Charles Hugh Smith – What is real wealth? Money, right? Currency, gold, quatloos, you name it. Money is real wealth because you can use it to buy whatever you want.

I would argue money in any form is only the means to acquire real wealth, which is the agency, opportunity and time to pursue your life’s work.

The conventional view of wealth is money and leisure has it all wrong. Let’s imagine the owner of a vault of conventional treasure: jewels, gold coins, etc.

If the “wealth” stays in the vault, what’s the point of owning this “wealth”? The secret satisfaction of being “wealthy”?

If “wealth” is only an internal state, then let’s measure friendship and being needed/wanted as the metrics of “wealth.” You see the point; if “wealth” is merely an internal state of satisfaction, then a vault full of “money” is a poor metric.

What money buys that is real wealth is freedom and control of one’s life. This control over one’s life is called agency. Agency is defined as “the capacity of an actor to act in a given environment.” This may not seem like a profound concept, but another way to describe agency is that agency is the opposite of powerlessness. Continue reading →