I think I may have found the most obnoxious book in the whole world: Paul Zane Pilzer’s God Wants You to be Rich. Pilzer is convinced there is no such thing as scarcity, and everyone, given enough gumption and hard work, can achieve great financial success.

Pilzer exposes the key error–the belief in scarcity–that leads to a misunderstanding of the process of creating wealth.  Countering this zero-sum view of economics, Pilzer shows how a society’s wealth is determined not by the supply of physical resources, which are supposedly limited, but by human ingenuity, which constantly redefines what counts as a resource in the first place.

Say what? Never mind the fact that if the rest of the world lived like we did, we would need the resources of three Earths to sustain ourselves; the answer lies in human ingenuity! Don’t worry about the future, or about wasteful consumerism; human cleverness will save the day! Did I mention how much I hate lying douchebags who claim there’s no such thing as scarcity?

The book was written in the 90′s, and if you are old enough to remember this decade, you’ll recall “network marketing” (another word for a pyramid scheme) was the latest money making trend. A bunch of very naive people (myself included) fell for the allure of easy money. What we ended up with was an empty bank account and a stupefied look on our faces. When you think about it, it’s sounds much like going to church.