Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wealth != power But you hit on an important point that wealth cannot accumulate unless consumption is disciplined. Sometimes discipline is self-imposed (e.g. calvinists), other times by the organizing authority (e.g. state, church). In the 2nd type, authority as the source of discipline, there’s debate on the right balance of disciplining the elite classes vs the under classes. This debate will never cease, as long a…
Can you elaborate please?
Wealth has lots of flavors but usually we mean material wealth.
Material wealth is the items and properties that people covet. And people figured out they can store wealth with money and everyone agreed that money is a fair way to store wealth and use it to transfer ownership of the items and properties people covet. (In hindsight maybe not wisest of all decisions but open for debate).
Material wealth is not permanent. It is consumed. By typing on my iPhone, using it daily, it’s degrading, eventually it’ll not be functional and it’ll be harder to get money in exchange for it. Real estate appreciates in monetary value but that’s an effect of the money system not a natural state of things, real estate actually degrades without real work put in to keep it up, consuming value. Food and fuel are easy to see as consumables, one-time use only.
Calvinists are historically frugal, their theology emphasizes thrift and industry, basically the backbone of capital accumulation - create wealth, but don’t consume it, invest the wealth to create more wealth. This is the bedrock of “capitalism” (capitalism in modern and postmodern age has taken a new meaning, but originally it meant ~using capital to create wealth).
China famously imposed (and still does) very strict discipline on consumption, and they used their excess capital to reinvest for industrialization.
Western economies imposed consumption limits in the continental wars, which enabled a huge surplus of wealth in USA following WW2 because the population was used to the discipline.
Churches (Vatican) accumulate treasures by disciplining their flocks to tithe. Churches in the east were looted by the Bolsheviks to finance their revolution, the eastern church had huge reserves of wealth that was consumed by the revolution. Eventually they had trouble balancing their economy and the holodomor took hold in the wheat belt - the wealth was exhausted.
The soviets eventually established absolute control, disciplined their populations and went on a long run of impressive industrialization and growth - but it eventually toppled due to imbalances in production and consumption, people don’t thrive under strictest disciplines, they grew tired and the economy got sick.
Today, the highly developed nations in the west are wrestling with questions of discipline. Wealth inequality its called. There’s an upwelling of popular sentiment that people want to consume more, and it’s hard not to sympathize with that, Id love to live like the elites do. But from my perspective there’s not much consideration to how much consumption is sustainable or desirable.
The key question from my view is what end does material consumption serve?
Is it for pleasure’s sake alone? Or is it to unlock more human talent? Is it converted to unleash other flavors of wealth such as spiritual fulfillment, thriving families, arts, wisdom? How can a material value be placed on these things in balance with real material constraints? More questions than answers, and that’s sort of the crux of the eternal argument.
Obviously things have gone well in the west, most people live lives of extreme wealth compared to their great-grandparents. Some of that has to do with warfare, some with luck, some with thrift and industry. Maybe that’s about to change, or maybe not. I for one am happy to work harder than most to create wealth, I find work fulfilling, but I am also well compensated for my labor and so I consume more than most people too… the balance happens at the micro-level and the macro.