First, it’s an obvious matter of justice; justice is sacred, individuals do have an innate sense of justice, and that has an influence on the morale, too: not only criminals do not produce, but even worse criminals and injustice discourage and destroy both production and exchange; every time an out exchange occurs and a product is exchanged for less or for nothing, the producer of the product is punished both by abuse and by lowering morale, instead of being rewarded for his or her contribution to the amount of products available, hence such amount in society is damaged, shrunk and spoilt, while conversely committing out exchange gets rewarded and thus it results in its legitimacy promoted.
Second, it’s a less obvious matter of arithmetic: in a criminal world, for each criminal exchange taking place only one product was produced: that of the honest producer robbed by the criminal; in a fair world, for each fair exchange taking place two products were produced: those of both honest producers; in an ideal world, for each exchange in abundance taking place more than two products were produced: those of both honest producers delivering something more than they receive; the number of exchanges being equal, the differences in the amounts of products existing and available in the society in each case are self−evident. And we have seen how both the level and the potential of survival for all consists in the survival factors produced.

Hence honesty was born. Individuals realized the importance to protect themselves not only as individuals but also as a group, a community, a society. Because the net result of individuals taking without giving is less survival factors for the community as a whole.

Basically dishonesty consists of a questionable advantage for the dishonest individual in exchange for a far greater damage for the group. The advantage is questionable because individuals who steal and stolen products get degraded by the theft, and all the individuals, including the dishonest one, are damaged because they are part of the group and live in it.

Unfortunately, as dishonesty degrades the individual, this takes the form of short−sightedness, too: it has been said that the criminal is stupid, actually, and could not figure out a better way than recurring to crime. This means that the more dishonest and degraded the individual, the less he or she can see this imbalance between his or her ill−gotten gains and the degraded state of the whole, ill−gotten gains included. Indeed, being stupid, short−sighted, he or she can’t see nor conceive of anything else beyond grabbing the loot and to hell with all the rest; and when such an individual thinks, if at all, the philosophy resulting from dishonesty, degradation and irresponsibility is mere justification: Who cares, I’ll be dead long before the long term effects of my misdeeds will hit. Which makes such individuals more likely potential supporters of materialism than of any form of dualism between spirit and matter, by the way: if they could choose, they’d rather not run any risk of being presented the bill in any form.

The border between Economy and Finance could be said to be that: in Economy what one earns is in exchange for a product of comparable value delivered to someone else; in Finance what one speculates is in exchange for a loss of comparable, if not much higher, value suffered by someone else. Economy is founded on production and delivery, finance is founded on deception and theft. It is the difference between intelligence and cunning, or between honesty and dishonesty.

Any form of speculation is criminal “exchange”, and nothing else. One exploits or causes the fact that relative values change in space and time, and pockets what someone else loses, without producing and delivering anything in exchange. Any speculation is suppressive, and it suppresses people in many a way simultaneously, which may not be immediately apparent: indeed there is the sheer robbery in itself; but behind it there is the additional damage to honest people due to the interference of speculation in the vital flows of exchange among people; and behind that interference looms the fallout of the counter−educational influence of the spreading of speculation, out exchange and dishonesty as normal or even positive.

For instance, it has been acutely observed how part of this counter−educational influence is that a danger inherent in money in finance is even elevated to the rank of certainty, being indeed the very substance of finance itself: “It substitutes for the natural inalienable right of the worker to the produce of his toil a vague generalised claim upon the totality of the fruits of the community’s efforts – a highly indefinite quantity, which opens the door to every kind of abuse. On the moral side, it divorces the conception of wealth from the dignity of labour”.

Some say that speculation is gambling. So, let alone that usually it is played with marked cards, for the sake of completeness let’s say that when speculation further degenerates in gambling, real or fake, the only difference is that randomness replaces cunning, while probably deception does not change much. But what really counts does not change at all: what one earns is what someone else loses.

Labour, production, fair exchange: survival. Deception, speculation, out exchange: suppression. We will delve ahead into how this is decidedly the case with that specialised form of all this that has been labelled moneypulation.

Back to pre−monetary basics, one began to realize that one is not just “self”, nor one merely “has” a group; one “is” one’s group, community, society as much as one is self. A key shift in one’s point of view: others are not separate from self any more, but become part of self.

Ethics is aligning efforts to a purpose, thus it is always associated to the purpose it serves. And its purpose progressively evolved from the benefit of self to the benefit of all.

And the development of ethics is gradual; it’s as if each individual drew a circle around self, a sort of border of one’s ethics, and then cared for what’s within that border, and cared not for what’s outside of it. As if one wore spectacles that limited one’s sight to a given distance only. Some include in this circle only self, some their family only, while some include their whole community, mankind, the world at large. Some widen their circles with time, some don’t, some take them in.

We may call the size of the circle the ethics level of the individual. And the hard fact is that the society and the world simply cannot afford individuals with an insufficient ethics level: a society and a world will be there only as long as there are enough individuals with their circles wide enough. Particularly now that we have the means to wipe out ourselves and the world as well.

First, philosophy sparks, shapes, puts together the questions; then philosophy itself and common sense, religion, psychotherapy, management and basically every human endeavour propose answers and/or methods implicitly or explicitly based on proposed answers. In the final analysis, the common denominator of all the sane, sensible, constructive, useful ones among these answers and endeavours, the basic of basics, the point on which all well−meaning people can agree whatever other disagreement they may have, is the awfully simple but precise, exact and all−embracing definition above: greatest good for all, longest and highest level of existence for everyone and everything – nothing and no one excluded. Less all−embracing definitions where only some ought to survive, and at the expense of others, are just incomplete, stupid, short−sighted, ill−intentioned or worse, because they are doomed to fall short of the final objective of survival and end up rather closer to its opposite.