Explains how we live in a world of unlimited physical resources because of rapidly advancing technology.

 More on
Unlimited Wealth

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

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

"The Economic Alchemist," by Paul Wirth, Lehigh Alumni Bulletin, October 1990.

"Renaissance and Real Estate," by William Summers, Financial Enterprise--The Magazine of GE Capital, Fall 1989.

Unlimited Wealth
by Paul Zane Pilzer

Excerpt from Unlimited Wealth -- Preface to the 1994 Updated Edition

     "Elias!"  I only called my father by his first name when I was angry with him.
     "How could you give Tony another raise?"  Tony, a Puerto Rican cutter whom we had trained and promoted from a floor sweeper, had missed two days last week, and we had to pay the guaranteed minimum, $1.65 per hour, to two piece-workers who had no work to sew.
     "I had to," he shrugged.  "His wife had another baby.  A boy this time.  That's
why he forgot to call in."
     I was unimpressed.  I felt that Tony, at 24 (only four years older than myself), shouldn't have any kids, let alone four already, and all living with him in the Bronx on only $200 a week.
     "But Dad," I objected, "he cost us $75 last week just by not calling in, let
alone what the buyer at Macy's is going to do to us when he finds out we didn't ship his order.  Listen to me!  Please!  We're going broke and you're going
around giving raises to people we should be firing.  You just don't understand!"
     "Don't speak like that," he said sympathetically.  "You can't fire Tony...where would he go?  He barely speaks English.  He'd end up as a floor sweeper somewhere at minimum wage.
     "But Dad, we can't make it anymore.  You just don't understand, do you?"
     "No son," he said, "you don't understand.  It's not worth being in business if
you can't extend a hand to people who haven't had all of your advantages.  Go
to Wharton next year.  Study hard.  Figure out how you can make your million
bucks and how we can stay in business to make jobs for the Tonys of this world.  Then you'll understand."

*  *  *

     My father was a religious man.  He firmly believed in a true and just God who had a reason for everything.  To him, an Eastern European immigrant who had seen his homeland destroyed during the Holocaust, the tragedies and misfortunes of human existence were simply the parts of God's plan that we could not yet understand.  His philosophy was perhaps best summed up in the Kaddish, the Hebrew prayer for the dead--the prayer that, as the son of a religious Jew, I recited every morning for a year following his death in 1979.
     The Kaddish is recited in Aramaic, the spoken language of the Jewish people in ancient times; it was originally written in Aramaic so that every member of the community would understand it.  Yet even more significant than the fact that the Hebrew prayer for the dead is not recited in Hebrew is the fact that this prayer for the dead contains no mention whatsoever of death.  Rather, in the midst of sorrow the Kaddish affirms our belief in the meaningfulness of life itself and our faith in a just and true God...even if He moves in what may seem to us to be mysterious ways.
     My father, who spent virtually his whole life working to support his family,
viewed his own business shortcomings and society's economic problems as one and the same: both were the result of our failure to understand and utilize the
tools that God had given us.  Even while he was dying of cancer in 1979, he
never wavered for a moment in his belief that God was just and that human
suffering was part of a divine plan that we did not yet understand.  He firmly
believed, as Albert Einstein once said, that God does not play dice with the
universe.
     To a man like my father, it was inconceivable that God would allow people to multiply in the billions and yet deny them the ability to feed and shelter
themselves.  Yet, like a loving father, God would not simply hand over to his
children everything they needed.  Rather, He would give them the necessary
tools and allow them to discover how to use the tools to take care of
themselves.
     I began my studies at Wharton Graduate Business School in 1975 with this
belief: that human suffering and social injustice reflected nothing more than
our failure to use the tools that God had given us.  I remember my shock upon
learning in my first class that the entire field of economics is based on the
concept of scarcity--that is, that there is a finite amount of resources in the
world--and that the best we can hope for is to figure out a better way of
dividing them.  Not only did this contradict everything I had seen as the
upwardly mobile child of an immigrant, but it contradicted my entire belief in
a true and just God, for such a God would not have created a world of limited
resources in which one person's gain would have to be another person's loss.
     At Wharton, it seemed to me that the science of economics had advanced only to where the science of medicine was at the beginning of the 19th century.  Before we discovered the underlying theories that explained bacterial infections, and thus inoculations and antibiotics, we knew from experience what few medicines and treatments worked--applications.  However, without an underlying theory explaining why, we were unable to learn and grow from our experiences, and, more significantly, only a select few could afford what little medical care existed.  Similarly, my professors were able to teach me what worked--in applications courses such as marketing, finance, and management--but were unable to teach me why--in theoretical courses such as micro- and macroeconomics.
     I felt then that the underlying theories behind business, which are based on
the classical economic concept of scarcity, were wrong.  But I did not have a
theory to substitute in their place.   This began my 15-year quest for a
business theory that could better explain the past and predict the future.
And, more important, the business theory consonant with a just and true God,
which would allow everyone, not just a select few, to share in a better and
better world.
                                   Paul Zane Pilzer
                                   Park City, Utah
                                   July 1989

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