Unlimited Wealth: The Theory and Practice of Economic Alchemy.

• Author: Donahue, John D.

Unlimited Wealth: The Theory and Practice of Economic Alchemy

Upon opening a book written by a Texas-based real estate operator, especially a book bearing a title like Unlimited Wealth, one must struggle to suppress the instinct to guard one's wallet. In fact, this isn't that sort of book. Paul Zane Pilzer isn't promoting Houston office tower investments as a contrarian an path to instant riches. What he's selling instead--with a great deal of earnestness, a certain amount of flair, and a limited portion of persuasiveness--is what he calls "the alchemic view of the world." This view boils down to the proposition that "we live in a world of effectively unlimited resources--a world of unlimited wealth," because the only resource that really matters is information, and information is becoming so plentiful that it's vanishingly close to free.

There is much to like in Unlimited Wealth. It recounts how technological leaps, particularly in computing and communications, have quickened the pace of economic change. It draws welcome attention to some specific consequences of technical transformations, such as the heightened vulnerability of people and nations whose prosperity rests on commodities subject to creative substitution; the diminished appeal of wars of conquest (though the Kuwaitis might quibble with this one); and, in particular, the ever-increasing importance of education and training. Pilzer's arguments are refreshingly unrooted in any single ideological camp. And his style is upbeat and affirmative. He would be an engaging seatmate on a long flight and probably a wonderful neighbor or business associate. But as a combination Keynes, Schumpeter, and Newton for the 1990s, which is the role he sets for himself, he falls short.

Beyond th e irritating neologisms, catchphrases, and unremarkable propositions dressed up as Capital-Letter Laws, there are a number of more substantial failures in this grand enterprise. One of the less serious but more bizarre problems is Pilzer's obsessive drumbeat of attacks on economists and their trade, coupled with a near-total ignorance of contemporary economic thinking. He charges that "conventional economists [regard] the struggle for prosperity as a zero-sum game," that "traditional economics has always treated technology as a constant," and that while "an Alchemist creates wealth, an economist merely moves it around." To be sure, it can be great fun to throw rocks at economists, but Pilzer scornfully...