Wealth is Intangible

You are surrounded by your past. All the tangible items and assets represent the earlier achievements. The same applies to your monetary wealth as well—it is only storage of your previous efforts and endeavours. The past is not the future; you need to create something new in between.

Basically everything goes through a cycle of creation, sustenance, and decay. It does not really matter whether we talk about knowledge, skills, physical goods, or even our thoughts. The only constant is change. It stays and forces everything else into movement. Effort is required to keep up with the changes in the world around us.

Tangible things are relatively easy to produce—if you only know how. And this is exactly the point. We need ideas, innovations, experience, knowledge, and the right skills to get something done. A beautiful house/car or any other physical good or product does not last forever. They need either be replaced or maintained. This information is always within people. Persons make everything happen.

Diversity and specialisation are the means that enable our society to have a wide variety of different tangible items and products available to us. There needs to be people who have the required skill set and the production tools to create the items. They do not come out of nowhere—they represent the existing expertise and knowledge.

We often take services and products as granted, and can only start to appreciate them when they have first demonstrated their non-functional nature. If your bathroom pipe is leaking then suddenly a plumber is a very valuable person for you. Actually your life becomes pretty unbearable without the necessary reparation skills!

The richness is not in the goods and things around you. They are only the presentation of the wealth in the society. The future success needs to be earned every day. No money can buy you food if you are in an isolated island. Similarly the wealth of any society can be measured only by the richness and the variety of experience, knowledge, and interaction among its members. Specialisation is only available when there are enough goods and services available to take care of the more general needs of the members of the society. If you need to grow your own food and prepare it as well there is less time available for other activities. In a similar manner any specialist is dependent on the work and expertise of the other people in the production chain. We all need each other. If you are not contributing or loving what you’re doing everybody is worst off. Do you see how personal freedom is very closely linked to the well-being and the wealth of the society?

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