Download or read book The Wealth of Humans written by Adam McCusker and published by . This book was released on 2017-01-03 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is wealth? For it is certainly not money - that is only a representation or unit to measure wealth of a certain kind. Adam Smith said wealth is the annual produce of the land and labour of the society. Some kinds of wealth - often the more valued ones - are immeasurable. The word 'wealth' comes from the same route as the word 'health' - the old English word 'weal' meaning well, as in wellbeing, are you well? An economy is tasked with the purpose of fulfilling human needs and genuine desires through utilizing that land and labour of society. Fulfilling the needs and genuine desires of humans is incidentally exactly what ethics is about and Gandhi's economic philosophy saw no distinction between economics and ethics. Money has only existed for 5000 years or so - just a fraction of the time homo sapiens have been around - so we have been practicing economics and ethics pretty successfully and sustainably for the entirety of our evolution. Only during the age of 'civilization' have humans been able to separate economics and ethics. So how can we make sure that humans are properly and ethically served by the economy?I hope to show that: being uncivilized is far better than being civilized; there is no such thing as 'left-wing' and 'right-wing', only missing information; both competition and co-operation are necessary, normal and symbiotic; evil is a product of evolution, just as altruism is; humans are perfectly capable of being as positive a force on the Earth as they are currently negative, including being able to improve nature (not improve on nature); humans are the greatest net producers; left to their own devices, humans will make good and sustainable decisions; economics can never be understood without looking at and engaging with nature (including the nature of humans); the solutions to the world's problems are instinctively understood by everyone; and in fact the problems are the solutions.