The core concept of wealth is “the ability to motivate many humans to satisfy your demands”. In non-monetary societies, kings and tribal elders were wealthy, because they can order others to do their bidding. In modern fungible-money economies, the wealthy are those who can control enough of the economy to be able to direct many people in their activities. This includes both production activities (which presumably generate MORE money for the wealthy, in addition to generating some for the followers) and consumption activities (which are a net drain on the wealthy, but still generate income for the followers).
That sounds like a type of power to me. I remember learning in college that, at least in the social sciences, power is about influence. You can influence people in various ways: the pen, the sword, the threat of the sword, etc. But influencing people to satisfy your demands is just one of many ways you can influence them. Same with influencing many people vs one.
Agreed. Wealth is one type of power. Or maybe some types of power are wealth.
In fact, both wealth and power are pretty vague, or at least context-dependent words. They’re not a precise description of anything, and probably should be avoided if you want to actually communicate. Like so many of these discussions, don’t try to narrow down a definition of a common term that’s difficult, instead just use more words to describe what you want to describe.
In fact, both wealth and power are pretty vague, or at least context-dependent words. They’re not a precise description of anything, and probably should be avoided if you want to actually communicate.
Yeah I think that’s my takeaway here. Going into this I figured that there was in fact some sort of decently narrow definition of “wealth” that I wasn’t understanding but now I’m pretty confident that there isn’t.
The core concept of wealth is “the ability to motivate many humans to satisfy your demands”. In non-monetary societies, kings and tribal elders were wealthy, because they can order others to do their bidding. In modern fungible-money economies, the wealthy are those who can control enough of the economy to be able to direct many people in their activities. This includes both production activities (which presumably generate MORE money for the wealthy, in addition to generating some for the followers) and consumption activities (which are a net drain on the wealthy, but still generate income for the followers).
That sounds like a type of power to me. I remember learning in college that, at least in the social sciences, power is about influence. You can influence people in various ways: the pen, the sword, the threat of the sword, etc. But influencing people to satisfy your demands is just one of many ways you can influence them. Same with influencing many people vs one.
Agreed. Wealth is one type of power. Or maybe some types of power are wealth.
In fact, both wealth and power are pretty vague, or at least context-dependent words. They’re not a precise description of anything, and probably should be avoided if you want to actually communicate. Like so many of these discussions, don’t try to narrow down a definition of a common term that’s difficult, instead just use more words to describe what you want to describe.
Yeah I think that’s my takeaway here. Going into this I figured that there was in fact some sort of decently narrow definition of “wealth” that I wasn’t understanding but now I’m pretty confident that there isn’t.