New York Times columnist David Brooks (with whom I don’t always agree but find to be brilliant) wrote last week about the “Experience Economy.”

Countering assertions in Tyler Cowen’s e-book, The Great Stagnation, that our economy has hit a technological plateau, Brooks says Cowen’s “evidence can also be used to tell a related story.” Brooks then spins two fictional tales, one illustrating a materialist economy that ended in about 1974, and the other, a post-materialist economy that began shortly after the former ended and continues today.

Brooks’s protagonist for the latter economy, Jared, “has some rich and meaningful experiences, [which] has also led to problems. Every few months, new gizmos come out. Jared feels his life is getting better. Because he doesn’t fully grasp the increasingly important distinction between wealth and standard of living, he has the impression that he is also getting richer. As a result, he lives beyond his means.” Jared has other problems, as does the economy his lifestyle generates, but they’re not relevant to my point.

Brooks never explicitly labels this search-for-meaning economy the Experience Economy, except in the column’s headline. The Experience Economy is not a good thing, according to Brooks, because “many of this era’s technological breakthroughs produce enormous happiness gains, but surprisingly little additional economic activity.”

I am not about to debate the merits of the previous wealth-producing economy versus what Brooks characterizes as an Experience Economy driven by people’s search for meaning. But I can’t help noticing that the Experience Economy is story-driven. To me, “experience” is virtually synonymous with “story.” People like Jared — and they are probably legion — would rather look back at the end of their lives satisfied that they had lived a meaningful story than that they had made piles of money.

I also recently came across the term “Reputation Economy.” I’m not sure who coined this term or when it came into use (2002 is the earliest reference I saw), but Consumer Reports defined it as “the way in which a product’s or a person’s … standing is shaped by the contributions of end users …” The 2002 piece, by Ryo Chijiiwa, describes this economy as “a system in which reputation and recognition, not wealth, is the measurement of value.”

What is a person’s or brand’s reputation if not its story? And the beholder’s interpretation of that story?

Increasingly, we both seek to live a more meaningful story and present our story to the world in a way that gains us, at the very least, acceptance, and perhaps ideally, demand for what we have to offer. A Story Economy?