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RE: All Wealth Is Created Out Of Thin Air
Indeed wealth is what we agree is wealth. The dollar is not backed by anything real. It is monopoly money. Some believe it will only be worth wall paper. But today we agree to give it value. Wealth can be made out of thin air if we believe and accept it as wealth. The minute we do not it is worthless. A wonderful story and info. Thanks.
If we accept "wealth is what we agree is wealth" for what it says (as I see it), then a great deal of what we can agree is wealth need not come from thin air.
From my viewpoint (unfortunately, I have no idea how many agree with this approach to wealth), wealth lies predominantly (if not almost entirely) in real assets, including my (and yours) knowledge, experience, state of health and fitness, our crops, animals, etc. It is this wealth that allows societies to resume business quickly after a reset in the monetary system.
All this is IMHO, of course, and I am usually wrong in my assertions! At the same time, I like to tell my family/friends that I feel that I am every bit as wealthy as Bill Gates, and I mean it seriously (except, of course, I do not have the transformation function that allows us convert a measure of my kind of wealth into his, and vice versa). I only know I do not have much respect for his monetary wealth, while recognizing the power that social constructs and institutional arrangements have conferred upon great monetary wealth.
However, one desideratum falls out of this viewpoint: we should start all discussions on this topic by telling g people how we are defining the word "wealth".