Money is the most fungible thing in the world—nothing else can be exchanged for so many other things and with such ease. But it isn’t infinitely fungible. What things can’t be bought with money?

The point of the question is to think about what sorts of things a rich person could possibly want and not have, so we’ll only consider things of great value that not everyone has. It’d be a little quaint to mention something like a nice sunset or the smell of rain.

As the world gets richer—as more and more people become equal in terms of all the things money can buy—these things become even more valuable, relatively speaking.

Technology might let people buy some of these eventually, perhaps all of them, but this requires a commitment to transhumanism many find unsettling—and it may never been an option. It’d be foolish to presume these things will be for sale eventually.

Can’t be bought

These things largely can’t be bought at all. Money can paper over them to some degree, but there is a hard limit to how far this goes.

People who have these things are able to leverage them into obtaining money, if they so desire. They obviously can’t trade them directly. Instead, this leveraging involves the buyer trading their money to merely utilize or experience what the seller has, rather than obtaining their .

Youth

The value of youth and all its trappings needs no elaboration, and no amount of money can ever buy it back.

Youth is often abstracted to saying that time is valuable—specifically one’s own time. Doing so seems to paper over what is really valuable here. Time is, without youth, and in an absolute sense, not inherently all that valuable. Many people would, if they could, take an irreversable time machine into a future where they think things will be better (typically betting on improved technology). Many more would if they could also take all their loved ones with them.

Life extension research is still in its infancy and has had surprisingly little money spent on it. One would think old, rich (redundant, I know) people would be funding every opportunity that shows even remote promise. This is perhaps a signal of its hopelessness—that there really are no avenues of attack one can even fathom—or it might be a signal of one more thing to add to this list: scientific and technological progress. Could any amount of money pull another Aubrey de Grey out of the aether?

Health

The value of being free of disease in both body and mind needs no elaboration.

While intricately related to youth, there are many ailments which even youth cannot cure, so it deserves its own mention.

Beauty

Talent

Talent is any way in which one is innately better at doing things than others.

No amount of training can ever overcome a serious lack of talent—at least not in a competitive domain—because the talented are just as capable of training as the untalented.

In non-competitive domains, the fruits of these talents can largely be bought. Me being a good technical writer is nice and all, but most of what I’ve ever written I could have paid someone else to do just as well.

Small exception for arts, where commissioning things isn’t quite the same as making it yourself. The greatness in art is in clearly expressing things that people already know but can’t find the words for. Whatever a non-artist can explain for a commission is not complicated. Hence commissioned work being mostly kitsch (and porn).

Most talents are not all that valuable. They’re narrow in scope and can’t be leveraged to get anything else, amounting to nothing more than a party trick.

However, there are talents with broad applicability and value.

Intelligence

The mythical g is both untrainable and the most broadly applicable talent. Whatever you want to do, being clever about it will get it done better. There is no tradeoff. The Flowers for Algernon mythos of high intelligence coming hand-in-hand with poor social skills comes from a combination of Berkson’s paradox, confirmation bias (you don’t remark upon all the unintelligent people you’ve met who lack wit or grace, nor the gregarious people that are also intelligent), and most powerful of all: cope. The value of intelligence in its totality is cruelly unfair when properly accounted for, so cruel that accepting it is more than most—especially those committed to some idea that all people are created equal—can bear.

The greatest check on intelligence are diseases of the mind, because the disease leverages that very intelligence to become more powerful.

Athleticism

To have a body that’s strong, swift, flexible, resilient, and precise—one that’s fully in tune with the mind—might seem quaint in this largely cerebral list. But make no mistake: the best athletes always being the most popular kids in school is no coincidence. Love for sports and those who excel in them is the most cross cultural, cross class value there is. On a primal level we can’t help but admire someone that’s really good at moving a ball around.

However, if getting people to like you were all it’s good for, it would merely be an inferior form of beauty. What makes athleticism so valuable is that growing and using an athletic body is innately fulfilling, satisfying, and thrilling—an experience with no comparison.