March 14, 2012
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What is Wealth?
I suspect I have no proper concept of wealth.
When people talk about wealth, their minds usually fill with images of living in the lap of luxury, tipping well at every fancy dinner, getting the bar tab because they don’t have to care about such trivialities, and so forth.
I, on the other hand, imagine being able to change the world with dollars, something akin to what Bill Gates is supposedly trying to do with his foundation.
So while people rage about the wealthy currently setting the bar at 7.5 million dollars, I actually think that would be kind of low for me personally to feel wealthy – because I would still need much more money in order to make a dent in the kinds of problems that irk me. I doubt I could make it happen unless I had something like $100 million. That’s about the kind of money needed to, say, finance the research, clinical studies, and legal approval of a drug that can’t really make pharmaceutical companies money, and thereby provide relief to all the people currently being screwed by the vagaries of research-for-profit.
It may be incredibly egotistical, but unless I could afford to do things like that, I wouldn’t feel like I had enough money to do whatever I wanted. I guess I primarily care for money as a means for getting organizations to sit up and take notice, and so, money is only really important to me in astronomical quantities. This, of course, statistically guarantees that I will not acquire money in such quantities, as the ones who accumulate it tend to have a very different mindset regarding spending it.
What is wealth, to you?
