Wealth is the capacity to command or forgo labor.

What does in mean for an individual or a society or a community to be wealthy? Wealth has a general meaning when it is used in common parlance to assign certain characteristics to some individual or group. And there is no reason to redefine the term for the sake of economists. And we find all too often that the term wealth is used to allow the economist to disguise political privilege. In our discussion of wealth we must first recognize that naturally occurring land and the plants and animals, water, and air (all referred to as land)are not produced by the involvement of men and that these will exist without and in spite of man's efforts. But that is the end of that which is given to man as a species. Our existence demands that we have access to this land or that we have access to the produce of this land. And all such produce and all that we require to survive is the result of man's labor as applied to the land.

We can labor to construct a home which will save us much labor in staying warm and dry and fed in the less hospitable conditions we would endure without the home. The home is a store of our labor, it allows us to forgo labor that we would otherwise expend in attempting to be comfortable or it can be said that we are simply more comfortable in the home. We can labor to create a place of agriculture and the contouring we have created is a store of wealth and it too will allow us to forgo much labor that would have been expended in hunting and gathering food. We can sew and reap and store the output of our labor in cans and jars and we will have a store of our own labor, a store of goods. And in every case the objects are goods that have been produced by labor. And in the case of the home and the field they actually save much more labor than was invested in their creation. When we open a container and feed ourselves we will be consuming past labors. And at the time of consumption we will be forgoing the labor of planting and harvesting (or the labor of hunting and gathering) and the labor of preparing the ingredients. If these jars of fruit are stolen by someone else then that someone else will surely forgo all the labor embodied in the jars. The canned goods are a form of wealth, the improvement to the land to make it suitable for raising crops is wealth, and the house is wealth and they are all embodiments of labor.

In the real world if one is to be wealthy then one must control land and/or have control of those things that would allow him to command the labor of others. In all cases force is required to control ones store of wealth even if that store of wealth is one's own abilities. The concept of ownership and property rights depends utterly upon force. Continuing with the example described heretofore, if a horde of gorillas remove me from the home I have built and inhabit it themselves then the house is no longer wealth. If these gorillas choose to inhabit the place I had contoured to raise corn then the improvements to that land cease to be wealth, and if they also steal my harvested goods I am wealthy no longer. Let us say that the puissance of the heretofore mentioned gorillas was greater than mine and they have destroyed the wealth that existed. They do not possess the wealth for they know not how to use it, how to extract the labor that was therein embodied. The point being that wealth does not exist unless it is controlled by an intelligence capable of using it. This control, in the real world, is always based on force.

If one is big enough and strong enough and intelligent enough to command labor in others then one is wealthy. In the previous illustration we see the need for defensive force. But let us presume that the invaders were human and possessed the intelligence to actually employ what they had taken. In either case I would no longer be wealthy, but in the latter case wealth would still exist and be owned or possessed by the invaders. The invaders have taken this wealth by force and they are now wealthy and I am not. But how long will they have it? How long will the house last without maintenance? The fields must be planted or they produce nothing. So a subject of much more importance, therefore, is the coercive command of labor. People will sew and reap at the point of a gun just as they will at the behest of their own hunger. And if we can control the land to which all persons must have access then we can command the labor of all. I can be coerced to produce goods and to give a share of this to an oppressor if that oppressor is big enough and strong enough to force me to do so. But this same coercion will exist if the oppressor simply prevents my access to land. This oppressor commands my labor through the use of force and is wealthy because he does so. He provides for his wealth through his own specialty, but that labor is the application of force. He will forgo his own labor (e.g. farming) by specializing in the use of his talent to apply force. His expended labor in the very specialized area of force is much less than what he would otherwise have expended in doing the farming for which he may or may not have any talent. And while it cannot be said that I will have the better part of the bargain we cannot ignore the fact that a trade has taken place. We cannot ignore the fact that I may still possess some amount of wealth in that the labor I will forgo in the use of the home and the land improvements may be in excess of the labor that I would have had to continually undertake absent the home and the land improvements and the oppressor. And let us not forget the gorillas who would have taken it ALL.. As part of the deal I may have received some protection from the gorillas. The conclusion, however remains the same: Power is a form of wealth.

Absent aggressive force as described in the previous section we still command the labor of others in a non aggressive manner. The use of the word "command" is employed because of Adam Smith and our reliance on a description of value by Smith in which he asserts that the value of wealth (the measure of wealth) is expressed as the amount of labor I will be able to command. The discussion of wealth heretofore barely touched on the idea of a market and on the concept of trades in the preceding section about power. But when we speak of commanding labor in others in a non aggressive manner we are speaking of a free market and we are speaking of trades. Let us return to the canned goods described in Wealth As Stored Labor (above). These goods can be used for trade and thus can be used to command the labor of others. If I offer to trade some amount of goods for a plow fashioned by some other individual then I am offering my labor (stored in the cans) in exchange for his labor (stored in the plow). We each have commanded the labor of the other. This becomes much more evident when we look at a larger market where plows and seed and wheat and corn and cans of dates and cans of pineapple are being offered for sale/trade. In each and every case the owner of some produce is offering his labor embodied in that produce in exchange for some particular produce owned by someone else. His labor will be commanded by whoever will offer him the most value for the labor he has invested in his produce. And each individual's wealth is embodied in all of his possessions; both those he intends to use to forgo his own labor and those with which he intends to command the labor of others. And absent or including aggressive force the extent to which he is wealthy is the extent to which he can command or forgo labor.