I strongly disagree. In the real world, wealth is very much not zero sum.
Look around where you live, at the things that you value. How many of them were created with human effort, versus just existed in nature? Look at everything from computer you're typing on to the chair that you're sitting in to the roof over your head. EVERYTHING that was created with human effort is an example of wealth creation.
Wealth is not a zero sum game. But it is not possible for one person to create a billion dollars of wealth for other people. What creates wealth is actual productive labor, not some kind of vision.
> Wealth creation isn't zero-sum, just because someone builds a business and creates wealth doesn't mean they're taking it from others.
It absolutely is zero sum - but not from the point of money, but from the point of view of another finite resource; human labour and talent.
The fact that someone has more wealth than someone else means that the market will value their time/spend more than someone who is poor.
Think about it this way, if you see money as a way for society to allocate resources - is the fact that you own more wealth than someone else mean that you can should be able to direct more of where the resource spend of human labour is?
How many talented engineers work at Rolls Royce to create £250,000 cars which would be better put to use elsewhere? How many software engineers work at startups funded as a moonshot for the wealth of the founders work on CRUD apps where they could be working on something like scientific or educational tech? How much chemical engineering talent do we sink into cosmetics?
Your cited examples prove the point above - the only reason why those examples exist is at the whim of those who have wealth. What about less savoury examples of the use of wealth such as Academi or Palantir?
This way of looking at things assumes that wealth is a finite resource, and that by some people having a lot it is depriving others.
Wealth doesn't work like that, though. It's not a zero sum game.
Wealth is infinite, and can be created from nothing by providing a good or service that people need.
I had a friend who was a multimillionaire, got there by building stone walls.
Another friend who's an immigrant, worth over ten million, got there by making custom iron and steel windows and doors.
I have a friend who's worth over a million, got there by working hard and saving his whole life.
Another friend who's worth over thirty million, got there by making web sites for auto dealerships.
Another one who's worth a bit over a million, got there by risking his life savings on opening up a winery.
A former neighbor had a multi-million dollar home. Also an immigrant. Got there by cleaning restaurant grease traps.
I could go on.
Wealth can be created from nothing. From something as simple as an idea.
The only qualifying factor is that you have to make something that other people want. It can be anything, a wall, a song, a good bottle of wine, an iron door, a NFT (ugh), ...anything.
There's no limit to wealth.
Our poorest today live like kings compared to those in poverty 100 years ago.
Because we've created massive, overwhelming wealth in this country.
And there's no end in sight. All we need is the willingness to do it.
To spend our time building up rather than tearing down.
Looking at someone's wealth and saying "that's not fair, we should destroy that and give it to others" is a juvenile solution that destroys societies.
I understand the temptation though. It's harder to create than to destroy.
It takes more intellectual rigor. It takes a leap into self ownership and responsibility.
That's hard to do when we've been taught from a young age that our situation is someone else's fault.
Class warfare is a tool that's used by conmen to gain short term power.
Wealth is absolutely a zero sum game depending on how you segment things. Increases in productivity and innovation are not zero sum, but things like land ownership on earth is absolutely zero sum.
The point of saying that wealth is not zero sum is that it can be created, by using the available materials and laborers in different ways. This phenomenon also causes economic growth.
The only reason wealth creation is not zero sum is because of the way it's defined. I can redefine anything zero sum to be not. Slicing a pie into pieces and sharing it is non-zero because there was no joy of sharing before! Etc.
That depends on how you generate it. When apple builds wealth, not zero sum; when a hedge fund builds wealth; zero sum. 40% of our economy is financial services now, there's a lot of zero sum wealth creation going on.
It is still a zero-sum endeavor because all this new wealth didn't materialize out of thin air. It was created by people, and specifically by people doing productive work with their hands and their brains - which does not describe the suits on top, no matter how much they try to convince us otherwise. The reason why the latter end up with most of this newly produced wealth in their pockets is simply because they have access to a wide assortment of mechanisms to collect economic rent from the people who actually produce - this is the zero-sum part. The notion that, without the suits, the wealth wouldn't have been produced at all is nonsense.
Look around where you live, at the things that you value. How many of them were created with human effort, versus just existed in nature? Look at everything from computer you're typing on to the chair that you're sitting in to the roof over your head. EVERYTHING that was created with human effort is an example of wealth creation.
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