Focused Link: God, Man, and Money, or How to Succeed in Business Without Going to Hell

Michael Novak's quite interesting essay on how to deal with money and not losing faith and morals. An excerpt is shown below.

The link:
http://catholiceducation.org/articles/civilization/cc0182.html

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Barter is undoubtedly the most primitive form of human exchange, and there seems to be something wholesome about it. As long as most people were hunters and gatherers, fishermen and farmers, the goods and services they exchanged seemed "natural" and "basic." Obviously, the subjective factor of a powerful lust for a particular object could lead to an exchange that calmer and more judicious observers would judge as grossly one-sided: the person with the stronger desire might give away goods worth far more than the object of his desire. The native Americans are said to have "sold" all of Manhattan Island to the first European settlers for strings of bright beads; although of course the joke may have been on the Europeans, because Native Americans made no pretense of "owning" anything, and may have felt they got something rare in their world for something overabundant — land — and by nature belonging to all.