Quest for Real Wealth
By Dr Arvind Kumar
David Korten, a noted author, tells us about two kinds of waelth – real living wealth and phantom financial wealth. Real wealth entails intrinsic value which includes fertile land, healthful food, knowledge, productive labor, pure water and clean air, labor, and physical infrastructure. The most important forms of real wealth are beyond price and are unavailable for market purchase. These include healthy, happy children, loving families, caring communities, a beautiful, healthy, natural environment. Korten further avers that real wealth also includes all the many things of intrinsic artistic, spiritual, or utilitarian value essential to maintaining the various forms of living wealth. These may or may not have a market price. The phantom wealth or money is devoid of intrinsic value. The market generates money in astonishing quantities through accounting tricks, financial bubbles, and debt pyramids. It appears from nowhere and can disappear in an instant, as a phantom in the night.
Korten laments that those engaged in creating phantom wealth collect handsome “performance” fees for their services and walk away with their gains. When the bubble bursts, borrowers default on debts they cannot pay and the bubbles and debt pyramid collapse in a cascade of bankruptcies. The market makes no distinction between the money acquired through means that enrich society, those created by means that impoverish society. It is in this context that ancient Indian wisdom emphasizes on creating real wealth which is lasting, durable and source of real happiness. We should strive for generating real wealth to make Palnet Earth a paradise.
