ time. Respect for time is a reflection of respect for ourselves and others. It tells a lot about our character and our values.

In conclusion, the value of time is in its scarcity, its fleeting nature. Let’s appreciate the time we have, for it’s the most valuable asset we possess. Let’s invest it wisely, using it productively for personal growth, for helping others, for making a positive impact in the world. Remember, time is like a book. Each day is a new page. It’s up to us whether we fill it with meaningful words or leave it blank.

Thank you for your time.

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Value of Time Speech for Students and Children

Value of time speech.

Time is precious in everyone’s life. We should not waste time in any way. Likewise, we can earn the amount of money we spent but we can never get back the time we have lost. However, this makes our time more valuable than money. Hence, we must utilize our time in the most possible effective way. Read the value of time speech here.

Time is one of the most valuable and priceless things in this universe. Also, we should utilize our time for ourselves and our loved ones. We should also use the time for the good of other people around us. This helps us and the society to grow towards a superior tomorrow.

Moreover, we should teach our kids the importance and value of the time. Also, wasting time will result in regretting afterward for misusing or wasting time.

Get the Huge list of 100+ Speech Topics here

Utilization

For utilizing the time fully and effectively we must study some points that can help us in our whole life ahead. The best and effective utilization of the time includes setting goals, preparing work lists, prioritizing tasks, and taking sufficient sleep and various other factors are also there.

For the best use of the time, we should set long and short term goals. The long term and the short term goals will help us in being productive and timesaver. Moreover, they will help us as a driving force that will continuously motivate us. Also, increases and generates a willingness to accomplish various things in our life.

Firstly, it will feel like an uninteresting task but later when we will be doing it regularly then we will understand that it only helps us in increasing our productivity. Ultimately, this forces us to achieve more in our life.

Prioritizing any task in our day to day routine is a very operative way of managing our time. Also, because of this, we will recognize the importance of numerous tasks and jobs in our lives. Apart from that, if we unite and perform a similar activity in the flow then it also increases our productivity.

Being productive does not mean that we have to involve ourselves in multiple tasks every time. Taking the proper amount of sleep and exercising is also a part of being healthy as well as productive. Besides, appropriate exercise and sleep maintain a balance between the body and the mind that is very necessary for being productive and efficient in life.

Most people do not realize how valuable time is until they lose it. Besides, there are so many peoples in the world who prioritize money over time. This is because, according to many of us, time is nothing. But, they don’t realize the fact that the time provides them the opportunity and chance to get the money. Apart from this, time has given us wealth and happiness. Moreover, on the contrary, time also gives us sorrow and unhappiness.

In ancient times, many kings proclaimed that they are the ruler of their age. But, they usually forget that they have time in a limited amount. The time is the only thing in this universe that is limitless and can go up to infinity. Time can either make you a king or a beggar in just a span of seconds.

As we all know that time is very important for each of us, we should spend it very cleverly. The time that passes away never returns. So, we should be aware and alert of where and in what type of activity we are investing our precious time. Time is priceless, no one can buy it, it’s the only thing that can make anyone 0 and anyone hero in just a moment.

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• Speech on Value of Time

Speech on Value of Time in English for Students

Speech on topic importance of time.

Time is very important in life. No one can escape the passing of time. If time is managed properly it would lead to the development of a good habit of organizing the daily activities.

Students should understand the importance of time. It will help them in managing time properly. 

Below 2 speeches are given on the importance of time, A long speech on value of time in student’ life and a short speech on value of time in students' life. These speeches will help the students to understand how precious time is. 

 Long Speech on Topic Importance of Time

‘Good morning everyone’! Today I want to talk about the importance of time. So what is time? Well, time is measured by hours, days years, and so on. Time is very important in life. No one can escape the passing of time. If time is managed properly it would lead to the development of a good habit of organizing the daily activities. We all cannot escape time and are subject to ageing and mortality. 

Time plays an important role in everyone’s life. If time is invested properly it could be used to develop a skill. Time also healing a person both externally and internally. 

Time is considered to be the ultimate thing that cannot be measured. When proper work is done and completed on time it will yield a fruitful result. 

As the proverb goes “TIme and tide wait for none”, all the students should understand this proverb. Time waits for no one and it just passes by. It is the duty of the person to value time and manage it properly so that the task could be completed. 

Students should understand that time is invaluable. People think that money has the most value on Earth but it is not. Time is more valuable than money. Lost money can be earned back but lost time cannot be and nothing can stop the flow of time in our lives. Time is precious and it is required that everyone should use it wisely. 

So the next question that comes to everyone’s mind is how to use time wisely? Well, there is the word for that and that is ‘Discipline’. Everyone should have discipline in every walk of life. If we are disciplined in our life no one can raise a finger against us. 

Discipline plays an important role in students’ life. If the student shows discipline and if is always on time. It is a sign of maturity and he or she will be appreciated by the teachers. 

The next thing that I want to talk about is Time management as it is required to understand the value of time. A person who completes his or her work on time will in turn help them to be successful. 

Students should develop the habit of time management as early as possible. While preparing for an exam, time management plays an important role. Students who manage their time by studying a particular subject at a particular time help the students to complete the syllabus in time and perform well in exams. 

To conclude this speech, I want to say that everyone should develop a habit to complete a particular task in that frame of time. The task could be anything from preparing for exams, working out, or sleeping. Completing the task on time will help in saving the time which could be used to develop a new skill. History is evident that all successful people in the world are very good at managing time. Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, and so on manages time very effectively and use the free time to read books. The most important people in the world are very conscious of the value of time. Hence, we should also not waste time and try to make the best use of it. Thank You. 

Short Speech on Value of Time in Students Life

‘Good morning everyone’! Today I want to talk about the importance of time. Time is measured by hours, days years, and so on. Time is very important in life. No one can escape the passing of time. Time plays an important role in everyone’s life. If time is invested properly it could be used to develop a skill. Time also healing a person both externally and internally.

As the proverb goes “TIme and tide wait for none”, all the students should understand this proverb. It is the duty of the person to value time and manage it properly so that the task could be completed. 

Students should understand that time is invaluable. Time is more valuable than money. Lost money can be earned back but lost time cannot be and nothing can stop the flow of time in our lives. Time is precious and it is required that everyone should use it wisely. 

Time management is required to understand the value of time. A person who completes his or her work on time will in turn help them to be successful. 

To conclude this speech, I want to say that everyone should develop a habit to complete a particular task in that frame of time. The most important people in the world are very conscious of the value of time. Hence, we should also not waste time and try to make the best use of it. Thank You. 

10 Lines About Speech on Value of Time in Students Life

Time is measured by hours, days years, and so on. Time is very important in life.

Time is considered to be the ultimate thing that cannot be measured. When proper work is done and completed on time it will yield a fruitful result.

Time waits for no one and it just passes by. It is the duty of the person to value time and manage it properly so that the task could be completed. 

Time is more valuable than money. Lost money can be earned back but lost time cannot be and nothing can stop the flow of time in our lives.

Time is precious and it is required that everyone should use it wisely. 

Discipline plays an important role in students’ life. If students a disciplined in life they will achieve success one day.

Time management is required to understand the value of time. 

Students should develop the habit of time management as early as possible. It will help them to excel in exams.

The most important people in the world are very conscious of the value of time. Hence, we should also not waste time and try to make the best use of it.

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• Speech Writing /

1 and 2 Minute Speech on Value of Time

• Updated on  
• Mar 15, 2024

Have you heard of the phrase, ‘Time Flies’ ? It means that time passes very quickly and it waits for none. Everybody has different meanings about time but it is important to everyone. Time can’t be controlled or stopped. Time teaches us valuable lessons like patience, adaptability, healing, etc. Understanding the value of time is very important to live a healthy and successful life.

Understanding the importance and value of time is crucial to growth in life. It helps in managing day-to-day activities. On this page, we will provide you with samples of speech on value of time. These speech samples will provide you with insights into the value of time and how we should manage our time.

Table of Contents

• 1 1 Minute Speech on Value of Time
• 2 2 Minute Speech on Value of Time
• 3 10 Lines on Importance of Time in Life

‘It’s really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time.’ – Steve Jobs

Also Read: 160+ Best & Easy English Speech Topics for Students

1 Minute Speech on Value of Time

‘Good morning to everyone present here. Today, I stand before you to present my speech on value of time. Everybody’s time is important for them. Time is one of the most valuable and priceless elements in our universe and no amount of money can buy time. Therefore, utilizing our time wisely is very important. 

We all have 24 hours in a day. Spending time with our parents and loved ones and studying must be our top priority. We should also spend time helping others to create a better world. Helping others not only makes us a better person but also promotes a positive attitude as people learn about our good qualities. 

People who understand the value of time must spread their thoughts on time to others. Making others aware of time management will help create a responsible populace, as people will spend time on important things only and will not indulge in time-wasting activities.

Thank you!’

‘Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend.’ – Theophrastus

2 Minute Speech on Value of Time

‘Good morning Principal ma’am, my teachers and my fellow students. Today, I stand before you to share my views on the value of time. What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the word ‘Time’ ? Is it a giant clock? Or a smartwatch? Whatever comes to your mind is your thinking of time. 

On Earth, time is measured in hours, where 1 day consists of 24 hours and 8760 hours in 1 year. However, the understanding and value of time goes beyond the hour and clock system. Our life is measured in years, which is a unit of time. Our life has a limited amount of time, making it a very important element. The value of time defines our existence.

Understanding the value of time is important to develop good habits. Time provides us with opportunities for learning, personal development, and growth. It allows us to acquire new skills, broaden our knowledge, and evolve into better versions of ourselves. The time we have is the reality and embracing it will help us understand its value. 

Time is irreversible. Once a moment has passed, it will never come back again. Think of any date or memorable moment of your life. Can you recreate it? The answer is NO . It is this irreversible nature of time that highlights the need to make the most of each moment, as we cannot go back and alter the past.

Investing time in ourselves in chasing our goals, and building healthy relations and good habits is very important to lead a happy life. In today’s busy world, time is often associated with money and resources. To emphasize the economic value of time effectively, productivity and efficiency are crucial for success.

Time plays an important role in the legacy we leave behind. How we manage our time and the good qualities we share will have an impact on other’s lives. Therefore, the value of time goes beyond the minutes and hours concept. Our healthy relationships, successful goals, and good habits are defined by how effectively we manage our time.

‘Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time.’ – Jim Rohn

10 Lines on Importance of Time in Life

Here are 10 lines on the importance of time in life. Feel free to add them to your speech topics.

• Time is a precious resource that once lost cannot be regained.
• Efficient time management leads to success and happiness.
• Every moment is an opportunity for growth and self-improvement.
• Time allows us to build meaningful relationships and create lasting memories.
• The value of time is evident in achieving personal and professional goals.
• Wasting time is squandering a valuable asset that can never be recovered.
• Proper utilization of time contributes to a balanced and fulfilling life.
• Time is a currency; spend it wisely on things that truly matter.
• The importance of time is underscored by its impact on our overall well-being.
• Recognizing the significance of time empowers us to live purposefully and make the most of each day.

Also Read: Speech About Life for Students

Ans: Time is a precious resource that once lost cannot be regained. Efficient time management leads to success and happiness. Every moment is an opportunity for growth and self-improvement. Time allows us to build meaningful relationships and create lasting memories. The value of time is evident in achieving personal and professional goals.

Ans: ‘Good morning to everyone present here. Today, I stand before you to present my speech on value of time. Everybody’s time is important for them. Time is one of the most valuable and priceless elements in our universe and no amount of money can buy time. Therefore, utilizing our time wisely is very important.  We all have 24 hours in a day. Spending time with our parents and loved ones and studying must be our top priority. We should also spend time helping others to create a better world. Helping others not only makes us a better person but also promotes a positive attitude as people learn about our good qualities.

Ans: Understanding the value of time is important to develop good habits. Time provides us with opportunities for learning, personal development, and growth. It allows us to acquire new skills, broaden our knowledge, and evolve into better versions of ourselves. The time we have is the reality and embracing it will help us understand its value.  Time is irreversible. Once a moment has passed, it will never come back again.

Related Speech Topics for Students

This was all about the speech on value of time. We hope we were able to provide you with all the necessary information you were looking for. For more information on such interesting speech topics for your school, visit our speech writing page and follow Leverage Edu .

Shiva Tyagi

With an experience of over a year, I've developed a passion for writing blogs on wide range of topics. I am mostly inspired from topics related to social and environmental fields, where you come up with a positive outcome.

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• Government efficiency, transparency and accountability
• Government spending

Chancellor: I will take the difficult decisions to restore economic stability 

Chancellor addresses House of Commons with a pledge to ‘restore economic stability’ after revealing £22 billion of unfunded pressures inherited from the previous Government.

• Findings of a Treasury spending audit reveal £22 billion of unfunded pledges inherited from the previous Government this year.
• Chancellor takes “difficult decisions” to find £5.5 billion of savings this year and £8.1 billion next year.
• A set of non-negotiable fiscal rules will be confirmed at Budget on 30th October, alongside further difficult decisions on tax and spending.
• Finalised departmental budgets for this financial year and the next will be confirmed in October and a multi-year Spending Review will conclude in Spring 2025 to embed mission-led government and transform public services.

Addressing the House of Commons today (Monday 29th July) the Chancellor pledged to ‘restore economic stability’ after revealing £22 billion of unfunded pressures inherited from the previous Government.

Findings from a Treasury audit commissioned by the Chancellor expose billions of pounds of unfunded commitments from the previous Government, including the Rwanda scheme, the Advanced British Standard and the New Hospital Programme.

The previous Government also failed to increase Departmental budgets to cover public sector pay settlements, which were £11-12 billion higher than accounted for at the last Spending review. All of which were made on top of pressures resulting from higher inflation, increased asylum costs and funding for Ukraine. 

Taking immediate action, the Chancellor announced £5.5 billion of savings this year and £8.1 billion next year to tackle the overspend. She also commits to set out full fiscal plans, alongside a Spending Review, at the Budget on 30th October.  

Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves said:  

This is not the statement I wanted to give today, and these are not the decisions I wanted to make. But they are the right decisions in difficult circumstances.” 

The difficult decisions taken by the Chancellor have secured savings including over £1 billion next year, rising to over £4 billion by 29/30 by not proceeding with the previous government’s unfunded adult social care charging reforms. 

Around £1.5 billion will be saved per year by targeting Winter Fuel Payments meaning households with someone aged over State Pension age receiving Pension Credit, Universal Credit, Income Support, income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance and income-related Employment and Support Allowance will continue to receive Winter Fuel Payments. This will better target support for heating costs at those who need it.

Immediate savings include £800 million this year and £1.4 billion next year from scrapping the Rwanda migration partnership and scrapping retrospection of the Illegal Migration Act, £70 million this year by cancelling the Investment Opportunity Fund and other small projects, £185 million next year from cancelling the Advanced British Standard and £785 million next year from stopping unaffordable road and railway schemes. The Chancellor also announced a review of the underdelivering New Hospital Programme.    

To provide certainty for public sector workers and help put an end to devastating strikes costing billions of pounds, the Chancellor accepted the independent Pay Review Body recommendations and confirm pay uplifts averaging 5.5% for public sector workers.  

To ensure that no Government is faced with a spending cliff-edge like this again the Chancellor set out plans to ensure Spending Reviews are set every two years to cover a three-year period, with a one year overlap with the previous Spending Review, helping build in greater certainty and stability over public finances. Transparency over in year spending pressures will also be enhanced, with more information being provided to the OBR. In the House the Chancellor also re-committed to a single major fiscal event a year.   

The Chancellor also outlined long-term plans to tackle unacceptably high levels of welfare fraud and error as well as addressing falling public sector productivity and a new Office of Value for Money. During her statement the Chancellor outlined next steps in delivering tax commitments from the manifesto, to provide taxpayers with certainty ahead of their final confirmation at the Budget.   

This includes ending the VAT tax breaks for private schools from 1 January 2025 to help recruit 6,500 new teachers, as well as replacing the outdated non-domicile regime with a new internationally competitive residence-based regime.

As also set out in the manifesto, the Chancellor confirmed plans for the Energy Profits Levy to be extended one year to 31 March 2030, have its investment allowances tightened and to increase the rate of the levy by three percentage points to 38% from 1 November 2024.

A call for evidence confirming the government’s intention to take action on the carried interest loophole has also been published, as well as a commitment to update on policies at the Budget to help close the tax gap further.    

Further details for all tax policies, including costings certified by the Office for Budget Responsibility, will be published at the Budget.  

Further information:  

• The Chancellor’s statement will be published here.
• Other documents published in relation to this statement will be published here.
• Winter Fuel Payments are devolved in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

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Francisco's 'Money' Speech from "Atlas Shrugged"

Rearden heard Bertram Scudder, outside the group, say to a girl who made some sound of indignation, “Don’t let him disturb you. You know, money is the root of all evil – and he’s the typical product of money.”

Rearden did not think that Francisco could have heard it, but he saw Francisco turning to them with a gravely courteous smile.

“So you think that money is the root of all evil?” said Francisco d’Aconia. “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.”

original source: Ana Rand Atlas Shrugged: Part II, Section 2, pages 387-391 of the paperback edition of

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