Azer VS Mantessa - Money Evil?

As crude oil hit > USD 75/barrel today…

Azer: So what is happening?
Mantessa: Just EXACTLY what it deserves.

Azer: Oh, how cruel! Don’t you believe in the operation of the moral law?
Mantessa: I do but you know money is the root of all evil and people like you are typical product of money.

Azer: Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value.
Mantessa: Money is the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force.

Azer: When you accept money as payment for our effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others.
Mantessa: It is the moochers or the looters who give value to money. The value of money is measured through those pieces of paper not gold. The Arabs are selling their oils to the Americans via these pieces of paper. Why not gold as the ultimate currency? Burn your RM 10.00 now and will you still consider the ashes as RM 10.00?

Azer: Those pieces of paper — your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. 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. Is this what you consider evil?
Mantessa: Money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak, by the intelligent at the expense of the fools, by the able at the expense of the incompetent and by the ambitious at the expense of the lazy.

Azer: To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort.
Mantessa: Money will not purchase happiness. Money will not give a man a code of values. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent.

Azer: Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth — the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir: his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one, would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve the mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?
Mantessa: I feel so sorry that money is your means of survival. The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence.

Azer: Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money?
Mantessa: Are you telling me the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it? I don’t agree with you but I can’t answer you. I don’t have any answers, my mind doesn’t work that way, but I don’t feel that you’re right, so I know that you’re wrong.

Azer: How do you know it?
Mantessa: I feel it. I don’t go by my head, but by my heart. You might be good at logic, but you’re heartless. Now you must excuse me!