To explore what wealth is I recommend The Origin Of Wealth by Eric D. Beinhocker. In essence, wealth is a process that creates low entropy. He posits three co

To explore what wealth is I recommend The Origin Of Wealth by Eric D. Beinhocker. In essence, wealth is a process that creates low entropy. He posits three conditions that need to be met: All value creating economic transformations and transactions 1) Irreversibility - are thermodynamically irreversible 2) Entropy - reduce entropy locally while increasing it globally 3) Fitness - need to be fit for human purposes. On my recent trip, I saw mountains being broken and shipped off to distant places for construction. If it goes on, within a few decades they will cease to exist. The last one tells us that we can define what wealth means - to some the mountains and the ecosystem they harbour are wealth, to some the buildings and the resulting economic activity is wealth.