Wealth must be created.
In economic terms, the wealth of one person is determined by what other people value. If you have much that other people value greatly and really want, then you’re wealthy. If other people don’t value what you have—or have to offer—then you don’t have much wealth.
Here’s the important thing about wealth: Wealth can be created. In fact, wealth must be created. That’s good news for everyone, especially those who right now don’t have much wealth: if wealth can be created, then those who don’t have much wealth can create new wealth for themselves.
Wealth is created by thinking, working, and producing things that others find to be useful, helpful, or otherwise valuable. The more people value what you have produced, the more wealth you’ve created.
Poverty is the absence of wealth, as cold is the absence of heat, and darkness is the absence of light. And, just as generating heat solves the problem of being cold and creating light solves the problem of not being able to see in the darkness, so too creating wealth solves the problem of poverty.
When individual liberty and private property are protected by wise and just laws, many people are incentivized to be productive; when people are productive and create wealth by producing value for others, there is little poverty. Where people are unfree and unproductive, there is widespread poverty because there is very little wealth.
Money is a medium of exchange, a currency that makes it easier to trade and purchase things. Anything can be used as money. Beads, salt, silver, sea shells, and feathers have been used as currencies. In many ancient cultures there was no money at all — people simply traded the goods they made for the goods made by others in exchanges referred to as “bartering.”
When people agree to use paper money, in particular, as a currency for exchanges, that means money can be printed. When money is printed and the increase in the amount of money in circulation far outpaces increases in productivity, the result is inflation, which is defined as the diminished purchasing power of money. Inflation means money becomes worth less and less.
Some governments will inflate their money to levels that stretch the imagination. Between 2016 and 2019, for example, inflation rates in Venezuela were percentages that reached into the tens of millions.
A decade earlier, during Zimbabwe’s period of hyperinflation in the late 2000s, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe issued 100-trillion-dollar bills.
These examples and others demonstrate that a person can have entire bags filled with Venezuelan or Zimbabwean money—currencies that no one values because they have been greatly inflated—and yet not have much wealth. A person can have much worthless money and still be hungry, homeless, and poor.
Money is not the same as wealth because printing money is not the same as creating wealth by producing value for others. Money is valuable only when it is in the form of a currency that other people value, a currency that can be used to purchase or trade for many things that many people value.
FAQ
No. Waypoints is not a lesson-plan warehouse. It is a curated library of primary sources paired with tutorials that deepen content knowledge and strengthen instruction. There are no student-facing lesson-plans; there are tutorials for teachers. For teachers, Waypoints is more like graduate school than a set of prepared lesson plans.
The Home Plan is ideal for individual learners and homeschooling families.
Organizer and Educator accounts can access the tutorials. Student accounts cannot.
Waypoints is a digital platform for learning and teaching built around beautifully published Primary Source Documents and Teacher Tutorials that reinforce selected Key Ideas of Liberty.
The Home Plan is $199 per year and includes an Organizer account, up to two Educator accounts, and up to four Student accounts.
Yes. Many people use the Home Plan simply for their own access to the Library and Tutorials. If you are a lifelong learner, the Home Plan is for you.
No. The purchase process automatically creates your Organizer account, which includes full access to all Waypoints content.
A Custom Plan is for schools, organizations, or other users whose needs are not fully met by a Home Plan or an Academy Plan. It can include a tailored combination of Educator and Student accounts. Please contact us for a Custom Plan proposal.
Student accounts can access the Library of primary source documents.
Yes, please do! We encourage teachers to use Tutorial content, written or video, any way they find helpful.
The Academy Plan is designed for schools, school districts, and other educational organizations.
For schools and districts, pricing is based on student enrollment. For non-school organizations and businesses, pricing is based on membership or staff size.
Please use the Contact Us page to discuss pricing, onboarding, and implementation.
Educators receive tutorials that illuminate the documents, deepen subject-matter knowledge, and support stronger classroom instruction.
You can go to the Waypoints Library and see the list of titles we have curated stretching across subjects such as American history, political thought, philosophy, economics, and citizenship.
Not yet. Additional titles are being prepared and published on a rolling basis. We will let members know when as more documents are published and uploaded to the Library.
Yes. Waypoints is designed to enrich and elevate existing instruction, especially in history, civics, government, and related courses. A teacher does not need to abandon the textbooks, lesson plans, or other curricula materials that have been used for past instruction. Waypoints is designed as an add-on to the materials teachers have been using and assigning to students.
