New Wealth

by mikekarnj on May 11, 2009

I’ve been thinking about the differences between old wealth and new wealth lately.

According to Wikipedia, “wealth is an abundance of valuable material possessions or resources.  ‘Wealth’ refers to some accumulation of resources, whether abundant or not. ‘Richness’ refers to an abundance of such resources. A wealthy (or rich) individual, community, or nation thus has more resources than a poor one. Richness can also refer to at least basic needs being met with abundance widely shared.”

So, in the old economy, wealth was determined by how much money you have, your family name, your school, etc.  Most of the things you’ve seen in high society or the upper class.  The problem with this definition of wealth is that it’s purely destructive. When a person is motivated by the pursuit of profit, he or she will start making decisions outside the normal realm of morals and ethics.

If you’ve seen the film, The Corporation, they reveal that “a disturbing diagnosis is delivered: the institutional embodiment of laissez-faire capitalism fully meets the diagnostic criteria of a psychopath.“  Symptoms include the “callous disregard for the feelings of other people, the incapacity to maintain human relationships, reckless disregard for the safety of others, deceitfulness (continual lying to deceive for profit), the incapacity to experience guilt, and the failure to conform to social norms and respect for the law.”  Pretty scary huh?  Enron, Worldcom, sweatshops, and Madoff are great examples of this psychopath behavior and the consequences that result from it.

What I’ve noticed is this notion and concept of “new wealth.”  Within our generation, it doesn’t matter how much money you make or how “wealthy” you are through monetary means.  With the collapse of the financial system (from psychopathic investment bankers) to the numerous corporations filing for bankruptcy, we’ve seen what “business and wealth” will cause individuals to do.

The currency around “new wealth” revolves around your creativity, innovation, cross-displinary networks, and what you’ve actually done to make this world a better place. These are the people that are “rich” in my books.  Not the investment bankers on wall street leveraging more buyouts with inflated money that doesn’t actually exist to make an extra buck.

As we move into this conceptual age, the new currency should revolve around creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship, and not on making billions at the expense of others.  I’m just glad that the majority of investment bankers have finally moved out of Manhattan because the “wealthy” creative folks are finally moving back in.

  • http://theperipheries.blogspot.com nien

    http://issuu.com/ddbcomyp/docs/ddb_yp_health_april09/4 wait a minute, DDB says health is the new wealth, im so confused.

    kidding aside, i think it’s interesting. and i think in general it’s true. it’s a manifestation of the “nerdy/smart” people are cool trend from a while ago.

  • http://www.mikekarnj.com mikekarnj

    HA. Health is the new wealth.

    Hmmmm, there a lot of nerdy and smart people that wouldn’t fit into the concept of new wealth. And there are a lot of really rich people that still fit into the concept of new wealth.

    I think it comes down to people doing things that matter, and adding value to the world i.e. innovative and disruptive ideas, models, and businesses.

    I’m going to be in SF next week. Drinks?

  • http://dennisdemori.com/ Dennis Demori

    Hey Mike,

    This is a timely post, and I think you’re touching on something very important as recent world events are forcing many people to redefine the personal meaning of things such as success, wealth and happiness.

    One of my favorite movies is Wall Street, and in the last scene as Carl Fox is driving his son, disgraced stockbroker Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) to the courthouse he says something that I think really embodies the theme of your post:

    “Stop going for the easy buck and start producing something with your life. Create, instead of living off the buying and selling of others. ”

    That movie came out over 20 years ago. It’s too bad more people didn’t listen.

  • http://blog.mikekarnj.com/?p=441 By/Association | Michael Karnjanaprakorn

    [...] Isolation“, “Social Origin of Good Ideas“, and another around “New Wealth“.  I started to read a lot of articles around these topics including “Sleeping by [...]