I think there's a bundle in of interlinked, but definitionally separate issues here.
What does wealth mean? What does the manifestation/storage/ownership of wealth look like? What about generation of wealth? What about extraction/exploitation of wealth?
Owning land is a way of storing wealth, because land is one of the most obvious "finites."
The land can generate wealth because it generates or contains things that sustain life or improve the quality of life. e.g. Food, Raw Materials, Energy.
Food and raw materials cannot (so far) be generated from energy alone.
Knowledge is how you turn land into food, or the raw materials from land into increased quality of life.
So I agree at that level with your categories.
Another one came up in a discussion with friends the other night though.
Complexity, or maybe Sustained Complexity.
You can maybe subsume this under knowledge, but not entirely.
Some part of the wealth of the UK vs, say Somalia is the sustained complexity of our institutions. We have government, companies, civic societies, charities.
This is arguably more than just "tacit knowledge" it's a semi-tangible social construct that facilitates turning Land, Energy and Knowledge into "improved quality of life."
(And also, managing human social interactions to sustain quality of life.)
If we are wealthier than we were a 100 years ago it's partly because we've exploited energy sources more, but also because we built a more complex system that allows us to do various things more efficiently and/or do things we couldn't otherwise do.
HP reminded me of this - the market cap of HP is clearly not, in the fluctuations, simply related to "wealth" but there is a store of wealth in the sustained complexity of organisation that is the large corporation called HP. If you dismantled HP overnight, overall we'd have less capacity to turn Land, Energy, Knowledge into improved quality of life.
Market Cap itself is really complex - because as Mig has diaried, you can't meaningfully sell a large number of shares in a company at the current share price... so in some ways, it's always an overstatement of value.
But one can borrow against the market cap, so it's not all illusory...
In the culture we live in, the complexity is obvious. However, one could imagine perfectly functioning societies that were not civically complex, but nevertheless sophisticated in the sense that a flock of birds is sophisticated, as a complex organization, but the complexity is produced by a few simple rules governing interactions between neighbouring individuals.
And adjacent to this: a friend and colleague of mine, Jon Sundell, ran a block party in Helsinki this last Saturday. 1500 + people showed up. The idea came up 3 or so weeks ago. Jon used his contacts to initiate (mobile) a network of people who would provide free (i.e. civic) services to build the party. I know this network of young speedy media types - websites built in a flash, videographers, people who understand how to stream mobile video to the web, bands, dancers, graphic designers etc etc. The load was spread and the party became a reality.
The budget was zero (or let's say less than a 1000 €). On the day, people got a badge if they bought a ticket. The price of the ticket was up to the buyer. However anyone could roam freely. The price of the ticket was a gesture of support to the 'organizers'. I suggested the badges because I assume people would like to show their support, and if enough were sold to be 'visible', then others might be persuaded to buy a ticket and show their support. (Haven't yet heard how this worked)
But an excellent street party with many bands self-organized itself in 3 weeks. With no arts funding, no media income, and no sponsors. This is civic knowledge and civic action. And we'll be seeing a lot more of it imo. You can't be me, I'm taken
