That^ might be the conventional definition of wealth, but if it is, it's not a very useful one. PG's definition is much better[1]: >> Wealth is stuff we want:

That^ might be the conventional definition of wealth, but if it is, it's not a very useful one. PG's definition is much better[1]: >> Wealth is stuff we want: food, clothes, houses, cars, gadgets, travel to interesting places, and so on. You can have wealth without having money. If you had a magic machine that could on command make you a car or cook you dinner or do your laundry, or do anything else you wanted, you wouldn't need money. Whereas if you were in the middle of Antarctica, where there is nothing to buy, it wouldn't matter how much money you had. It matters because this kind of wealth (as defined by PG) is also created and destroyed all the time, in a very different way, and this is really important. Suppose you grow a big surplus of turnips one year. The turnips represent genuine wealth - they can feed someone for a year (let's say). Now you have a choice: you can give them to someone in exchange for their labor and have them improve your land, build you a road for getting your turnips to the market etc. Or you can give them to someone to play the fiddle and tell jokes for you while you eat turnips every day. In the first case, the wealth represented by the turnips is preserved, and with a bit of care (and luck) the return is even a little better than what you started with. In the second case, the wealth is gone - really gone! You have nothing to show for it, and you're back to square one. IME this is the fundamental thing that a lot of people don't get about wealth. We have an enormous store of wealth bequeathed to us by the sacrifices of previous generations, and we absolutely have the power to destroy it permanently if we're not careful with it. [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html