Real Wealth

Real Wealth is what remains when the illusions of money are set aside: the actual capacity to sustain and elevate Life.

It has two inexhaustible components. Energy — which by the first law of the Universe cannot be destroyed, only transformed, and which pours onto Earth daily as pure income. And Wisdom, Knowledge, and Information — which do not diminish when shared, and can only increase: every experiment, every lesson, every story adds to the stock forever. Wealth made of these two cannot be spent down; it can only be grown and better circulated.

By this true measure, scarcity is a design choice of the Old World, not a fact of the Universe. The fiat instruments of the old economy are claims and counter-claims — debt denominated in fear — while the Real Wealth of humanity (Our Collective Inheritance joined to the daily income of the Sun) already suffices for every family and community on Earth to flourish. This is the sober arithmetic behind the saying that We Are All Billionaires.

Time-Energy Accounting is how Real Wealth is measured; The Commons is where it is gathered and held; Centers of Distribution are how it circulates; and the New Economy is the system that produces progressively infinite Real Wealth for All — an economy whose bottom line is not profit extracted, but Life elevated.

Discussed in: Time-Energy Accounting · Value · Our Collective Inheritance · 39. The New Economy