Why is wealth important?
> Rol Fessenden asked "Does this mean that Capitalism is no longer
operating?
This conversation on wealth and capitalism has evoked in me to reflect on
the relationship between money, wealth, capitalism, and the good life. My
first observation is that most of us tend to mix distinctions like money
and wealth, and also to collapse different domains into one, often causing
confusion and conflict. An approach that I recommend is to re-examine the
distinctions one is working with to get some more clarity on its meaning,
and the other is to seperate the domains so that one can also gain clarity
on each domain.
There are three thinkers that have helped me to gain more clarity on these
distinctions and domains. Aristotle on money and wealth : "wealth is not
desireable for its own sake, but only as a means to living well". " Some
goods are limited goods, some are unlimited goods (knowledge,skills, and
pleasures of the mind are unlimited goods)". Some critics of capitalism,
claim that capitalism aims at wealth for its owm sake, thus it has its owm
nature and logic. And that in its current form it thrives on making the
limited goods(cars,vcrs to name some) the desireable goods, as opposed to
knowledge, the mind/unlimited goods.
Thus money becomes a key factor to have the limited goods that one thinks
may lead to a good life.
Erich Fromm in his books, "To Be or to Have" and "The Sane Society" did a
diagnosis of what it means for human beings to live in a capitalist
society, and the effects and price we pay for it. Most recently, and I am
still reading it , Lester Thurow's book "The Future of Capitalism" raises
similar concerns as Aristotle and Fromm, except this time the power of
Capitalism is global, thus its impact positive and negative are global in
magnitude.
The key point for me is one's ability to distinguish between money and
wealth and to be able to use both to design a good life and a good
society.
Manuel Manga
Organization Design Consultant
<0007015296@mcimail.com>
--Manuel Manga <0007015296@mcimail.com>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>