Wealth and Work

Wealth as the result of serving the work

• Ford (ford) — profit is the reward of service, not the basis of a business; chasing money is the surest way not to get it; work is a law of nature. Grounding: pribyl-nagrada-za-sluzhbu, rabotat-a-ne-delat-dengi, trud-eto-zakon-prirody.
• Rockefeller (rockefeller) — the man who starts out simply to get rich will not succeed; success imposes obligations, profit is put back into the business, and giving must be done scientifically. Grounding: net-korotkoj-dorogi-k-uspehu, uspeh-nalagaet-obyazannosti, davat-nado-nauchno.
• Smiles (smiles) — labour has dignity and educates; thrift is a school of character, but character matters more than wealth. Grounding: dignity-of-labour, trud-vospityvaet, harakter-vazhnee-bogatstva.
• Franklin (franklin) — industry and frugality are the road to independence: debt takes away freedom, and time is the stuff life is made of. Grounding: berezhlivost-eto-svoboda, industry, time-is-life.

Wealth as a science and the right of desire

• Wattles (wattles) — getting rich is an exact science: whoever does things in the Certain Way grows rich with mathematical certainty, creating rather than competing. Grounding: bogatstvo-est-tochnaya-nauka, tvorit-a-ne-konkurirovat, otdavat-bolshe-polzy-chem-berosh.
• Hill (hill) — riches are gathered by organized effort around a definite aim; do more than you are paid for, and fear is the mother of poverty. Grounding: bolshe-chem-oplacheno, sila-eto-organizovannoe-usilie, strakh-mat-bednosti.

Wealth as vanity and parasitism

• Schopenhauer (schopenhauer) — what a man is matters more than what he has: property is the lowest class of goods, and the chase after it is vain. Grounding: tshcheta-imushchestva, chto-chelovek-est, lichnost-vazhnee-imushchestva.
• Tolstoy (tolstoy) — the life of his circle is parasitism on the labour of the people: procure life not for yourself but for all; meaning belongs to those who make it. Grounding: parazity-zhizni, dobyvay-zhizn-ne-dlya-sebya-a-dlya-vsekh, trud-dobyvanie-zhizni.
• Laozi (laozi) — he who knows sufficiency is content: hoarding and a hall filled with treasure cannot be kept, and contentment is wealth. Grounding: zhizu, predel-i-mera.

Axis of dispute: Tolstoy against Ford, Rockefeller, and Wattles — renunciation
and simplification against the administration and science of wealth;
Schopenhauer against Hill — the futility of striving against desire as engine;
Ford against Rockefeller (within the camp) — competing the price downward
against cooperation instead of ruinous competition
(sluzhba-a-ne-borba-s-konkurentom vs kooperaciya-vmesto-razoritelnoj-konkurencii).