The true measure of a civilization is the piecemeal accumulation of wealth that can only occur when peaceful individuals are able to trade and interact unhampered. Currency and money are not wealth. They are the conduits through which true wealth can be accessed and acquired. A pile of gold coins on a desert island is useless because they cannot buy anything of value. When there is nobody to trade with money becomes useless. Their function is apparent only when entrepreneurs create and innovate wondrous things that lift us out of poverty and raise the standard the living of humanity in very real ways. Take away the currency or money and people will use something else to trade in.
In order to destroy wealth one must destroy factories, medical technology, industrial machines, combine harvesters, tractors, excavators, 18 wheeler trucks, trains, cargo ships, cars, computers, smart phones, houses, electricity, indoor plumbing etc. Do that and you will plunge humanity into a most abysmal and wretched dark age that no wanton conquerer in history has been able to achieve. The painful reduction in the standards of living of billions of people will be acutely felt as lifestyles become downgraded to that of the common folk of centuries past.
Technology is a tool that humanity has marvelously wielded to attain unprecedented levels of prosperity and comfort. It is the application of the faculties of logical deduction, critical analysis, creativity, and imagination that has placed human beings far above his animal brethren. The knowledge and wisdom procured by our forefathers is the most valuable treasure we have inherited. May your existence add to the heirloom wealth we pass on to our progeny.
I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
Isaac Newton, physicist and mathematician
