Essay That Got Me in the 3rd-Place Category in the Ayn Rand Institute’s 2009 Essay Contest: ‘Making Money Versus Having Money’

Stuart K. Hayashi

Below is the essay for which I received one of the five third-place slots in the Ayn Rand Institute’s 2009 Atlas Shrugged essay contest. That year there were 4,000 entrants — more than double the previous record.

In this essay, I explain that money, as a commodity, is a complement. This means that its value hinges upon the value of some other product. For instance, the value in my having a can opener — qua can opener — is contingent upon my having sealed tin or aluminum cans to open. Likewise, the value of money is contingent upon there already being goods and services, such as food and shelter, for which that money can be traded. Therefore, it is such wealth — these goods and services created by entrepreneurs — that confer value upon cash and credit.

The quantity of goods and services that can be produced in a society is directly commensurate with the amount of freedom — freedom from force and fraud — existing in that society. A totalitarian society can have trillions of monetary units in circulation in the form of cash and credit, but as the lack of incentive will discourage entrepreneurial production, that society will remain poor.

Grammatically, what you see below is not exactly the same as the version I submitted. Years later, I noticed that the draft I submitted split some infinitives. I have decided to change that for the version below.

_________

 

Topic 2: Making Money Versus Having Money

In Atlas Shrugged, the heroes want to “make” money while the villains want, on the surface at least, to “have” money. What is the difference between these two views of money? Explain your answer by reference to actual events in the novel.

 

The conflict in attitudes that the heroes and villains have about money comes from their differing views on the nature of wealth. First, “wealth” must be defined properly. The measure of a person’s wealth is the usefulness that he finds in the products and services in his possession; “wealth” does not merely refer to cash and credit. The usefulness of any unit of currency comes from the fact that it can be exchanged for the goods and services that comprise wealth. As Francisco d’Anconia explains at James Taggart’s wedding: “Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them” (Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, 1957, [New York, New York: Signet, 1985 mass market paperback edition], 387).

John Galt notices that the villains do not consider the source of the world’s wealth (968); they are only aware that it exists, and they fuss over how they would like for it to be distributed (132). By contrast, the heroes understand that wealth is not something that automatically emerges into existence, independent of human initiative. The heroes recognize that all the wealth that exists, and has ever existed, was created by individuals who applied their volitional capabilities, first to discover the laws of nature, and then to utilize their understanding of such laws to convert natural materials into useful products.

The mere existence of crude oil, for instance, cannot be of immediate use to anyone while that oil remains stuck miles beneath the earth’s surface. It takes a capable entrepreneur to coordinate the activities of men and machines in an effort to bring this oil aboveground. That is precisely what Ellis Wyatt does, keeping other industrial concerns alive by reliably supplying them with oil (17). After Wyatt vanishes from public life, and after the government responds by placing further controls on the oil industry, there are no entrepreneurial individuals left who can competently organize oil-drilling endeavors. Resultantly, the country experiences a petroleum shortage (325). This demonstrates that wealth is conditional, that no one may have it unless there is someone willing and able and free to use his mind to create it.

When a man invents a new product that provides advantages that older products cannot, the new invention brings about an increase in wealth. Before Hank Rearden invented Rearden Metal, Dagny Taggart purchased steel for the reason that there was no better substance available for casting the rails for Taggart Transcontinental’s lines. Once Rearden brings his Metal into existence, it opens up previously untapped opportunities. Dagny observes that Rearden’s alloy is “tougher than steel, cheaper than steel, and will outlast any hunk of metal in existence” (28). Accordingly, a dollar that Dagny spends on Rearden Metal today will bring her greater benefit than did a dollar that she spent on steel in the past. This net benefit — this improvement in the quality of Taggart Transcontinental’s tracks — is new wealth that Rearden’s Promethean initiative has brought into reality.

Furthermore, two independently creative individuals can take advantage of one another’s creativity by making voluntary trades with each other, giving “value for value” (387). Rearden provides Dagny his Metal for her rails, and she provides him the service of shipping his Metal to his other customers (86). This trade is not executed through barter; Dagny and Rearden each pay one another with money, as money makes trading simpler in a society in which businesses perform specialized tasks. Dagny purchases cigarettes from a newsstand (64-65), but if all she had to trade for cigarettes was her railroad’s transportation services, then the newsstand owner would not agree to the trade if he had no desire to transport anything via rail. Money makes trading easier because it is a tool used specifically as a common medium of commercial exchange. Dagny can offer rail transportation to her customers in exchange for their money, and she can then offer some of that money to the newsstand owner in exchange for cigarettes.

Money is therefore the material representation of the product of one’s own effort, which one can then “exchange for the product of the effort of others” (387). To “make money” is to earn money in a two-step process: first create useful goods or services, and then trade them to willing customers in exchange for their money. Ergo, to “make money,” one must be a wealth-creator. A moneymaker is a producer.

Though wealth is created, the villains obtain it by means other than production and trade. Another way to acquire wealth is to receive it as a gift. The persons that primarily obtain their wealth not from working, but through alms, are those whom Francisco identifies as “moochers” who gain the product of your work “by tears” (387). Philip Rearden lives off of his brother Hank in such a manner (441). An even worse tactic of acquiring wealth is to engage in extortion or other forms of robbery. Those who employ this method are “looters,” who seize your wealth “by force” (387). As a case in point, in his unwillingness to try to persuade individuals to finance his scientific research consensually, Dr. Robert Stadler asks the government to confiscate money from citizens forcibly and have it redistributed to his State Science Institute (178, 183). Such moochers and looters often take money and have it, but they do not make any new wealth and therefore do not make money.

When an extortionist steals from his victim, most of society evaluates the extortionist as strong and the victim as weak. However, if strength is the ability to live as a rationally proud human being, then the productive victim is stronger. The victim survives by his own effort. By contrast, the extortionist is a parasite that lives off of its victims and will perish in the absence of victims.

Following Wyatt’s disappearance, for example, the government gives the State Science Institute full access to Wyatt’s oil fields. However, lacking the acumen to produce the same results that Wyatt did, the Institute fails to put the fields back into production and therefore fails to mitigate the petroleum shortage. To keep its building adequately heated, the Institute relies upon the oil that the government rations to it, but this quantity proves to be insufficient for satisfying Stadler’s needs (325-26). Rather than take any constructive action, Stadler simply laments that the temperature in his Institute’s building recently dropped so low that he “nearly froze to death” (325). Producers like Wyatt can survive without looters like Stadler, but looters like Stadler suffer when they no longer have producers like Wyatt around to produce for them.

If everyone in the USA lived as a productive individual, creating wealth and trading it with other wealth-creators, then the nation would flourish just as Galt’s Gulch does (652-756). Conversely, a society in which everyone was a moocher or a looter would inevitably destroy itself. The moochers and looters would find that the quantity of wealth available for consumption constantly shrinks when there are no moneymakers present to create new wealth. There would be no competent entrepreneurial efforts to generate electricity (1075), as there would be no one left to mine the coal that could supply it. The world would descend back into poverty (273), technological primitivism (1080), famine (869-870), and civil war (1029). Society would vanish “in a spread of ruin and slaughter” (390).

A particularly important principle is revealed when, just as the American economy falls into deprivation and chaos, Mr. Thompson — the nation’s Head of State — tries to coax John Galt into becoming the country’s economic dictator by offering him cash: “Want a billion dollars — a cool, neat billion dollars? . . . ...I mean straight out of the public treasury, in fresh, new bills . . . or . . . or even in gold, if you prefer.”

In reply, Galt asks rhetorically, “What will it buy me?” (1023). When there are so few quality goods and services being produced, a billion dollars will fetch very little value for its owner. To quote once again a statement of Francisco’s that was quoted in this essay’s beginning, the value of any sum of cash is predicated upon the fact that there are still “goods” being “produced and men able to produce them” (387). As the productivity of these men ceases to exist, so does the usefulness of any currency, and so it is the productive men “who give value to money” (387). The producers’ economic power comes not from merely possessing cash, but from making the wealth that gives cash its meaning.

Galt rightfully appraises Mr. Thompson’s bribe as pitiful, for having money is meaningless in a world in which there are no longer any men around to produce the goods and services that the money is supposed to purchase. That is the idea behind Francisco saying, “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” (387). In the final analysis, the money that one has can only retain its value as long as — and to the extent that — men still make their money freely.

On Thursday, April 8, 2021, I added the photo that my mother took of me holding a copy of the hardcover Atlas Shrugged and the certificate from the Ayn Rand institute. My mother took that photo on December 23, 2009.

Jean-Baptiste Say in Favor of Liberalized Immigration

Stuart K. Hayashi

 

Jean-Baptiste Say was a pioneering Enlightenment-era economist to whom I have previously referred on this blog and elsewhere. He articulated an important principle in political economy.

 

What Makes Him Special 

Prior to the Enlightenment, most people believed that private property rights are nothing more than a tentative method for the State to suspend disputes over who gets to control which scarce resource. Most people, at least on a subconscious level, hold that attitude still.

But as I have written before, Say provided a much more sophisticated understanding of private ownership. John Locke and Adam Smith explored this idea earlier, but Say delved deeper and explained it better. Say showed that, for the most part, most economic value is not a given provided by the wilderness as some default. Instead, most economic value is created by inventive, entrepreneurial, human choices.

And, to that point, the institution of private ownership is about more than resolving fights over scarce resources. Those scarce resources gained their value mostly as a consequence of invention and entrepreneurship. For that reason, private ownership over such economic value is about the inventor and entrepreneur retaining control over the value she created. The institution of private ownership is vehicle for enabling individuals to enjoy the consequences of their creative choices.

And one such form of creativity involves the choice of impoverished dark-skinned people to migrate to new lands where they have more opportunity to employ their skills in the building of wealth. Appreciation for the right to immigrate is the logical extension and implementation of the free enterprise that Say studied and championed. Sadly, this insight is often lost on people who claim to venerate this man. Thomas Sowell wrote an appreciative book about Say, but on this topic takes the retrogressive position of Say’s opponent Rev. T. Robert Malthus.

 

 
Anti-Immigrationism in the Name of Say 

 There is also a Twitter account going by Say’s name and using the man’s portrait as a profile picture. The Twitter account’s opinions, at first glance, seem similar to the real Say’s in that it gives lip service to commerce and deregulation. Yet the Twitter account, for the most part, just repeats the same old talking points of “anti-SJW” Twitter accounts and YouTube channels like those of Carl Benjamin/Sargon of Akkad. At least the Twitter account’s owner is honest in admitting, “I contain platitudes.” Unfortunately, the account’s owner not only holds those platitudes internally, but provides the rest of Twitter the disservice of divulging them.

Among the rightwing clichés this account spouts is that the State is right to take action against dark-skinned immigrants. The rationalization is that the Twitter account’s owner presumes Third-World immigrants or at least their children all vote for Democrats and the welfare state. For the Twitter account’s owner, that is justification enough for the armed federal agents to obstruct dark-skinned immigrants from entering the West peaceably. 

 Ayn Rand Institute chair Yaron Brook notes on Twitter, “Most illegal immigrants work. Most immigrants don’t take welfare, because at the federal level and in most states it's denied for illegal immigrants.” 

 To this, the Twitter “Jean-Baptiste Say” snaps, “That’s irrelevant. What’s relevant is that most immigrants vote for welfare. Stop defending the importation of statism.”

Maybe if immigrants don't support our values we have to make a more compelling case for our values 🤷‍♂️.

— Anton Chigurh (@buddybakerAM) July 15, 2020

Dr. Brook implores people to consider the immigrant’s situation.

Think of a mother who struggles to get to America because she wants her child to be free. In any other context, you would admire that woman. 

 What could be more heroic than that?

Dr. Brook challenges his readers to consider why they scorn immigrants “instead of admiring them.”

To that, Jean-Baptiste Say’s imposter cracks,

Because statistically she’s a Socialist who didn’t come here for freedom, she came for a job. And statistically most of her children will be as indifferent to freedom as their mother and vote the way she does.

Can you please show me the statistics that indicate this?

— Brian Robert Harris (@BrianRHarris) July 20, 2020

I have already disspelled these bigoted clichés. Therefore, I want to address something else. There is a sad irony in someone expressing this hostility to immigration freedom while using Say’s name and likeness to do so. And it is an irony that I doubt will be spotted by left-wing people like Vadim Newkwist who, lumping together all their political opponents, conflate anti-immigrationists with “Koch-funded libertarians” as if those two categories are in agreement rather than at odds. This is something about which I learned from the financial writer John Tamny. The irony is this: the real Jean-Baptiste Say approved of liberalized migration policy.

 

Letting the Real Jean-Baptiste Have His Say 

 In his Treatise on Political Economy, Jean-Baptiste Say writes, 

One nation cannot take from another the revenues of its industry. A German tailor, establishing himself in France, there makes a profit, in which Germany had no participation. . . .

A nation, receiving a stray child into its bosom again, acquires a real treasure...

Interestingly, in an endnote to the English translation of his work, one does find some fretting over the prospect of immigrants coming to a country to go on welfare. 

...defective human institutions may convert a benefit [such as immigration] into a curse; as where a poor-law system gives gratuitous subsistence to a part of the population, capable of labour, but not incited by want. In such case, every additional human being may be a burthen instead of a prize; for he may be one more on the list of idle pensioners.

However, that endnote came not from Say himself but from the English translator Charles Robert Prinsep.

The line of Say’s beginning “A nation, receiving a stray child into its bosom again,” might be interpreted as not a strong endorsement of immigration for several reasons. Although this section of the work is largely in defense of the right to migration, the sentence is preceded by a discussion of expatriates returning to their country of origin. Therefore, the “receiving a stray child into its bosom again” could be interpreted as saying that it is only a “treasure” when a native-born citizen repatriates to his country of origin, not so much when a non-native comes to the country. 

 Adding to that interpretation is this implied condescension toward non-natives: “...I reckon that a native Frenchman in quitting his country, robs it of an affectionate attachment, and a spirit of exclusive nationality, which it can never look for in a stranger born [resident alien in France].”

Yet there is another passage of this work that is unambiguous in its approval for immigration: “A stranger [immigrant], that comes into a country to settle there, and brings his fortune [productiveness] along with him, is a substantial acquisition to the nation.”

The real Jean-Baptiste Say does not delve into tirades about how would-be immigrants holding opinions on public policy contrary to his own is sufficient reason for armed government agents to bar their entry into the country.

Using Say’s face to spout the old canards against free immigration is an embarrassing attempt to co-opt the image of a great man who delivered the opposite message.

All ‘Economic Migration’ As Financial Arbitrage

Stuart K. Hayashi

Screen shot from the motion picture Born in East L.A.,
prod. Peter Macgregor-Scott, dir. Cheech Marin (Universal Pictures, 1987).

There is an important term in finance and investing: arbitrage. This means that you notice a resource fetches a very low price in Market A and fetches a high price in Market B. Therefore, you start by removing the resource from Market A, usually by purchasing units of the resource in Market A. You conclude by moving that resource to Market B, where you are paid much more for it. That difference in prices is your profit margin.

 

Case Studies
Here is a basic example. You notice that in Country A, oil fetches 37 U.S. dollars per barrel. Yet you notice in Country B, parties are willing to pay 100 U.S. dollars per barrel. Therefore, you purchase barrels in Country A and then resell them in Country B. You make a profit of $63 per barrel. This business method is called arbitrage, and the one who practices it is an arbitrageur.

Here is another example. Maybe I want to find an old collectible or toy, maybe one Godzilla-related. But I only know of the big online vendors, such as Amazon and eBay. Perhaps an arbitrageur is more familiar with many smaller, lesser-known online vendors. The arbitrageur spends hours scouring the websites of the various online vendors. That is how she finds the collectible for sale for 40 US dollars. The arbitrageur purchases it for that price and then asks $55 for it on a bigger website with which I am more familiar. If I purchase it from the arbitrageur, that is a $15 profit before the bigger website takes a commission.

Arbitrageurs such as those described above have long been reviled as parasites. The implication is that the arbitrageur should have simply told me about the sale on the obscure website. Then I could have purchased the item at the lower price. What goes overlooked in that the arbitrageur did perform a valuable service for me. The arbitrageur was willing to spend time and effort keeping tabs on the various lesser-known vendors. By contrast, I was not. The additional $15 I pay to the arbitrageur is for the service of doing this legwork I was not willing to do myself.

The same applies to the arbitrageur who buys oil from Country A and resells it in Country B. The arbitrageur is performing the service of taking oil from where it is wanted less and redirecting it to where it is wanted more. Absent of the arbitrageur, parties in Country B who desperately wanted oil barrels at the lower price would have to do the hard work the arbitrageur did for them. They would have to travel to Country A themselves to make those purchases.

The principle of arbitrage is always as follows. Because there is relatively small demand for a resource in Market A, it fetches a low price there. Because there is greater demand for that same resource in Market B, that is where it goes for a higher price. The arbitrageur profits from the difference by removing the resource from the smaller-demand market and repositioning it in the greater-demand market.

 

Bible-Age Arbitrage
Ignorant hatred for this practice goes back at least as far as the Bronze Age. Merchants would purchase items in City-State A and travel many miles across the Middle East to resell those items in City-State B. These merchants would were said to be cheating the citizens of City-State B. Overlooked was the fact that those merchants performed a valuable service to citizens of City-State B by making those items more accessible to City-State B than they otherwise would be. If not for those merchants, the citizens of City-State B would only be able to access those items by themselves making the long trek to City-State A.

Fortunately, Jean-Baptiste Say understood the nature of such transactions.

The carrying trade, as Smith calls it, consists in the purchase of goods in one foreign market for re-sale in another foreign market. This branch of industry is beneficial not only to the merchant that practises it, but also to the two nations between whom it is practised; and that for reasons which have been explained while treating of external commerce.

Moneylending is another form of arbitrage. That, too, has been reviled since the Bronze Age, this time being condemned in the Bible and Koran. At this very moment, I am in urgent need of 100 U.S. dollars. My demand for that $100 is so great that, in order to access it by tonight, and I am willing to pay you $115 for it in one month’s time. By contrast, you have much lower demand for your own $100 — you are not willing to pay any more than $100 for it. Hence, we make an agreement. You hand me the $100 this moment. In turn, a month from today I pay you $115.

For most of recorded history, many people have condemned that $15 profit as something you stole from me. It is actually a payment to you, once again, for a valuable service. It is valuable on two counts. First, you make 100 dollars’ worth of resources accessible to me much sooner than they otherwise would be. Second, you yourself have to go a whole month without that $100. The equivalent quantity of resources will not be so accessible to you for that month. Instead, for that month you have turned over your control of that quantity of resources to me.

This is how you, as a moneylender, are an arbitrageur. The resource in question is the $100 at this very moment in time. My custody at the very moment is the market where the resource is in greater demand. Your own custody is the market where there resource is in smaller demand. At this moment, you need the $100 less than I do. A month from today, though, you might need that $100 more than I do. By handing me the $100 today, you remove the resource from the market that has smaller demand for the resource. By selling $100-at-the-moment to me for the price of $115-a-month-from-today, you relocate the resource to where it is in greater demand.

 

“Economic Migration” As Arbitrage
Any time a person changes countries for the purpose of making more money than she otherwise would, that is a form of arbitrage. That principle applies even in the unlikely instance of someone actually immigrating to a new country to go on welfare.

Suppose an impoverished woman makes zero dollars in her country of origin. It’s seldom the case that such a person has zero marketable abilities. She does have marketable abilities. The reason why she is not being paid is that, in the village where she lives, there is not sufficient infrastructure where her abilities could be put to a lot of use. She could be very productive in a factory. But, in her village, there are no factories.

Suppose this woman illegally enters a rich country and gets a job. Now she is making more money. She is an arbitrageur, and her laboring ability is the resource she has relocated. In her country of origin, there was small demand for her abilities. Hence, she moved her abilities to a new country — a new market — where there is larger demand for her abilities. Hence, her abilities fetch her more income in the new country than the old.

I have previously disputed the old accusation that impoverished dark-skinned immigrants come to the USA and the West just to go on welfare. As a theoretical exercise, though, I will explain how even such an act would be arbitrage in practice.

In my country of origin, no one pays me anything for my presence. Hence, there is very small demand for my presence. Then I move to a rich country where I collect welfare. In this instance, I make more money than before because there is much greater demand for my presence in the new country than in the old — even if the consumer demand comes from the State officials claiming to act in the interest of the public.

Rage Toward Tax-Funded “Economic Migrants” As Misdirected
Even aside from the fact that this phenomenon is less common than presumed, there is another reason why it’s unfair to single out Third-World immigrants as if they were the only group to profit this kind of arbitrage. If I find any type of item for a low price and then resell it to the government a profit, it is a form of arbitrage where the choices of the buyer (government officials) are likely at odds with those of the taxpayers who funded the purchase. As Christopher Cerf noted in the 1980s, arbitrageurs often take advantage of defense spending in this manner. Defense contractors purchase tools that would be priced at a few cents at a hardware store and resell them for $80 or more to the Pentagon.

Insofar as the reader disapproves of any immigrants or their children collecting welfare, the proper solution is to agitate for reductions in welfare in particular and, more importantly, reductions in government spending in general. The act of immigrating, by itself, is not a violation of anyone’s rights. It is especially not a violation when someone whose services are less-valued in her country of origin then moves to the USA where her services are more sought-after and therefore better-compensated.

On Saturday, October 10, 2020, I added the quotation from Jean-Baptiste Say.

‘Circumstance Does Not Make the Man; It Reveals Him to Himself’

Stuart K. Hayashi 

“Private schools are for weaklings,” an older relative of mine liked to say. She continued, “When I gave my presentation to kids at Iolani School, I noticed they leave their backpacks and laptops out unattended. Any schoolmate could swipe their stuff. Remember the public schools we went to? We and everyone else there knew better. If I have kids, that’s why I’m sending them to public school. That’ll toughen them up.” 

 The implication of this rant greatly offended me. I wanted to say, “Would you also get drunk and beat them up? By your logic, that’ll really make ‘em tough!” 

 Sadly, while very few people would choose government schools over private schools for the reason my relative gave, many people do agree with a particular pernicious philosophic premise of hers. Most people believe that your personality as an adult — including how tenacious you are — is determined by circumstances entirely external to your conscious choices. 

 That is the premise behind the very term “Nature vs. Nurture debate” — what gave you your personality were either environmental circumstances in which you grew up, which were beyond your choosing, or some inborn biology that was beyond your choosing. With “Nature” (meaning inborn biology) and “Nurture” (meaning environmental circumstances) presented as the only two possibilities, your own choices are not even countenanced as a possible factor in making you who you are. Incidentally, it is not an accident that the very expression “Nature vs. Nature” was coined by Francis Galton, the biological determinist founder of eugenics. 

 My older relative’s rant was a manifestation of the “nurture” side of that false dichotomy. The implication is that the degree to which you are tough as an adult was mainly a consequence of unpleasant circumstances being imposed on you. The assumption is that if you were in pleasant surroundings as a child, it would make you soft and weak. By contrast, the assumption goes, if some unpleasantness is imposed on you, it will make you strong. In this interpretation, you are a passive receptacle. Further in this interpretation, it is your environmental circumstances that are active, actively molding you.

The reality is far different. The very same difficulty can be thrust on two different people who grew up in the same sort of environment. They might even be blood relatives. Despite these similarities in genetics and environment, one of these people may rise to the challenge while the other may not. The reason is simple. Difficult circumstances are not the main factor in making anyone tough; it’s the person’s choices. Insofar as you rise to some challenge in circumstances, the approach you took and even the lessons you drew were primarily up to you. 

 Toughness is not a passive response to circumstances; it is a proactive choice. And, to a large extent, a tough person doesn’t have to have difficulties imposed for him or her to undertake creative projects that require discipline. For that reason, a child does not need for adults to impose harsh circumstances upon him for him to learn discipline. All he needs is to be encouraged and supported in following through on the goals he set for himself. 

 In 1903, a member of the New Thought movement, James Allen, published a self-help book titled As a Man Thinketh. It emphasized that your well-being as an adult is mostly the result of your own choices. It was too harsh for my taste in saying that if you are poor in the USA, it is your own fault. However, the book also provided some wise words that are most pertinent to this discussion: “Circumstance does not make the man; it reveals him to himself.” 

  As pointed out to me by Maus Merryjest, Epictetus understood this as well. The Stoic philosopher put it, “It is circumstances (difficulties) that show what men are” (Discourses, Bk. 1, Ch. 24, lines 1–2). 

  Also helpful are some ponderings from yet another Stoic philosopher, the emperor Marcus Aurelius: 

 You need never believe that anyone who depends upon happiness [to come from circumstances external to the self] is happy! ...that joy which springs wholly from oneself [one’s own choices] is legal and sound... All things that Fortune looks upon become productive and pleasant only if he who possesses them is in possession also of himself...

 For men make a mistake, my dear Lucius, if they hold that anything good, or evil either, is bestowed upon us by Fortune; it is simply the raw materials of Goods and Ills that she gives to us — the source of things which, in our keeping [choices], will develop into good or ill... ...the upright and honest man corrects the wrongs of Fortune...

On Friday, September 10, 2021, I added the quotation from Epictetus about hard times showing what men are.