"Unlimited Wealth," by Paul Zane Pilzer with introduction by Bob Meyer, Barter News, Sept 1992.

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About the Author
Pilzer is a Paradigm-Buster
Education Must Never Stop

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Unlimited Wealth

"Unlimited Wealth: Paul Pilzer Tells Where to Find the New Prosperity," by Duncan Maxwell Anderson, Success Magazine, October 1993.

 Pilzer Is A Paradigm-Buster

     The ideas espoused by economist Paul Zane Pilzer in his book, Unlimited Wealth: The Theory and Practice of Economic Alchemy, are far different from the traditional "economics" thinking which, for decades, has focused on the systematic study of scarcity.
     Look no further than a quotation from the world's most popular economic textbook, Economics by Paul Samuelson: "Economics is the study of how people and society choose to employ scarce resources that could have alternative uses in order to produce various commodities, and to distribute them for consumption."
     What Pilzer calls "economic alchemy" is derived from principles of abundance, not scarcity, because technology has liberated us from the zero-sum game (the idea that for someone to gain, someone else must lose) of traditional economics.
     Pilzer says that instead of finding better ways to slice up the same old pie, in the alchemic world one concentrates on baking a new pie big enough for ALL to share.  In short, Pilzer contends that scarcity thinking is a learned behavior which is no longer justified, because of today's continual technological advances.

Labor Is An Asset
     Labor is a capital asset, not an expense.  Return on invested capital continues to be a useful primary calculation only when we realize that physical assets cannot be justified except as a way of increasing the yield/effectiveness of intellectual assets.

Everything Changes
     The only enduring business is the business of change.  When a business derives all or most of its income from a restrictive competitive position (such as a trademark/ patent) that business is doomed.  Exploitation of scarcity is no longer a valid strategy.  Today's markets have no corners.

Imagine a Need and Then Create It
     Once upon a time, there was a business law which stated that "Success comes to those who find a need and ethically fill it."  That law has been repealed by this more
 

Transformation Accelerated
     The transformation of a product or service from the status of "luxury" to that of "necessity" has, over the past 100 years shrunk from 35 years to only a few years.  Some futurists anticipate that this transformation may soon be measured in a handful of months.  (The attitude of children toward a fad game is an illustration.)
     While all of this has been happening, there has been an incredible realignment--economically and politically.  We used to believe that the wealth of a nation was determined by its physical resources. But today we must explain how the tiny island-nation of Japan became a world industrial power despite the total absence of coal, iron ore, and not even a teaspoon of oil.

Improvement and Expectations
     When people perceive that their qualities of life are improving, the result is not complacency.  Instead--they
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