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If you want that girl
Listen, son
Don't you sit around and cry
Because, love
In this world
Ain't nothing you can't buy
-- Lyle Lovett, Money 

Money may not really buy love or make the world go round, but it certainly does help society to function efficiently. Money, which is assigned a value, is the item of exchange we use if we want to purchase something. The work we do to earn money is also assigned a value and the amount something costs reflects the value in producing or developing it. Most people would agree that the reward of money is the incentive they need to invest their time and labor into many of the tasks that demand their attention. While there may be additional reasons for applying ourselves to projects, a surplus of money allows us more freedom to devote our energy to additional pursuits. 

In answering whether money is the root of all evil, Ayn Rand wrote, "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?" Money incentivizes those who produce and there is nothing wrong with that. Heritage Foundation's Rebecca Hagelin writes that "wealth and economic freedom go hand in hand." In countries where there is economic freedom, there is more wealth. It can be argued that there is something inherently wrong with de-incentivizing those who produce by making it more difficult to be productive or rewarded. 

The Founders understood that those with property have a vested interest in protecting the fruit of their labor. When people think of the Founders, they usually think of the names most associated with writing the founding documents, however, it is just as important to remember those anti-Federalists who feared giving too much power to the federal government and who refused to ratify a Constitution without a Bill of Rights. These founders gave voice to prevailing concerns and greatly influenced what was included in the final document. Cato, in letter 62 wrote, 

By liberty, I understand the power which every man has over his own actions, and his right to enjoy the fruit of his labour, art, and industry, as far as by it he hurts not the society, or any members of it, by taking from any member, or by hindering him from enjoying what he himself enjoys. The fruits of a man's honest industry are the just rewards of it, ascertained to him by natural and eternal equity, as is his title to use them in the manner which he thinks fit: And thus, with the above limitations, every man is sole lord and arbiter of his own private actions and property. A character of which no man living can divest him but by usurpation, or his own consent. 

The entering into political society, is so far from a departure from his natural right, that to preserve it was the sole reason why men did so; and mutual protection and assistance is the only reasonable purpose of all reasonable societies. 

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