[FRIAM] What is Wealth for? — Defining Wealth

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Whether that viz worked would depend on the sorting. The types on the X axis could be shuffled arbitrarily, maybe helping with the Y,Z dimensional axes. But if you can't do the {Y,Z} ordering well, then it'll be a mess. Adding time/animation might help, though. As with SteveS' high node graphs, "flying through" might be enough to extract some intuition from it.

But the more interesting aspect of your proposal is that I'd prefer not to measure *assets* so much as *access*. It doesn't much matter to me if I own, say, toilets or books. What matters is whether or not I have access to them. We've talked a lot about linear logic and resource consumption. But this would be a mixed language, where some resources like food are consumed and are, if not zero-sum, limited in the extent to which they can be [re][distributed|used]. And that's where, when considering private property and ownership, the emphasis moves from ownership to *privacy*. It really doesn't matter if, say, some rich guy owns a museum, as long as the rich guy (and his descendants) allow public access to it ... like Bezos and the Washington Post.

The trouble is how to quantify access?

On 3/17/21 9:11 AM, Prof David West wrote:
> I really suck at visualization (and math and ... ) but
> 
> A graph:
> Horizontal axis a set of labelled points for different types of "assets" ranging from basic needs (food, shelter) to semi-abstract (energy, love) to abstract (cash on hand or cash flow, stocks). Start with something like Maslow's hierarchy and flesh it out to include a point for everything we might think belongs on the line. Don't forget books! Whatever is put on the line must be quantifiable, directly or indirectly.
> 
> Vertical axis marks a set of bands: nearest to zero is "dangerously inadequate," then, in order, "inadequate," "adequate," "comfortable," "surplus," "excess," "toxic excess;" or some such. We can have fun deciding how to define/measure these things for each line on the horizontal access. Toxic money might be defined by differential from average, or sole purpose is control of others.
> 
> The 2D graph could be used to measure a single individual's profile.
> 
> Add an orthogonal dimension and mark it with population percentiles. The vertical measure would then be some kind of average, mean, median.
> 
> Now you have a surface that shows the state of the population for whatever segment of the world (entire, region, country, state, ...) the graph was chosen to focus on.
> 
> Somehow, I feel that such a visualization would be useful as a reference point for this thread???

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