True wealth of nations is not discovered in the ground, but created by the ingenuity

His book teaches us an old lesson anew: that the true wealth of nations is not discovered in the ground, but created by the ingenuity and sweat of citizens. It’s the same lesson the Spanish learned centuries ago when they discovered gold, the oil of their time, in the New World. They piled up bullion but squandered it on imperial fantasies and failed to build enduring prosperity, while destroying the civilizations from which they seized it.

Book review of Peter Maass’s slender but powerfully written new book, “Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/27/books/review/Hirsh-t.html

 

All wealth comes from the ground. Food, gold, materials for housing, clothing, ect.

A little ingenuity can make a nation wealthy. Too much ingenuity will destroy a nation. There was alot of ingenuity in those financial deriviatives werent there?


A nation will fall based on what they worry about most. Why did Rome fall? There was a shift in thinking. The citizens of Rome used to worry about politics (much like our founding fathers and the rest of the country did in the 1700s) Then the Romans worried more about entertainment (the gladiator fights at the colossium) Look at America now. All we care about is our TV shows, all our kids care about is their video games.

 

Ash to ash, dust to dust...

 

Almost all the food and energy we use, including fossil fuels, ultimately comes from the sun, even though it is on earth on which they were processed. The uranium that powers the nuclear reactors and the gold which you hold so dear are also the products of the furnaces of the stars.

But that is besides the point. We are more than the sum of our parts. The average human being is worth more than the dollars amount of 110 lbs of water, 50 lbs of carbon and 10 lbs of trace minerals. The productive ingenuity of science and technology and social structure which improves the standard of living is what determines the wealth of nations.

Financial derivatives as practiced since 2000 were not productive ingenuity that improved the lives of the average human being.

 

I wonder if this falls in line with "Geograph is Destiny", a book for econ and predestination.