Greek Olive Tree Ownership

There is a kind of appreciation that financial instruments cannot measure and that balance sheets do not capture. It is not the appreciation of market value, or the compounding of financial return, or the increasing rarity of a finite supply.

There is a distinction that the financial frameworks do not make, and it is one of the most consequential distinctions available for anyone thinking seriously about what they hold and why. The distinction between a living asset and a traditional one.

The individuals who now hold the greatest concentration of private wealth in the world are making different decisions from their predecessors, not because they are less interested in quality, but because they are more interested in meaning.

There is a question that most people never think to ask about the things they hold. It is not what something is worth, or how rare it is, or what it says about the person who has it. It is a simpler and more fundamental question than any of those.