The words "rich" and "poor" carry the appearance of objectivity. They look like descriptions. They are not. They are evaluations — and the criteria on which they rest shift substantially depending on who is doing the evaluation, in what community, against which reference class, and according to what theory of what constitutes a good life.

Law 1 — We Are Human — requires that we take seriously the full range of human ways of organizing economic experience. Among those ways: the different definitions of what it means to have enough, to have too much, and to have not enough.

The standard economic definition of poverty uses income thresholds relative to a cost-of-living baseline. A household below a certain income level is, by this definition, poor. This is a useful administrative instrument. It is not a description of how the people inside those households experience their lives, or how their communities assess their standing.

A person with a $40,000 annual income in rural Mississippi and a person with a $40,000 annual income in Manhattan occupy the same position in the federal poverty statistics (technically above the threshold in both cases, though barely in the second). But the lived reality is entirely different. The first may own a house outright, maintain a garden that supplements their food supply, participate in a dense community of mutual aid, and be considered economically stable by everyone around them. The second may be housing-insecure, food-insecure, and isolated by the economic pressure of urban survival. The number is the same. The life is not.

More interesting: consider how "rich" is defined relationally, not absolutely. The person who earns twice what anyone else in their family has ever earned is rich in their community's accounting, regardless of their absolute income level. The person who earns $300,000 a year in a peer group of hedge fund managers is poor by the standard of their immediate reference class. These relative assessments are not irrational. They are measurements of real social experience — of status, of access, of what one can and cannot do relative to the people around them.

Different communities also define wealth along non-monetary axes. In many indigenous frameworks, wealth is measured in relationships and land stewardship — the person with the most intact social network, the most reliable reciprocal obligations, the most productive land, is the wealthiest. In some religious communities, wealth is measured in spiritual capital — the accumulation of charitable acts, the quality of one's relationship with the sacred, one's reputation for generosity. In gift economies, wealth is measured by what you give away, not what you accumulate. The accumulator who hoards is, in this accounting, not wealthy — they are blocked. The person who gives abundantly has more status the more they distribute.

These alternative definitions are not romantic alternatives to real economics. They are descriptions of how real economies work in real communities — and they have real economic consequences. The person who has correctly assessed that their community's definition of wealth involves generosity and will invest accordingly (hosting events, making loans, supporting kin) is not making economically irrational decisions. They are building social capital in the currency that their community values and that their community will reciprocate. Standard financial advice that tells them to stop giving and start saving is advice to exit their community's economy. That is a legitimate choice in some circumstances. It is not obviously the rational one.

The practical implication is this: when you use the words "rich" and "poor," you are making a claim that requires specification. Rich by what measure? Poor by whose standard? Relative to what reference class? According to what theory of what matters? Answering these questions carefully is not academic pedantry. It is the precondition for understanding how people actually make financial decisions, and for giving advice that connects with the life the person is actually living rather than the life the adviser has modeled.