> I'm going to make a broad generalization and say that the people
> participating (and reading) in this mailing list are fairly intelligent
> people -- and this gives us the ability to produce the results we want to
> achieve (another good definition of wealth?).
> Literally, our knowledge has made us wealthy.
First of all, I enjoy seeing what Ben is saying, and the following is not
a personal response!
Sometimes when seeing either the difficulty of laborer's work or the
abstruse travels I've made to accomplish something for free, I wonder if
all of the wealthy or even most of the wealthy have gotten their wealth
through superior knowledge. Have they worked so arduously to gain their
advantage? The CEO of Sun said that he's not sure that he or Bill Gates
could be as successful if they had to start over. Solomon says (in
Ecclesiastes) that a certain wise man saved a city during a seige through
his wisdom and after the seige was forgotten.
On the other hand, I know almost nothing of the effort required to keep
wealth. That effort may be as great as the effort to discover solutions to
problems.
It doesn't seem to me that either the smarter one is or the more benefit
one brings results in greater wealth or that wealth shows that the wealthy
have either of those two attributes. That does not mean that they DO NOT!
One can reach wealth through the determination to do so and through the
choice to put wealth above other options.
What we have is different people gifted in different ways, and some of
those ways are received into monetary riches, and some may even cause the
bearer to be rejected, though Solomon also says that a person's gift makes
room for him!
Have a nice day
John Paul Fullerton
jpf@myriad.net
--"John Paul Fullerton" <jpf@mail.myriad.net>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>