The True Value of Wealth: A Thought Experiment on Progress and Innovation
What is the purpose of wealth if not to acquire the finest of what society has to offer? Yet often, what we consider everyday necessities today were once deemed luxuries available only to the mega rich. This paradox leads us to an interesting thought experiment:
You’re offered a choice — immense wealth now, or keeping your average middle-class lifestyle. The allure of affluence is powerful. You choose wealth.
POOF! You’re now one of the richest people in the world. But there’s a catch. In exchange, you’re sent back in time to the year 1523.
The Shock of the Past.
At first, you try to spend your way to comfort and convenience. But you quickly find that much of what you’re accustomed to doesn’t yet exist. Modern plumbing? Electricity? Antibiotics? The internet? Forget about it. You’d trade half your fortune for an aspirin, but even the concept of germ theory and modern medicine won’t exist for centuries.
For all your wealth, you find yourself essentially living like the rest of the 1523 populace. You’re dealing with food spoilage, rampant sickness, poor sanitation, vermin, and drafty stone hovels for homes. You cannot simply buy or will into existence the many wondrous technologies and infrastructure that make modern life secure, convenient, and comfortable.
A Time Traveler’s Lament
As a time traveler stranded centuries in the past, You begin to grasp that the wealth you bargained for is meaningless without the engine of innovation to create things to purchase. In 1523, there is little to buy that meets your 21st century expectations, no matter how much money you possess. Your dreams of a convenient modern lifestyle supported by medicine, electricity, smartphones, and rapid transit slowly melt away, leaving you longing for your familiar world.
Here are some of the many wondrous technologies and discoveries that wouldn’t yet exist for hundreds of years:
- Electric lights — Once considered near-miraculous luxuries, accessible only to the incredibly rich and powerful. Yet today, they illuminate even the most humble homes. You lament not being able to share this marvel, which we take for granted, with the shadowy world of 1523.
- Vaccines — The polio vaccine alone was a modern medical miracle, nearly eradicating a once-feared scourge. Yet even the theory of germs is inconceivable in 1523. Your knowledge that diseases can be prevented through vaccines is an unfathomable fantasy to your contemporaries.
- Airplanes — Devices that allow crossing continents and oceans in mere hours were the stuff of science fiction for millennia. Yet today, air travel is mundane and routine. In 1523, even articulating the concept of human flight could be seen as heresy. You yearn to describe the wonder of air travel to people who would see it as impossible sorcery.
- Telephones — Imagine being able to converse instantly across any distance. This power was once attributed solely to gods. Today, global communication is instantaneous and ubiquitous. But in 1523, the notion would be unimaginable magic. You wish desperately you could reveal this future marvel.
Your anachronistic knowledge is both a blessing and curse. You lament being unable to share future transformations that will revolutionize human life in realms from health to travel to communication. But you know your visions would be dismissed as madness by those limited by the boundaries of their time. Like Cassandra of legend, your prophesies of the future would be ignored or derided. All you can do is patiently await the day when these wonders move from fantasy to reality, signaling humanity’s ever upward ascent.
The Privilege of Progress
This thought experiment illustrates a key point — the purpose of wealth is to acquire access to the finest resources, innovations, and capabilities that human civilization has developed up to that point in history.
But without new frontiers continuously being opened through invention and discovery, wealth cannot fulfill its purpose. Affluence and comfort are only made possible by the legions of inventors, scientists, tinkerers, philosophers, and visionaries who gradually build upon previous discoveries to push the boundaries of what is possible.
A New Wealth Paradigm
Money and possessions can satiate shallow desires, but our true yearning is to have access to total abundance, wrought by modern technologies .
Human focus should not be the pursuit of wealth for its own sake. Rather, we should seek roles that allow us to be on the vanguard of innovation — contributors pushing the boundaries of knowledge and capability.
Scientists and engineers are the true creators of wealth in society. Everyone else is simply along for the ride.
The Next Wave of Progress
At the Seraphina Project, we believe in using AI to upgrade human civilization. We believe it is possible to forge a new society of abundance from scratch wherein the needs of every person on Earth are equally met.
Just as with other inventions mentioned in this essay, AI will revolutionize the way in which wealth is understood forever.
Someday very soon- thanks to AI- it will be possible for humanity to phase out money as a medium of exchange for resources. Instead, “value” shall be pegged to individual human worth.
A time traveler from a post-scarcity world- traveling back to the year 2023- would feel as unaccustomed as someone today being transported 500 years into the past.
Innovation is the true driver of wealth. And at the Seraphina Project, we intend for all people everywhere to enjoy true wealth and abundance- especially in light of AI continuing on its ever increasing trajectory upward.
Get more insightful commentary at the Seraphina Project website.
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*This human curated article was written in collaboration with AI.
