It is not yet clear what will be the benefit to humanity of the emerging science of Complexity. What is clear is that gradually it is developing ways of describing complex situations so that they are more readily understandable. That is a valuable contribution in itself. Foresight may be the major innovation that mankind has developed, but understanding does not fall far short. From complexity theory I shall be using one of the models attributed to Per Bak, Chao Tang, and Kurt Weisenfield, although I shall change the raw material slightly.

Imagine a small table onto which a single slow but steady trickle of gold dust is falling. A pyramid will gradually form. From a distance the pyramid will eventually appear to be a constant shape as excess dust falls off the edges of the table onto the floor. The shape of the pile itself can be regarded as stable, yet its surface is in a precarious condition. Avalanches great and small will abound apparently at random. It is impossible to predict when or where they will occur. Nevertheless, collectively they fit a mathematical relationship. The average frequency of a given size of avalanche is inversely proportional to some power of its size.

The importance of this allegory is not in itself, but in the fact that the underlying rule it reveals is characteristic of the natural world. The property of self-organisation of an externally long-term stable structure, combined with the unpredictability of its local structure and behaviour of individual components, mirrors much of the universe around us. For example, it fits the Gaia concept well. Ignoring for the moment the energy trapped within the earth’s mantle, the "living earth" can be considered to be "the pile" (i.e. a self-organised structure) and the steady "trickle of gold dust" to represent the energy from the sun. I shall return to this idea later, but you may by now be wondering what all this has to do with the subject of wealth.

Politicians of all shades or colours agree that the creation of wealth is an important objective for any nation. Many would say it should be the principal aim. Yet what most of them are referring to is not the creation of true wealth, but the acquisition of money. Those on the political right want this money wealth for themselves and their sponsors and supporters, relying on the trickle-down effect for benefits to the wider population. Those on the left want money to circulate so it can be taxed to finance their social engineering ideals. What they both seem to be imagining is that money wealth is something akin to a steady trickle of gold dust onto the table of society creating a pile they call the economy. On the right they accept the continual irregular avalanches as "market forces"; on the left they try to stabilise the sides of the pile by redistributing the gold dust.

Here we have another example of people drawing conflicting conclusions from the same premise. The political premise must therefore be suspect. The acquisition of money is not a worthy universal aim; the creation of true wealth is! Let me explain.

The amount of money circulating in society at any particular time is finite. It is not a steady stream of gold dust from above. If some people, or some nations, acquire more, then others have less. On the right "the rich get rich and the poor get poorer"; on the left they "rob the rich to give to the poor". Nations try to alleviate the worst excesses of these situations in one of two ways. The most common and least effective has been simply to print more money. This is used directly or indirectly to help their citizens: social security, welfare, subsidies, loans, etc.. This eases the problem in the short term only. It is the root cause of inflation. The increase in the money supply gives the temporary illusion of wealth.

Few governments have readily admitted their responsibility for fuelling inflation in this way, but if they carried the concept to its logical conclusion they need collect no taxes at all. They could simply print all the money they needed. Thus the cause and effect of inflation would be starkly exposed and directly measurable.

The other major way of increasing the national money supply is the sale of national assets, particularly natural resources. Accumulating other nations’ currencies enables a nation to use them, via international exchanges, to pay for goods or services for its people. Hence the importance attached to international trade. The exploitation of national resources, even when that resource is human skill, such as processing imports into exports, requires energy. It is energy that is the true wealth.

The apparent monetary wealth of the so-called developed nations has been created under the tacit assumption that the world’s energy resources are infinite. Unfortunately, however, one cannot print energy as one can print money. In recent centuries we have been squandering the earth’s natural energy resources in a profligate way.

It can not go on for ever. To return to the allegory, when the trickle of gold dust stops, the activity on the surface of the pile ceases. The remainder is blown away by the winds of time. For humanity to survive, as long as the earth survives, or longer, we do need the creation of true wealth: the creation of energy in unlimited supply. Furthermore, only then can the whole of mankind share its wealth equitably. We must continue to search for a source of this energy wealth, the energy of the universe.

At present nuclear energy is unattractive to many people, because of the side effects that we still do not know how best to ameliorate. That is no reason to abandon research into ways of tapping this energy. Nuclear fusion may be a blind alley, or it may be the ultimate answer. Nuclear reactors may have to be built in outer space and their output beamed down to earth. Whatever; we must find some way to develop true wealth from this source, or another, within the next millennium. Otherwise our natural energy supplies will be exhausted. Then the whole world will be poor, no matter how much money we print.

The allegory of the pile of gold dust can help us to appreciate such an aptious concept as unlimited energy. This energy would correspond to the steady trickle of gold dust; the world economy would be our Gaia, the pyramidal pile. That is no guarantee of blissful serenity, however. The surface of the pile would still be active. Though we could recognise that each grain of gold dust would be associated with a human being, we would still need aptious politicians and governments to deal compassionately with the inevitable avalanches. Futilely trying to control the surface of the pile will not prevent them.

Nevertheless, we should not abandon individuals to gravity or "market forces", and just let them fall off the table, or out of the economy. In aptious terms that would be immoral, or at least amoral, just as is Nature. We would need to intervene when adverse events were outside the control of individuals. If we are to keep our pile stable, yet allow a diversely active surface we must collectively be concerned for every person associated with each grain of dust. When someone is unpredictably in trouble beyond their control, we must respond. That is a function of the common wealth of humanity, to use the energy of the whole to preserve the well being of its parts. That will be possible, however, only if the steady trickle of energy wealth never stops.

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