Education has been touched by the Midas finger and made into vocational training. Children are taught to do useful things that make large quantities of money for themselves and others. And of course, professors are also expected to bring in grant money. Universities are businesses, albeit businesses of a special kind. Like all businesses, universities need money. This is why most university presidents spend more time thinking about fund-raising than education. When you set sentimentality aside and think about it rationally, which is more crucial to the existence of a university, money or education?

Government has been turned to solid gold. It is an instrument of collective economic prosperity — prosperity for its own sake.

And of course business has always existed to make money for its owners and employees. What other purpose could business serve, besides making money?

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(Sometimes idealists claim that businesses should serve some purpose higher than profits. But businesses that do not make money do not survive. To claim that businesses do not exist to make money is as absurd as claiming that human beings do not exist to breathe air.)

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In a world made entirely of gold, gold can only buy more gold.