John D. Rockefeller was the richest man in the world. Indeed, Forbes magazine proved it in 1918 when they published the first-ever wealth ranking. Rockefeller was placed at the top with an estimated $1.2 billion (that’s more than $20B in today’s dollars).
Against those numbers, it might surprise you to consider that average citizens in developed nations today are all richer than Rockefeller. While you might not be able to afford Rockefeller’s many mansions and teams of servants, can you imagine life without air-conditioning, reliable transportation, the internet, and effective and easily accessible medicines?
If the original Rockefeller wanted sushi, he would have needed to take a long boat ride to Japan. You can dial up an order on your phone, pay any variety of digital form, and scan a dozen of the world’s leading newspapers on your iPad while waiting for an order to appear at your door.
Material advances have created unprecedented wealth in developed nations and rapidly declining poverty in developing nations. Yet, numerous polls suggest that citizens worldwide are becoming pessimistic about the economy and lurching toward hopelessness on questions of politics, corporate leadership, race relations, and our educational systems.
CEF participants think better of these things because we understand what constitutes true riches and we’re diligent to serve the world’s needs while dead to its claims. We are clear-eyed about the world’s challenges and creative in our solutions.
No one captures this thinking better than Tom Darden. “It’s fascinating that the solutions to yesterday’s problems of scarcity are the exact causes of today’s problems going forward,” states Darden in direct opposition to the commonly-held belief that the world’s greatest problems stem from scarcity. In his presentation at CEF 2017, he envisions an “amorphous beast slouching toward us,” the daunting reality of uninhibited access to information. His discernment of these facts highlights exactly the kind of thinking that CEF aims to foster and share. Watch the full talk below:
