Re:My own private basic income
by z1mm32m4n on Wednesday June 28, 2017 @04:06PM
(#14657776)
This echoes a lot of the same sentiments that Paul Graham puts forth in his essay "How to Make Wealth"[1].
Basically, the claim is "money is not wealth" (or as put above, money is not value). Money is a tool, used for three things:
1. making it easy to trade if you can't barter (i.e., be a medium of exchange)
2. store wealth (i.e., store value)
3. measure wealth (i.e., be a unit of account)
Wealth on the other hand deals with actually making the economy better off. Creating a startup that makes widgets faster and cheaper then ships them out over the interwebs moves the needle forward. Both of these scenarios create wealth.
I think there's still an argument to be made over the apparent inequality between how much work is required to create a certain amount of wealth. And certainly, owning wealth while doing no work is another story entirely.
Basically, the claim is "money is not wealth" (or as put above, money is not value). Money is a tool, used for three things:
1. making it easy to trade if you can't barter (i.e., be a medium of exchange) 2. store wealth (i.e., store value) 3. measure wealth (i.e., be a unit of account)
Wealth on the other hand deals with actually making the economy better off. Creating a startup that makes widgets faster and cheaper then ships them out over the interwebs moves the needle forward. Both of these scenarios create wealth.
I think there's still an argument to be made over the apparent inequality between how much work is required to create a certain amount of wealth. And certainly, owning wealth while doing no work is another story entirely.
[1] http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html