Money or Wisdom? Which has more influence?

Well; The question is: Which one is more effective? Gaining power through money, or through wisdom?

I come from a pretty stable background, which has led me to notice, that many people who live in a lot worse circumstances than me, often try to hang around me; Hell my ex (we were together for 18 months), after 10 months started asking for things like money for a cab, because she was lazy to go home by public transport.

On the other hand; Wisdom. I believe, that if one is clever enough and has the right skills, one can convince the less wise of nearly anything, and make them believe concepts they don't even understand. Seeing the educational systems are dropping horribly, the newer and newer generations are dumber and dumber, wisdom also plays a huge role in influence, I think.

An example:
You seek some confidential information from someone:
- If you are rich enough, you can pretty much buy it, because there is surely an amount of money, the person will sell it to you; I have no doubts about this.
- On the other hand, if the other person is not wise enough, and you are good at social engineering, you can simply get the information you were looking for.

Which one do you think is more effective, or easier?
^
This is just an example

In my country, for instance, all political parties are horrid, none of them were able to achieve anything at all, really. There are 2 bigger parties (Socialists and Democrats) which take turns, and why? One fucks up, and the other uses this, to make them believe, that they will do better; Yet they do just about bad as the previous, if not worst. And people close their eyes, and turn their backs. They accept this as faith, and do nothing about it. However, on the last election, a new party (radical (racist party, who claims they want to jail all gipsies in Hungary!)) managed to get a SHOCKING 20%+ vote % out of nowhere. There was actually drama about this in the EU.

I also feel, that people who are in possession of knowledge that others are not, they are able to control them to an extent, where the controlled person will pretty much do anything told by them, because they become blindfolded and believe anything they are told, etc.

Sorry, couldn't come up with a better excuse for wisdom off top of my head.

On the other hand, once again; Money. If a country has resources (see oil and such), that are rarer than others, others will become dependant of them. Since the demands are high and the resources aren't infinite nor are they open to everyone, they have the option to control the market really, and at the same time gain massive influence. Example:
After WWII, Iran (I believe, not 10000% sure) attacked Israel to regain territories that have been lost by them. They were sanctioned, and so were they when Israel attacked them; They responded by cutting down on resources, which led to many country's prices increasing to 3-4x in price! All countries raised it, only the Soviet Union decided to try an adaptation, where the price would constantly go up over time, and tried to add those extra costs to the companies, which didn't work either.

So at the end of the day: Which one do you think has more influence? Resources and Money or Wisdom?

I feel that when it comes to an individuals' case wisdom can obviously have more influence on the person, than money, but if we are talking about having influence on races, countries, in the world, money or resources such as the aforementioned.

 

They're two methods of influence and debating which is more effective is an ineffective use of time.

Money influences those with less money very effectively, but those with less money and wisdom less so.
Wisdom influences those with less wisdom very effectively, but those with less wisdom and money less so.

 

Well, I don't think it'd be a waste of time, really. Frankly, you didn't interpret my question as I meant it; What you stated is the obvious.

What I was however wondering; Which approach is better to influencing people in general? Without knowing their financial background and cleverness well enough. Also there is a big difference, when it comes to smaller crowds (individuals) or bigger (countries even).

I was curious, what people thought about these.

 

Money, because the more intelligent you become the less likely you are to relate to the average joe and if you are less likely to related to them they will be less likely to follow your cause. How influential is the local physicist, then compare that to how influential the kid who's dad has a fortune 500 company is.

Also someone who is rich is able to share their wealth with others which is why they usually have a following with them as they are trying to get a piece of their pie, where as intelligence cannot be shared as easily and involves dedication and effort.

 

In this day and age, wisdom is only proven fruitful and useful with the backing of wealth. I want to say wisdom, however that's sadly not the case. Wealth is the foundation of worldwide knowledge.

 

I'd say wisdom only because if your smart enough you'll find a way to make the money that you need

 

Wealth has more influence than wisdom, but it should be wisdom over wealth.

 

Money, people would rather listen to people with money since their sucsess full and have money when all that someone with just wisdom people would think they don't know much since they aren't sucsessfull

 

I believe at the time being wealth is more influential than wisdom to most people due to many people believing wisdom is backed by wealth.

 

I say wisdom cause u can get rich off wisdom and use that $$ to get power.. lol