Paul Graham – How To Make Health

If you want to create wealth, it will help to understand what it is. Wealth is not the same
thing as money. Wealth is as old as human history. Far older, in fact; ants have wealth.
Money is a comparatively recent invention. Wealth is the fundamental thing. Wealth is stuff
we want: food, clothes, houses, cars, gadgets, travel to interesting places, and so on. You
can have wealth without having money. If you had a magic machine that could on command
make you a car or cook you dinner or do your laundry, or do anything else you wanted, you
wouldn't need money.

A surprising number of people retain from childhood the idea that there is a fixed amount of
wealth in the world. There is, in any normal family, a fixed amount of money at any
moment. But that's not the same thing.