This post is about monetary wealth—currency, lucre, coin—as the counters used in finance to signify a store of value that is generally fungible and at least somewhat durable. But herein I am concerned with the nature of wealth not as a material accumulation, but rather as its meaning to individuals in terms of how it influences lives and how wealth alters the human condition.
What does wealth mean to an individual? This changes based upon how much wealth that individual has accumulated, but for most people, who have not and cannot accumulate a significant fraction of available wealth, it means labor. That is, a given individual is obliged to labor for the sake of generating the wealth that individual requires to exchange for the goods and services that are either necessary for the continuation of life or desirable to improve the conditions of one's life. Here I am using the term 'labor' as short for the exchange of one's time and effort at a given task performed for the sake of others which generates a fractional transfer of wealth to the individual performing the task or tasks. This may be employment, self-employment, contract work, trade, etc; for most individuals most of the time, wealth means and requires the exchange of labor to generate that wealth, predominantly through a transfer from some other party or parties.
Technically and fundamentally, labor is voluntary. Over the individual, consciousness reigns supreme and no other can force an individual consciousness to move its body. Within the perceptions of the individual, however, labor becomes absolutely necessary for continued survival—for most people, as some will always be able to subsist upon the labor/wealth of others, whether through voluntary care, theft, parasitical draw, or otherwise. Labor is an ongoing necessity of survival because wealth itself is not an absolute quantity, but rather a thing of relative value that is constantly fluctuating. Wealth is an accounting of available resources, not a resource in or of itself. Furthermore, the individual perceives only that one must accumulate wealth in order to keep living, or to live as one desires. If labor is the only practical means of garnering wealth, and wealth is required for the conditions of ongoing life, and wealth must be constantly exchanged for consumable or otherwise transitory goods, then one must either constantly engage in labor to garner and accumulate wealth or risk the ending of the self or otherwise the diminishing of self will through reliance on charity, etc.
So, practically speaking for individuals who wish to continue to live, and live (relatively) free, labor is not voluntary but required. In terms of societal economy, this is necessary and good—it is required for there to be constant ongoing labor in order to marshal and transform the resources that keep society going and perhaps enable it to flourish. Wealth, however, as the financial medium through which this process takes place, is a distinct thing, which may be accumulated, by some lucky or clever or skilled or diabolical few, and used not as part of an ongoing cycle of constant exchange, but rather as a tool of power over others.
So, for those few who have accumulated vast wealth, in whatever form by whatever means, wealth signifies not constant labor but rather the reverse—it enables the ability to command others to labor for them. This power is indirect, as it must be, considering that the individual consciousness is, or at least has the capacity to be, free, and retains the ability to reject any and all constraints upon itself aside from its own will (or even that, through madness). If the wealthy individual in question cares not who performs labor but rather that the labor be done by someone, though, the expenditure of wealth alone is sufficient to guarantee (usually) the performance of the labor. Consider that most people are required to labor, and that there falls out to be a going rate for a given type of labor. If a wealthy individual offers a higher rate for a given type of labor, then other individuals will jump at the chance to secure such a job, even competing with others of their like to do so. It matters not to them that the fractional increase in pay rate is almost meaningless to their wealthy employer. It matters not to the wealthy employer which individuals perform the labor, so long as the labor is completed to satisfaction. In these cases wealth is no longer a generally beneficial means by which the natural world is transformed into forms of use to ongoing human society, but rather a tool of individual will to place in harness the wills of others—or at least the ongoing works and labors of those others.
Money, in whatever form, due to the necessary properties of what money must be in order to perform the functions of money, has always been subject to accumulation. Is this good? Possibly. Certainly it is the case that it has been necessary, historically, for money to be accumulated in order for progress in societal development to be achieved. A few wealthy individuals are much easier to keep track of and to tax than are the vast mass of human labor underneath of them (financially speaking). Likewise many great works of human civilizations have been accomplished at the overall direction of a wealthy few. It has also been the case that many great evils and atrocities have been committed through the will of a wealthy few. As explained above, the accumulation of wealth becomes a tool of power—power over others, or the harnessing of the power of many to the will of one individual. I submit that power itself is neither good nor evil, but rather it is the manner in which that power is utilized which may then be judged as morally good or not.
What is wealth? From the perspective of a given individual, wealth is either ongoing labor or instead the power to command the labor of others. It is either the subordination of one's will, as extended through one's labors, to the will of another, or instead the extension of one's own will through the harnessing of the wills of others. Wealth, money, is the means by which things get done and by which the activities of people are controlled. It is the direct, and better developed and more efficient, successor to the edicts of kings, or the commands of deity. So be it—until we find something even better developed and more efficient.
Should the accumulation of wealth be restricted? In cases of outright abuse, yes, but more generally, no. Money is not the root of all evil; the root of all evil is the will of individuals who choose to do evil and who can do evil because they have accumulated some sort of power. Accumulated wealth is simply a tool of power—sometimes good, sometimes necessary, and generally at least somewhat self-limiting because of the indirect nature of its hold upon the will of individuals.
Or rather, perhaps there should be reasonable limitations placed upon the concentration of wealth. Power does tend to corrupt the mind of the individual and should never be completely unrestricted. I intend to explore this topic further in subsequent posts, perhaps also placing some consideration on how the structures of some businesses can better reflect societal goals instead of only the wealth generation goals of given individuals.
[Joseph Jones, 19 August 2023]