The Rich are not Really “Rich.”

In my book, “How Money Becomes a Curse,” I described several ideas related to the illusion of money and riches. And while I acknowledged that money can indeed be a real and driving force, there are many cases where the rich are not really rich.

Let’s take the analogy, for example, of how many apples you can eat per day. Someone who can afford 100 apples a day is no richer than someone how can afford one apple per day simply because he or she cannot eat 100 apples per day. In this analogy, we can see that both persons derive the same satisfaction out of life simply because the human being is capable of using or consuming only so much. What’s worse is that the person who can afford 100 apple per day might eat too much and acquire health problems – in addition to getting to dislike the fruit.

But it was while traveling through the small South American country of Guyana, South America, I noticed another real life demonstration of how the rich are not really rich and how life tends to level itself out. On the coast of Guyana live the industrious people made up mostly of Africans, East Indians and Europeans while in the hinterlind live the natives – the Amerindians who are Guyana‘s first people.

While the people on the coast had greater financial power than those in the hinterland, I observed that the people along the coasts were somewhat “poorer” than the natives in the hinterland. Here’s a story which illustrates this point.

Along the coasts of Guyana, in order for a man to acquire a piece of land to build a house, he has to through a lengthy and tiring beaurocratic process that could drag on for years in order to obtain a “house lot.” What’s worse is that the government has announced that it does not have enough houselots for “everyone.” A man living on the coast, facing this hurdle, is forced to live in undesireable and even expensive conditions until he can finally afford and be “approved” to purchase a houselot. But even when that happens, he has to pay exhorbitant sums for building material and labor to build the house. This may drive him to the bank to take a loan with high interest rates that could take him burdensome years to repay.

On the other hand, in the hinterland regions inhabited by the natives, anyone can start buiding their house at anytime. And what’s more is that the natives have the knowledge of buiding small but comfortable thatch-roof houses with material freely found in the environment.

As you can see from just this one example, the rich are not really rich, and poor are not really poor.

Related: You are as rich as you think you are and at the same time, richer than you think you are.

Related: The Ironies of Life: Venezuelans living in Amerindian shelters.