That wealth isn't money
Economists will tell you that money has exchange value whilst wealth has use value.
So money is whatever token is accepted for the purposes of trading things whether it be electronic ones and zeroes, paper notes, metal coins or even cigarettes or salt.
However, wealth is defined whenever you can actually use it. For example, a loaf of bread is wealth because you can eat it.
Furthermore, if you have wealth, you can get money but if you only have money, you can't necessarily buy wealth because the money only has value if someone else is prepared to accept it. As someone recently said to me, "Money is a giant confidence trick"
Wealth Has Use Value
If you understand what that means, you have discovered the Philosopher's Stone that Alchemists have searched for centuries to find. Forget lead. You can transform anything, absolutely anything, into gold. It is the Midas Touch. It is literally King Solomon's Mine.
Wealth Has Use Value - so if you find a way of increasing that use value, you increase wealth. A gold nugget has a value - current £852 per ounce. I shape it and declare it to be art. Now it's worth £100,000, £1 million, £10 million, who knows? Where has that extra money come from? I created it by increasing the use value of the gold. I could've done that with anything. Potatoes have a certain use value but if I make vodka, evidently that has a greater use value if you look at the increase in price. Stop and think about that. No matter how little money you have, you always have the capacity to create wealth. How much wealth? Well, if you came up with a cure for cancer, you could write your own cheque. The poorest person in the world can have an idea that increases wealth. That also means wealth is unlimited.
Why Is This So Profound?
Surely, this is trivial because it's all about money? No, it's about the opposite of money. It's about wealth. Money is trivial but wealth is anything but.
Let's look at a common lie:
Richest 62 people as wealthy as half of world's population, says Oxfam
This is just not true. These people don't own 50% of the wealth. They only own 50% of the money. Well that's fine, they can own all the money they want because it has no intrinsic value. But they don't even own 50% of the existing wealth. Sure, they own some of it. And they certainly don't own 50% of all the possible wealth because wealth can increase.
The trouble with this lie is that if you think wealth is money, then you try to solve money problems by using money. But as money is the problem, you're just adding to the problem. That's like trying to bale out water in your lifeboat by pissing in it.
These "rich people" need you to believe this lie so that their worthless money can buy things (remember the confidence trick). As soon as you realise that you have the wealth and they don't, they become powerless.
Money brings slavery but wealth brings freedom. Real freedom. The freedom to choose about things that matter. Things that have real value. You realise that exchanging something of real value like your time for something that has far less value like money is not a good exchange. Then you can see jobs for what they are: intellectual and economic slavery. Wealth means people doing work they enjoy because that is where they produce the greatest value.
Wealth will end world poverty. As more people generate wealth, not only do they increase wealth, but they also show others how to do the same.
Wealth will end wars. Is that possible? If we understand that wealth comes from people (and can only come from people), then where's the sense in killing people to get their wealth? That's as stupid as killing the golden goose to get all of the golden eggs inside it.
Wealth Has Use Value - so the greater the usefulness, the greater the value. That can be greater in number of people who want it or greater in desire of a small group of people who desperately want it. This is the Wealth Exchange Gradient. The worst exchange is your valuable, irreplaceable time for money in a job. An average life is about 30,000 days, so do you really want to swap any of them for the average wage? Is that really the best swap you can manage?
Wealth Has Use Value - so different wealth have different values to different people at different times. A loaf of bread isn't worth much in our modern societies. But if the economy collapsed tomorrow and it suddenly became hard to get food of any type, your bread suddenly increases in value.
Wealth Has Use Value - so the best exchange you can get is to "sell" something you have that has a low use value to you but has a high use value to other people. Crude oil is a classic example. To the Arabs, it was useless but to Western society, it was necessary to drive the economy.
It doesn't matter what "scarce" resource you mention, the story is the same: the Earth's population has more than doubled in the last 50 years and those "scarce" resources haven't become scarcer.
And that even though we tried to make arable land scarcer by building our cities on it which always bemused me - "oh look, only 1% of the Earth's surface can grow crops so let's cover it all with concrete and tarmac". In spite of that, we still produce a glut of food. America has pulled a wad of land out of food production and into bio-fuel production. In spite of that, we still produce a glut of food.
Just look at how much we waste
I disagree with you that it will take a "drastic drain on resources" to elevate the poor to a decent lifestyle. But let's say you're right. As a world, we spend about £1.7 trillion a year on arms and war. Are you really saying that if we stopped killing each other, we wouldn't have the resources to deal with poverty?
Military spending: how much does the military cost each country, listed
Personally, I don't believe that we need to wait for that to happen. We can turn the lives of the poor around by making the rich happier. There's a claim that if all of the world lived like Europe does, it would require two Earths and if all of the world lived like America does, it would require three Earths. I've not seen the calculation so I don't know if it's right. But let's say that it is. Here's the problem: all that conspicuous consumption of resources isn't making the vast majority of Europeans and Americans happy. In fact, they're miserable. But technology is helping. I used to be aghast at the walls of CDs, videos and DVDs people used to own in their personal collections. It seemed such a waste of resources. That's all disappeared now to be replaced by the cloud and MP3 players. Now people don't print out the majority of the photos. They keep them on disk and have displays that rotate them. That's more resources saved that can be diverted to other means. Newspapers are dying thanks to online news providers. That's even more resources saved that can be diverted to other means. Each innovation in wealth has led to the use of less resources which means that they can be placed elsewhere into creating further useful things.
Are these things making us happier? Well, even if they're not, we're being miserable at a much lower rate of consumption.
Ooh look, it doesn't need a drastic drain on resources, it just needs us to use those resources better - which is what wealth is all about.
That notwithstanding, I'm a great believer in greed, selfishness and self-interest. I describe myself as the greediest and most selfish person I know because I want to live a long and happy life in a beautiful world filled with all of the good things life has to offer. I happen to understand that for me to have that, I have to get other people to work with me to get this and then we can all get to share in the results. But that's a damn sight easier than doing all of the work myself or having to fight other people to get a smaller version of it and then having to fight to keep it for the rest of my life - that sounds really tiresome.
wealth , Wealth & Money
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