After reading this article on the phenomenon of Farmville I revised my notions of wealth. I previously categorized wealth in the following two ways:
- Owning Money – how much money do you have in the bank account, or can be converted to cash quickly. Most people regard money wealth as the only wealth
- Owning Time – How much time do you have in the average week/month/year that is under your control? Do you spend 90 hours a week working in a job you hate? Do you spend 30 hours a week doing housework, maintaining electronic gear, smiling at people you don’t care about, or commuting? If so, you possess little time, no matter how much money you can spend. Tim Ferriss is the best explainer of this notion. Read his blog (and book). (I include his book, The Four Hour Workweek on my all time top ten list of books. I intend to write a time-wealth calculator at some point.)
Up until reading the Farmville article I limited my definitions of wealth to the above two categories. Reading the article crystallized my notion of clan wealth.
Please note, I’m using the Southern American definition of Clan, which I define as a group of people related by blood, marriage, friendship, or history of friendship which has an intricate network of mutual obligations and debts and acts as one unit on divisive issues. (Please also note, nothing in this post relates to the KKK). In American pop history the Hatfield and the McCoy groups serve as the best example of clans.
This post originally appeared on the Stronico blog – with the absorption of Stronico into Digital Tool Factory this post has been moved to the Digital Tool Factory blog
I define Clan wealth as membership and position in the clan. Clan Wealth is a product of relative position within the group times the overall strength of the clan as a whole. Someone rich in clan wealth would be someone able to make decisions for a powerful group of people, much like Joseph Kennedy. IIRC Tim Ferris writes about this in his book, but he defines clan membership as a means to the other forms of wealth, i.e. a tool, not wealth in and of itself. The Farmville essay delves deeper into the inner workings of mutual obligations. I do not intend to invest many resources into this version of wealth, but quiet millions of people are investing their time and money (the other two forms) into developing clan wealth right now.
More thoughts on this to come I’m sure.
Update: 4-27-2010 corrected link
photo credit: Jeff Belmonte
This post originally appeared on the Stronico blog – with the absorption of Stronico into Digital Tool Factory this post has been moved to the Digital Tool Factory blog
Tags: Networking, theory, wetware
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Written By Steve French |
great post as usual!
this post is very usefull thx!
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