It’s genuinely paradoxical what you see when you look at how the current economic system works behind all that glittery pomp and circumstance surrounding it.
Wealth is generated and hoarded, and the hoarders of that wealth consider themselves wealthier as they hoard more. This is seen as a good thing. It’s seen as something that increases the comfort and power of those who hoard that wealth. It’s even advocated as being something that is good for society. So, those who hoard wealth do everything to hoard more wealth as they push the economy to generate even more wealth to be hoarded.
But if you take just one look behind all the glitter, you see that hoarding wealth does the exact opposite of what it is supposed to do - the more it’s hoarded, the less it makes itself.
Wealth Is Only Worth What It Can Do In Your Own Reality
What’s the difference between being the richest person on the planet who owns entire continents’ worth of wealth back in 1000 AD and having only a fraction of that wealth today in the 21st century?
For all intents and purposes, the current economic paradigm would tell you the former is much better - you own a much bigger percentage of the wealth available on the planet. And percentage-wise, it would seem so - owning ~80% of all the wealth that exists would surely be much better than owning 0.0001% of that wealth mathematically.
Except…
If you were rich back in 1000 AD, what you would do with that wealth would be limited by the technology, the economy, and the social development of your time. The reality of the time would be stomping down on the supposed importance of your wealth like it was nothing.
No running water. Dysentery. Cholera. Contaminated food. Early death. Accidents and disabilities. Travel by foot or horse. A short life, followed by a probably agonizing old age and brutal death.
All that you could do with your wealth would be to maybe buy some imported colorful and expensive silk clothing, have somewhat fancier furniture, and be able to put some spice on your food. You sure would live much better than almost everyone else, but that’s it.
None of the ordinary comforts that you can have today. Medicine. Climatized housing. Air travel. Increasing lifespan. Better quality of life for all ages.
Things like the Internet, computers, and all electronic devices would be things that you wouldn’t see even in your dreams. Even if you saw any of them, you wouldn’t be able to understand anything anyway because your imagination would be so limited by the understanding of your time that you wouldn’t be able to interpret what you saw.
But today, all of these things are ordinary realities of life. Things that even the biggest emperors could not even imagine back in their time.
So much less wealth today is worth much more than all the wealth on the planet back in 1000 AD.
How Did This Happen?
The social, technological, and scientific development that shaped our modern world made it starkly more advanced than the world of 1000 AD.
And for that to happen, an immense amount of investment and effort went into all those facets of the civilization in order to push them forward from the primitive paradigm of 1000 AD to where they are today.
Ironically, those who hoarded wealth back in 1000 AD and earlier times did not invest that wealth back into the economy to make that progress happen.
Many revolutions and social changes took that wealth from those who hoarded it and put it into investments in society, or they forced the hoarders to invest that wealth.
As a result, society progressed, everything changed, and today we live in a world that could not even be imagined back then. Even the middling poor today are able to enjoy comforts that were unavailable even a few centuries ago thanks to the technological progress that was made through the revolutions that forced the hoarded wealth back into the economy.
Only by not being able to hoard that much wealth, the ultra-rich themselves too were able to obtain amenities, comforts, and luxuries that were unimaginable back throughout history.
So paradoxically, by hoarding the wealth they had, the ultra-rich of those times were crippling themselves by preventing that wealth from pushing society forward and creating more things that wealth could be used to acquire.
It’s Still The Same - Hoarding Wealth Today Cripples The Progress Toward Better Tomorrow
It works the same way it worked back in 1000 AD - keeping wealth hoarded and not investing significant amounts of it back into the economy and the society cripples the progress of civilization and sabotages the hoarders themselves.
The wealth that is not used to push the economy forward is just imaginary value that loses its own value due to the inflation that comes with the economy creating fewer products and services than it could create if that wealth was reinvested.
If it was considerably reinvested into the economy, it would not only immediately increase the number of goods and services produced in the economy and therefore increase the actual purchasing power of the wealth that was kept, but also it would push civilization further and make happen products, services, and technologies that are not available today.
Think longer lifespans. Better health. Robots. Flying cars. Free energy. Space travel. Anything you can imagine.
The more wealth is hoarded, the more it delays the development of such things.
Therefore Wealth Must Be Significantly Reinvested
By reinvesting wealth, those who hoard wealth can realize more actual value for the uninvested portion of their wealth and push society forward at the same time.
They liberate their wealth from being an imaginary statistic that could cause immense inflation if it is spent in significant quantity and make it something tangible that allows them to get actual value for what they spend.
Nobody can be worse off by living longer with better health. Nobody can be worse off by being more comfortable. Nobody can be worse off by being able to do more instead of less.
Hoarding wealth only appeases one’s transient perception of self-worth. It does not bring any tangible, practical value to the hoarder. Only when it is used, wealth becomes meaningful. When it’s hoarded, it’s only an imaginary value that speaks of ‘things that could be’.
Therefore, for the benefit of both its hoarders and society, wealth must be invested in the economy and society in large percentages to create new technologies, actual goods, and services. If the hoarders do not realize the importance of reinvesting, they must be made to reinvest the hoarded wealth through laws, regulations, and any other means possible.