Wealth

"Gold is the money of kings; silver is the money of gentlemen; barter is the money of peasants; but debt is the money of slaves."

(Norm Franz: Money and Wealth in the New Millenium)^*

Have you ever held it in you handy? Of course, I think physical gold. This is the yellow metal, which is pleasant to touch and also to look. And also nowadays after many millennia, what people know it, it fascinates, attracts and tempts them. They are able to do everything to acquire it, and at the same time they do not sometimes detest even the most terrible thing, which man can do it to another one.

However, there are even other possibilities to exchange – however not with gold, silver or other precious metals. It is money, concretely paper money, but also virtual money of which real value one can maybe doubt.

When Marco Polo showed Venetians paper money, which he had imported from far China, one form the attendees had took one note and had lighted it. Of course, it burned completely. After that this man took out one coin from his pouch and knocked on a hilt of his sword: “This is a sound of money!” Marco said: “You just burned the note valued at ten golden Venetian ducats.”

Is it that real wealth, which is in our wallets as the notes and coins of dubious value? Is it that, what enrich us? Or is it a freely convertible virtual currency in the whole world like credit cards, bank accounts or checks?

These are quite hard questions and probably there is no unique answer. Whether you think about the real world or about virtual one. I always will be an opinion of particular person.

I try to outline, how I see it, and for both worlds.

Real Life

Something to own is thing, which man has maybe encoded in its genes already from the very ancient time. Maybe even the predecessors of contemporary Homo sapiens sapiens (wise man) wanted to own something, what the others did not have and they regarded it as a kind of “their wealth”. Remember the opening sequence of the movie: A Space Odyssey: 2001. Some chief of one troop find a long bone and begin to bang with it on earth. When he finds out its strength, he tries to beat some animal similar to today’s pig a he kills it. Later he uses this weapon against another troop of modern men in a battle for a water source – the wealth – and hi kills chief of this troop. The first murder in a history of humanity comes to the world.

Nowadays the wealth concentrates to collect all sorts of everything, starting with money, properties, things and ending with others. The mammon governs the world. But to be not so skeptical, there are people that are at least indifferent to that. Their wealth is the wealth of an intellect, whether it is the fine art, the architecture art or the music art, gourmet art, art of enjoying the life, art of love and many others. This is the wealth that I respect and I strive to achieve it. But to have money is still always good. Do not you think? The old saying already says it: “Do not enter into the pub without money!”

Second Life

“Just I do not know!” This world has fascinated me for long time. However, I have never thought about some wealth form. As an avatar you collect many things until your inventory already is overflowed. And to find something there it is sometimes quite horror. Nevertheless, you feel the most things as nothing important one.

Everybody knows that. As newbies, you took everything, what was close to you and cost nothing. The reason was evident – no lindens. Later you obtained some lindens, mostly from today non-existent “camping“, or you had to hire for some job (dancer, DJ, companion, escort service, etc.) and in the best case you have rented something or have sold your own creations to other in SL.

For me the SL wealth is something other. Yes, my inventory contains many nice things with excellent design, mainly branded products. There are several things of the personal character there too. I received them form somebody and I never give them away. However, the avatars are the right wealth of Second Life world, actually live being behind them. This is the right social, multidimensional network. This is an attribute, which will never unsew to SL. And in my private opinion, SL is more “social network” than Facebook.

Tedy:

• The wealth is nice, sometime.
  
• The wealth sometime hurts and sometime troubles.
  
• The wealth is a contribution.
  
• The wealth is a burden.
  
• We want the wealth.
  
• We hate the wealth.
  

We pay for everything.

However, we are not able ever to pay off the wealth.

^*Quoted from a presentation of Nick Barisheff, January 6, 2011 at the Empire Club 17th Annual Investment Outlook Luncheon, full text here