What is the Source of Wealth?

When you analyze the great fortunes, whether on a macro or micro scale, it seems clear that wealth has three potential sources:

• Fraud and Theft of Capital and/or other Resources
  

Those with criminal mindsets simply steal resources and money thru exploitation and warfare. I'd hazard to guess that behind all great fortunes, whether of countries or individuals, lies some great robbery.

Throughout history warfare/exploitation played a primary role (especially for European countries in the not so distant past), since capital resources were scarce. In modern times, where paper money,which can be printed with abandon, is the primary source of capital, basic theft, without warfare, is more common. Theft by government and from the government (e.g. Healthcare in the US) is the primary means of capital robbery.

• Luck and Gambling in the Financial Casino
  

Since modern capitalism is basically a casino, with paper money being shifted around the globe into different asset classes and bets being made daily on basic economic outcomes, a vast amount of wealth accrues to those who gamble huge sums of money and by luck turn out to guess correctly on the flow of capital. Wealth also accrues to those who manage the house, i.e. banks, in the vast financial casino.

• Creativity to Develop or Satisfy Existing or New Demands
  

Bursts of creativity by certain individuals, leads to new development of previously non-economic resources and/or the creation of new products/services that satisfy a human need, whether real or perceived.

If you think about it, creativity, plays a very small part in the creation of wealth since it requires other capital to both pay for the new product/service, and more importantly grow. Growth is key since most of the creative energy is targeted at developing new needs that nobody really demands. So it requires a huge amont of capital to actually market new products/services to convince people to pay for these, largely wasteful, products and services.

Furthermore, many of the successful business creations are later morphed into paper money, and the great wealth is then created by the financial casino. This is why most great entrepreneurs in modern times, have no desire to create profitable businesses. The game is marketing the potential of the business with investors and selling shares to the big gamblers, who proceed to flip the shares to other gamblers ad infinitum.

In sum, if you want to get rich, you need to either steal, gamble, or create. If you take the higher path of creation, just remember that you'll be dependent on those who steal or gamble, to actually supply the capital.