The “philosophy of a million dollars” … Essentially — there is no freedom until there is financial freedom, and since to be financially free — (though the absolute value will vary from place to place and time to time) – you need about a million dollars, this is all most people need to know of moral philosophy: make a million dollars or so — at which point you’re in a position to really make free decisions about morality.
(Of course, if you have gotten your million dollars through illegal or immoral means you may find that, now that you are free to make truly moral decisions, you are obligated to give it back, which should be avoided.)
It seems like what necessitates something like the philosophy of a million dollars is if you assume the morality of work for compensation. If you believe it’s immoral to have a living without working for it that seems to put many of our holiest and most revered moral figures in a bit of a spot; while wage earners/ people without a million dollars, can’t even allow themselves to think certain things about what morality really demands/ are very constricted as to what they can do morally. (A soldier can’t entertain that killing is immoral, a merchant can’t entertain that profit is immoral, etc.)
However, it also suggests something ennobling about wage earning: that workers are not working for luxurious tropical vacations or an escape from work and early retirement; they’re working for the opportunity and hope of one day making truly moral decisions, rather than under the constrain of necessity.
Obviously, in this scheme, people born into financial freedom have a better opportunity of understanding freedom’s finer points than those born into poverty – is it really so? – (Maybe the ethic should be rephrased: the ethic of earning and saving a million dollars, not merely having it — but what does that essentially change?)
This is a stupid idea. We believe children capable of moral choices yet they don’t participate in economic freedom. And while a Master Class does problably not concern itself with the moral choices among its slaves, those slaves, among themselves, have and believe in a moral sense.
Stoic objection: that the amount of money one actually needs to be financially free is zero. Maybe cannot be greater than zero. Communist objection: the philosophy of a million dollars is the typical laughable American fantasy. No one can be financially free until everyone is financially free.
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