"Men nearly always speak and write as if riches were absolute, and it were possible, by following certain scientific precepts, for everbody to be rich. Whereas riches are a power like that of electricity, acting only through inequalities or
negations of itself. The force of the
guinea you have in your pocket depends wholly on the
default of a guinea in your neighbor's pocket. If he did not want it, it would be of no use to you; the degree of power it possesses depends accurately upon the need or desire he has for it,- and the
art of making yourself rich, in the ordinary
mercantile economist's sense, is therefore equally and necessarily the art of keeping your neighbour poor."
John Ruskin1862