 In the comments section is filled with this kind of stuff. Wealth was stolen from resource rich nations. Resources slaves, land, water, all stolen. And now I ignore that, but it keeps getting repeated. Somebody else says, well, he forgot to add it was because of exploited resources of Asian and African countries that the European nation built wealth. And I thought, God, this is a confusion that people have and that they still have in the 21st century and that it still kind of dominates people's thinking. The idea that wealth equals natural resources and that wealth comes from natural resources. And I thought, well, we should do a show on where wealth actually comes from and on natural resources, wealth. Now take natural resources. This stuff in the ground, oil, I don't know, metals, all kinds of stuff that's in the ground. Land, is it a natural resource? Well, is it a resource first? And then is it wealth? Well, if I don't know what to do with the stuff, then it's just stuff. It's not wealth. What do we say? Wealth is material goods made by man? Well, it's not a good because I don't know what to do with it. It's not made by human beings. It's just a waste. And indeed, until the mid-19th century, oil in the ground, oil in the ground was not considered a good. It was considered an evil. It made farming on the land impossible. It leaked out this black geek that dirtied everything. It was difficult to get rid of. Nobody wanted it. Resources that were underground were not known and therefore were not a good for man. They were just nothing. They were not existent. They didn't exist. Africa has had no natural resources before they were discovered. But more importantly, before a use for them was created. What made nature a resource is man's ability to take that and use it for something. Oil for energy, plastics, materials, gas coming out of the ground for energy, metals for construction of things. Today they talk about rare earth metals. They were there in China lying around. It was not a resource. They were not valuable. They had no value. They were just stuff and they were not wealth. So it's not the case that Africa and Asia and China and whatever had just these stores of wealth in the land that were stolen from them. They had stuff in the ground. And it's people who discovered that that stuff could be used for productive means, that that stuff could be made into wealth, could be harvested as wealth, could be mined as wealth. But that required discovery. That required action, that required ingenuity, that required innovation. And then they had to figure out how to get it, how to extract it. Now I'm not saying what colonizers, European colonizers did in Africa and in Asia was okay and they did it right because to a large extent they often did not respect the people who lived there. They often were brutal. They often killed a lot of people. So there was a massive violation of the rights of individuals in these countries. They weren't countries in these locations in their attempt to access the natural resources. Even today, the mining operations in the Congo are not just, they're not right, they're not good. Whose fault is that is an open question, right? Primarily the local people there who don't respect property rights. Local governments there who don't respect property rights. Nature is only a resource when human beings alter it, when human beings use it. It's not wealth until we discover how to make it wealth, how to make it productive, how to make it useful, how to make it something that is useful for human beings. Land, when we were hunter-gatherers, land was not a resource. Land was unimportant. Yeah, it was good for the grazing, the bison's of grazing, so we could hunt the bison, but the land, quality of the land was not a resource until we become farmers. Only when we become farmers does land become a resource. And then it becomes wealth, a source of wealth, because you can grow stuff on it. It's productive now. And now it is a material good that is made from man, agriculture. Now, so you can't... Natural resources sure are valuable to those who know how to use them. The fact is gold was not valuable to the Incas, because they didn't use it for anything. Yes, they did a little bit of jewelry, but it wasn't useful because there was no productive activity that it could facilitate. And many years in the Portuguese who mined it and brought it to Europe, it solidified it as the monetary unit. It then became the monetary unit that was used for what? Was used to facilitate production, funnily enough. Not in Portugal and Spain, and that's why it's interesting, right? The natural resources you'd think that Portugal and Spain today would be the richest countries in the world because they found all the gold and they stole in quotes all the gold and they should be the richest. And yet Portugal and Spain became impoverished, relatively speaking. They did not become the wealthiest wine because they didn't take that gold and they didn't invest it in production. They consumed it all. And once it ran out in terms of the new supply and constant mining, they had nothing. And where did all that gold flow? All that gold flowed to the countries that at the time were actually producing, were actually building, were actually creating, were actually engaged in productive activity and early on it went primarily to the Netherlands and to England and that's why the Netherlands and England became rich while Spain and Portugal became poor. And when Spain and Portugal had better colonies in terms of extracting natural resources, the British focused more on trade and focused more on production and ultimately the Industrial Revolution made them richer than anybody because they produced wealth. Wealth is produced. It takes natural resources, it takes labor and you emerge natural resources and labor with the most important component, the mind, reason, innovation, ingenuity, business. That's where you get wealth. So wealth is immaterial goods and immaterial goods need to be produced. Wealth needs to be created. Wealth needs to be produced. You can only produce wealth. You don't just find wealth. Wealth is not just out there to be picked. Now, a thief can steal wealth. You can steal your stuff but that's zero sum. It's negative sum. That goes nowhere. That creates nothing. Wealth grows not by taking. Wealth grows by producing. So yes, those natural resources, I don't know, we have all companies in Nigeria and constantly told that we're impoverishing Africa by taking the oil. But the oil is useless to them. It's only useful to those who extract it and can refine it. And refining and extracting and using and producing and creating and building wealth requires private property and freedom and that's really what Nigeria needs. That's really what the rest of Africa needs in order to become wealthy. Isn't it funny that places like Hong Kong have no natural resources? Singapore has no natural resources and yes, they are incredibly wealthy because they produce, they create wealth. So wealth comes fundamentally into some extent this is part of the theme of Atlas Shrugged. Wealth comes from the application of reason to the problem of human existence, human flourishing, human success, human progress. Wealth comes from the application of reason using reason to know and identify and understand the world around us, the components of the material world and then reshape them in ways that are more useful for human beings. Wealth comes from the human mind for a particular type of human mind, an entrepreneurial human mind, a human mind geared towards the reshaping of nature to fit man's needs. The reshaping of those resources that nature provides to fit man's needs but for that you need a mind and for that you need freedom and you need property rights. So the oil is not the resource, the ultimate resource is the human mind and therefore the ultimate source of wealth is the human mind and if you want to create wealth anywhere in the world what you need to create is an environment in which the human mind can flourish, the human mind can innovate and then, wait, individuals can act on their judgment, can act on their ideas, can try new things. Yeah, I highly recommend the writings of Julian Simon on the mind as the ultimate resource and why resources are infinite. I also recommend George Reisman's book, Capitalism. I'm just going to show you this book because it's hard to believe that this thing exists. Look at the size of that. I mean that's real size, I'll put it here next to my head. That is a massive book, right? Anyway, I recommend chapter two of that book about wealth. It's very good, it's very interesting, it goes through a number of different aspects of wealth. Julian Simon's book, which I have behind me, I have it somewhere there, is excellent. Yeah, there it is, much smaller book. The ultimate resource too, also pretty thick but much much smaller just to give you a sense of the difference, right? Look at that. And ultimate resource is already that big book. All right, these are great books to understand where wealth comes from, where natural resources come from, what makes a resource a resource rather than a liability and the role of the human mind in all of that. Thank you for listening or watching the Iran book show. If you'd like to support the show, we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening, you get value from watching, show your appreciation. You can do that by going to www.uranbookshow.com slash support by going to Patreon, subscribe star locals and just making a appropriate contribution on any one of those channels. Also, if you'd like to see the Iran book show grow, please consider sharing our content and of course, subscribe, press that little bell button right down there on YouTube so that you get an announcement when we go live. And for those of you who are already subscribers and those of you who are already supporters of the show, thank you. I very much appreciate it.