The changing meaning of wealth

What is perhaps the most abundant resource in human history comes to us in the sparsest possible form. I am referring to the Google search bar, that doorway to virtually all knowledge that exists in the world. An empty box, a doodle, and a few words. It reveals nothing about everything that lies behind it. The massive colonies of servers that make this possible are invisible, as are the complex algorithms that power our search. Its enormous wealth is not for display. What matters is not what it has, but what we need, when we need it.

Our existing mental model of abundance is very different. The wealthy look rich, and behave accordingly. The learned carry the burden of their erudition in some form or the other. Our clothes our station in life, the vocabulary we use advertises what we know. Possessing any form of wealth marks us, changes us. Google’s abundance is naked, stripped bare of any pretentions. And it comes to us regardless of the silliness or weightiness of the question that it is asked. Airbnb, Oyo and Uber also own nothing, but they are the source of an enormous sense of plenty.

If we could have anything we wanted, whenever we wanted it, of what value would wealth be? Why own 15 cars, or 3 houses, or wardrobes full of clothes, if we could get any of those as soon as we desired them. After all, at any point in time, we can wear only one set of clothes, live in one house, however lavish, and eat one meal. As this column had argued previously, the idea of stocking things, of hoarding objects of all kinds simply because we can afford to, makes increasingly little sense in a world where every desire is within a heartbeat of being fulfilled. Viewed from this vantage point, the very idea of surplus, so essential to the economics of our time, becomes redundant.

And this not a new idea. In a hunting-gathering society, where the idea of storage was absent and there was no need to own things, what constituted wealth? One hunted for what one needed, when one needed it. The need for storage came when that flexibility was sacrificed, and settlements came into being. The animating motivation for storage was the fear of scarcity, of not having enough when one needed it.

Today, that fundamental need is gradually disappearing. The digital layer has embraced the world in its fluid grasp, and made the smoothing of gaps between need and its fulfilment much easier. One need not be occupied with the idea of accumulating objects, but can focus more on moving between experiences. The idea of abundance is becoming more horizontal. To toggle between identities, to accumulate a variety of experiences is what excites emerging generations. Simply having more of the same becomes pointless when the option is so much more exciting.

To put it another way, who is the wealthiest Netflix or Amazon Prime viewer? Is it the person who watches the most content? The latest? The most diverse? The most experimental? Whom would you envy the most? Or is the question itself not meaningful? The idea of owning the best collection of films or music is rendered meaningless in a world where all of us have access to everything, all for the price of subscription. Google makes all of us equally wealthy, regardless of what we use it for. Wealth is a construct that has meaning in its current sense because it resides in a world where more for me almost always means less for you. If that operating condition changes, what happens? The envy that wealth evokes becomes largely irrelevant.

If one could have whatever one imagined, then the meaning of wealth would become synonymous with that of imagination. Those that imagine more, leap beyond the confines of the current, are the ones that will evoke envy. All of us have access to a canvas and boxes of paint, but there is only one Picasso. The idea of accumulation had to do with building one’s inventory of options, so that one could exercise any should one feel like it. Increasingly, the options are a given, it is what we choose to do with them that becomes material. Consumption itself becomes a much more refined form of self-expression. In the future, consumption could become paper thin, just enough to cover all that we desire, but very rich nevertheless. In fact, the word ‘consumption’ with its rapacious associations may start looking crudely primitive in a world where everything we do is potentially an exquisitely crafted statement about who we wish to be.

The lop-sidedness of our current world is a function of the power of wealth and the inequalities it brings in its wake. A few have far too much and the rest too little. If the idea of ownership became less meaningful, then theoretically it would become easier for everyone to have access to what they really require. The disproportionate consumption by a small group of people could perhaps give way to a more democratic spread of markets.

But it isn’t that simple. Ownership has other rewards. It serves to draw distinctions between one set of people an another, and that need is not going to disappear. Also, capital is different from wealth. Capital is needed for imagination, and without that form of aggregation, the impetus for the new is difficult to generate. Power is what money really buys, and that cannot be streamed. The form that wealth could change but the social function that it serves is too entrenched for it to get dismantled easily.

A profound shift is under way. New concepts and new meanings for old ideas that radically reshape our existing mental models are emerging. It is not entirely clear as to what implications these hold for us, but it certainly is a time when we should ask big, fundamental questions and speculate about new possibilities.