ABSTRACT
Selfishness is always and necessarily out of order. Interestedness is not, and scarcely could be. But if it is proper to speak of a profit motive, it should be equally proper to speak of a wages motive. Aristotle's contention here was that any trade is essentially exploitative. Three corollaries may be drawn from this account of the essential nature of money. First, it has to be entirely unilluminating psychologically to speak of any money motive and, still more unilluminating to try to develop a complete economic psychology upon a basis of a series of economic distinctions between various mercenary motives. The second corollary is that it has to be wrong to hope that the abolition of money or even a reduction of the range of desired goods that money can buy might by itself reduce greed and competition. The third corollary is that money, and the extension of the range of goods and services, are sovereign instruments of choice.
