Wealth

Wealth usually refers to money and property. It is the abundance of objects of value and also the state of having accumulated these objects. The use of the word itself assumes some socially-accepted means of identifying objects, land, or money as "belonging to" someone, i.e. a broadly accepted notion of property and a means of protection of that property that can be invoked with minimal (or, ideally, no) effort and expense on the part of the owner. Concepts of wealth vary among societies.

Wealth in the form of land

Many indigenous cultures reject the notion of land wealth. In western tradition, the concepts of owning land and accumulating wealth in the form of land, are justified according to John Locke. He claimed that because we admix our labour with the land, we thereby deserve the right to control the use of the land and benefit from the product of that land. However, in our post agricultural society this argument has many critics; most of the criticism focuses around the idea that since people did not create land, they have no right of property over it. Still, many older ideas have resurfaced in the modern notions of ecological stewardship, bioregionalism, natural capital, and ecological economics.

Related Topics:
Land - John Locke - Ecological stewardship - Bioregionalism - Natural capital - Ecological economics

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