Paul Graham on How to Make Wealth is a very thought provoking essay on why you should “Startup”. A part of the essay was about how, “Money is not Wealth”.
If you want to create wealth, it will help to understand what it is. Wealth is not the same thing as money. Wealth is as old as human history. Far older, in fact; ants have wealth. Money is a comparatively recent invention.
Wealth is the fundamental thing. 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.
Wealth is what you want, not money. But if wealth is the important thing, why does everyone talk about making money? It is a kind of shorthand: money is a way of moving wealth, and in practice they are usually interchangeable. But they are not the same thing, and unless you plan to get rich by counterfeiting, talking about making money can make it harder to understand how to make money.
It is important to understand the difference. And if your money is not working (read, invested properly) or you are spending more money than what you earn (remember credit cards?), having a lot of money is of no value.
You can be wealthy without having a lot of money. And conversely, a lot of money doesn’t automatically makes you wealthy!
What do you think?
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