Wealth is not created: RANT
I hear this time and again: "The creation of wealth...."
Well, I say: wealth cannot be created. I think wealth is like energy and matter; it is conserved. You can move it around, you can concentrate it in a locale and you can even change it's form, but you cannot create it.
A factory owner accrues wealth largely by paying people to transform his raw materials into product. The difference between the cost of materials plus labor and the price he charges for his product is his profit. There's nothing wrong with this; the laborer expends his labor to obtain cash, which can buy him things that he cannot make for himself; he expends more energy than his labor is worth, but in return he gets money which can be used universally. The point of the thing is that wealth has not been created. It merely has been transformed from the form of raw materials and labor into a product, like a tennis shoe.
A mine owner experiences the same labor situation as the factory worker, but he has something else going on: he has figured out how to own a mining claim and so can extract materials from the earth. Unlike the factory owner, he does not pay per piece for his raw materials: he simply owns them. And then he sells them. This, also, is not the creation of wealth. This is the extraction and resale of wealth from the earth, which is a finite object.
The professional whose labor is negligible also does not create wealth. A physician, for example, spends several years mastering an information construct and then is paid to administer that construct to his patients. The consultant is paid to impose a construct on a person or an organization. This, still, is not the creation of wealth. It is merely the transformation of energy into an intellectual construct in the professional, and then the sale of the imposition of that construct on the client.
Again, wealth is NOT created. It is only transformed or transported.
How about the farmer who puts a seed worth fractions of a penny into the ground and then some months later pulls a plant worth a few dimes out? This, too, is not the creation of wealth. Forget, for a moment the enormous inputs of labor, fertilizers and pesticides that made that plant possible. The farmer takes those factors as business costs. So where does his profit really come from? Well, that field was not always a field. It once was a community of plants that had a lot of interactions, and that represented a high degree of energy, because it was a highly organized system. The farmer has traded this low-productivity, information-rich native system (by 'information-rich' I mean only that there's a high degree of organization and interactions in the system...this is not a value judgement) for his high-productivity, information-poor system (=simple system) in which his crop grows. In that sense, he's a miner. The farmer has tapped a resource (soil) on the planet.
The farmer's ability to move wealth around does not end there. Consider the Mississippi River. We've removed all of the complex plant communities from the banks of that river and farmed it all along its length. The result is that our agricultural runoff goes straight into the river and from there, straight into the gulf of Mexico, where it produces a 'dead zone' of about 100 square KM, as a direct result of the agricultural runoff. If this is not an example of to the transport of profits upstream, then I don't know what is, because that dead zone should have been fishing grounds for somebody.
ok I'm done.
Profit is not a bad thing. Wealth is not a bad thing. We all need agriculture so that we can eat.
My rant is about the idea that wealth can be created. It cannot. It is a zero-sum game. Wealth accumulating here means that wealth is diminishing there. Anybody who uses the phrase "the creation of wealth" is telling you lies. That is all.
Well, I say: wealth cannot be created. I think wealth is like energy and matter; it is conserved. You can move it around, you can concentrate it in a locale and you can even change it's form, but you cannot create it.
A factory owner accrues wealth largely by paying people to transform his raw materials into product. The difference between the cost of materials plus labor and the price he charges for his product is his profit. There's nothing wrong with this; the laborer expends his labor to obtain cash, which can buy him things that he cannot make for himself; he expends more energy than his labor is worth, but in return he gets money which can be used universally. The point of the thing is that wealth has not been created. It merely has been transformed from the form of raw materials and labor into a product, like a tennis shoe.
A mine owner experiences the same labor situation as the factory worker, but he has something else going on: he has figured out how to own a mining claim and so can extract materials from the earth. Unlike the factory owner, he does not pay per piece for his raw materials: he simply owns them. And then he sells them. This, also, is not the creation of wealth. This is the extraction and resale of wealth from the earth, which is a finite object.
The professional whose labor is negligible also does not create wealth. A physician, for example, spends several years mastering an information construct and then is paid to administer that construct to his patients. The consultant is paid to impose a construct on a person or an organization. This, still, is not the creation of wealth. It is merely the transformation of energy into an intellectual construct in the professional, and then the sale of the imposition of that construct on the client.
Again, wealth is NOT created. It is only transformed or transported.
How about the farmer who puts a seed worth fractions of a penny into the ground and then some months later pulls a plant worth a few dimes out? This, too, is not the creation of wealth. Forget, for a moment the enormous inputs of labor, fertilizers and pesticides that made that plant possible. The farmer takes those factors as business costs. So where does his profit really come from? Well, that field was not always a field. It once was a community of plants that had a lot of interactions, and that represented a high degree of energy, because it was a highly organized system. The farmer has traded this low-productivity, information-rich native system (by 'information-rich' I mean only that there's a high degree of organization and interactions in the system...this is not a value judgement) for his high-productivity, information-poor system (=simple system) in which his crop grows. In that sense, he's a miner. The farmer has tapped a resource (soil) on the planet.
The farmer's ability to move wealth around does not end there. Consider the Mississippi River. We've removed all of the complex plant communities from the banks of that river and farmed it all along its length. The result is that our agricultural runoff goes straight into the river and from there, straight into the gulf of Mexico, where it produces a 'dead zone' of about 100 square KM, as a direct result of the agricultural runoff. If this is not an example of to the transport of profits upstream, then I don't know what is, because that dead zone should have been fishing grounds for somebody.
ok I'm done.
Profit is not a bad thing. Wealth is not a bad thing. We all need agriculture so that we can eat.
My rant is about the idea that wealth can be created. It cannot. It is a zero-sum game. Wealth accumulating here means that wealth is diminishing there. Anybody who uses the phrase "the creation of wealth" is telling you lies. That is all.
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thank you. i hope you feel better in the morning 
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WOW, i need another hit 0 -
I must respectfully disagree. Wealth is a social construct.
It is certainly true that a miner does not "create" the metal, gold, diamonds or whatever is mined. However until it was introduced into the economy it was not "valuable" and was not wealth, per se.0 -
I couldn't disagree with you more, and you do sound like a Democrat.
I had a full time job as a Paramedic. I made plenty of money to rent a nice little house in the country. But, I decided I wanted to build a house.
I bought a lot on the lake for 20K. In my spare time, over a fifteen month period, I built a 1,800 square foot log cabin, three bedrooms and two baths.
In 1995 I sold the house for 140K, and made about 80K in profit.
I created that wealth, and did it in my spare time. Had I not done all that work, there is a fair chance that in 1995 that lot still would have been vacant.
Wealth is absolutely not a zero sum game.0 -
Software.
By clicking on a keyboard you create wealth. Created from finger movement for a long period of time.[:p][:D][:D]0 -
Sorry but you are DEAD WRONG!
Wealth is created; look at Microsoft, Billions and billions out of thin air. That was created wealth.
Your scenario only works if the pie of welath is of finite size. Creating wealth shows the pie can and does grow as more wealth is created.
Wealth is created by men and women dreaming the dream and risking it all in the belief it will pay off for them. That creates jobs and more pie for all!
A free market is the best and fastest way to raise the standard of living for all.0 -
I will follow any and all strategies suggested....you can all be right and I wouldn't mind at all! 0 -
i see your point.
but, try to look at it like this, you have a pile of money in a bank just sitting there not being used. its money. paper. thats all.
it has potential to bring prosperity to someone, but its not. its just sitting there. it is not wealth.
give it to someone. he uses it to profit. he created the term wealth, where there wasnt wealth before. HE BECOMES 'wealthy.'
so, you CAN create wealth. the tools you use to create it isnt the wealth, its the title someone earns by using tools to prosper.
if he gives it to someone, the receiving person inherits someone elses wealth. that person now becomes wealthy and the other person fades out of the picture. that is wealth transfer. in my day it was called 'old money.' in many cases, wealthy people can acquire so much wealth that it begins to self sustain itself much like a fire. first is the smoke, then the spark, then the flame, and then the coals. once wealth can sustain itself without effort or outside influence, it becomes a dynasty.
there comes a point where pushing the stone on flat land will become a downhill avalanche. its everyones dream to achieve that. wealth with no effort, with an occasional redirect. capitalizm at its finest.
hope this helps.0 -
I disagree.For instance,If I buy a piece of property for X,build a pond on it and after the work is done sell it for 10xX.I would call that "created wealth".I made something that did'nt exist before,again "created".Now if there is still an arguement try this.I had sex with my wife and we "created" the most incredible daughter on the planet[8D]That my friend is "created wealth",beyond measure
It just occured to me that Making something from Nothing is your definition of Creation.If thats the case I have to Concur.The joining of two materials to make something different is Creation as well,Just different.Not wrong or right,Just different0 -
...What? Sound's as if you want the "wealth" re-distributed "around" like 'ol Putz Pelosi; and the rest of the Che' fans. A lot of people disslike, or are jealous of most people that do have money, when they themselves don't; human nature that I dissagree with.
...The next time you need a job, go ask a street person what he/she has open.
...If wealth is not inherited, it is earned on varying levels, or not earned...(see social services here)...[;)]0 -
My life is 3/4 over with, I have enough money to live good (health is bad, do to an accident) I made it the hard way Honest lee, Big mistake, if i had it to do over again I would STEEL from the Crooks, In every town of any size their is the head of the drug people, the one that makes the big bucks, not the one that gets caught. I would follow the cash to him and steel it then leave town. Who is he going to complain to?
THATS HOW A POOR PERSON CAN CREAT WEALTH[:0][:D]0 -
+500
quote:Originally posted by ObiWan
Software.
By clicking on a keyboard you create wealth. Created from finger movement for a long period of time.[:p][:D][:D]0 -
quote:Originally posted by Henry0Reilly
I must respectfully disagree. Wealth is a social construct.
It is certainly true that a miner does not "create" the metal, gold, diamonds or whatever is mined. However until it was introduced into the economy it was not "valuable" and was not wealth, per se.
I see your point, and if my argument is going to fall apart, it's going to fall apart because 1) my definition of wealth is too broad (your complaint), or 2) I have a hard time explaining how painting by Picasso or a pistol by Colt becomes worth what they're worth (i.e. I can't explain the value of collectible objects in terms of my framework).
The thing is, we have a good understanding of the dynamics of zero-sum-games, so why not try to understand the mineral in the ground as wealth in a form that has to undergo some transformation before it becomes useful? It most certainly is valuable or we wouldn't have legal institutions to figure out who owns what mining claim.
Oil is not energy, but we have no problem understanding that it represents useful energy LONG before it's combusted in an engine. I see wealth as analogous.
I view wealth as the ability to create order or possess highly organized objects (like cows or cars). With enough wealth, I can cause pieces of a mountain to be combined with other materials and organized to build a fine marble mansion. If I have the ability to organize computer code to produce a good software product, then I have tapped some of my energy (a form of wealth useful only to me) to produce a product which now is valuable on the marketplace (a form of wealth useful to several).
Finally, I'm not sure what some of you were reading, because nowhere did I advocate the redistribution of wealth, and nowhere did I suggest that wealth is a bad thing. I think maybe I used the word 'labor' and hit some funny-bones. Even people who don't love Che are allowed to think about labor.0 -
quote:Originally posted by allen griggs
I couldn't disagree with you more, and you do sound like a Democrat.
I had a full time job as a Paramedic. I made plenty of money to rent a nice little house in the country. But, I decided I wanted to build a house.
I bought a lot on the lake for 20K. In my spare time, over a fifteen month period, I built a 1,800 square foot log cabin, three bedrooms and two baths.
In 1995 I sold the house for 140K, and made about 80K in profit.
I created that wealth, and did it in my spare time. Had I not done all that work, there is a fair chance that in 1995 that lot still would have been vacant.
Wealth is absolutely not a zero sum game.
You traded labor for profit. Is your time worthless just because you're not at work? Obviously not: you transformed your time and skills into $80K profit. I don't see what's so dirty about that interpretation of the world.0 -
quote:Originally posted by bpost1958
Sorry but you are DEAD WRONG!
Wealth is created; look at Microsoft, Billions and billions out of thin air. That was created wealth.
Your scenario only works if the pie of welath is of finite size. Creating wealth shows the pie can and does grow as more wealth is created.
Wealth is created by men and women dreaming the dream and risking it all in the belief it will pay off for them. That creates jobs and more pie for all!
A free market is the best and fastest way to raise the standard of living for all.
As I've defined it, the pie of wealth is finite, but extremely large because the driving force that causes objects to be organized in our solar system is the sun. If you can harness some of that power by putting a plant in the ground, then you're tapping a source of wealth.
Microsoft tapped the wealth of individuals' intellect and transformed it into a product. It came not out of thin air, but much thought and hard work.
I have no problem with the free market.0 -
quote:Originally posted by sothere
I disagree.For instance,If I buy a piece of property for X,build a pond on it and after the work is done sell it for 10xX.I would call that "created wealth".I made something that did'nt exist before,again "created".Now if there is still an arguement try this.I had sex with my wife and we "created" the most incredible daughter on the planet[8D]That my friend is "created wealth",beyond measure
It just occured to me that Making something from Nothing is your definition of Creation.If thats the case I have to Concur.The joining of two materials to make something different is Creation as well,Just different.Not wrong or right,Just different
I do view creation as something from nothing. Everything else is a transformation. Now, the transformation of egg and sperm to form a zygote, then an embryo and then a baby, and the rearing and shaping of that child into an adult is an incredible endeavor.0 -
I disagree with your definition of "wealth".
A pile of gold is worthless until a market is made for it. Once that is done, it becomes wealth. The making of the market creates wealth for the owners of the commodity.
Wealth is created, it does not exist in nature.0 -
quote:spurgemastur:
I hear this time and again: "The creation of wealth...."
Well, I say: wealth cannot be created. I think wealth is like energy and matter; it is conserved. You can move it around, you can concentrate it in a locale and you can even change it's form, but you cannot create it.
May I preface this with, I care little about what others 'think.' My father taught me the definition/meaning of a 'performance contract' - talk's cheap to some - it's worthless to me. I've met many 'all talk' types and generally have increased the distance between them and me ASAP! Folks like that generally waste your valuable time.[8D]
I respect your philosophy/beliefs and any ole inane thing you want to say. I, and most of my friends, have created wealth - to various degrees - from a million or two, to over a billion, or two ... dollars, that is.
Your premise is flawed and your personal observations - if any - were probably faulty in that you observed the wrong folks.
... as always, a good solid education and the willingness to take risks are the two most important ingredients of 'creating wealth' ... also, another less discussed, asset is having friends who have achieved wealth helping you to multiply yours, too. Choice of friends is HUGE in the pursuit of your making of a fortune.
It's as simple as that ... it's really not that hard. [:D]0 -
Take economics 101, then you would understand the creation of wealth. 0 -
Do you know how money is made, how 5 dollars can be turned into 20? Ever heard of the time value of money? It IS the creation of wealth.
Ditto on the Econ classes.0 -
After reflecting for a while ... there is a group of learned men who would
support your thesis ... I can't believe that I forgot them!
http://tinyurl.com/9fd8
[:D]0 -
there are 3 ways to create wealth.
1. you run a company, so others do the work for you, to provide your goods/servics that consumers pay you for. you are "standing on the backs of others".
2. you have knowledge or a skill that others need. not want, need, and a) are willing to pay a lot for, and b) absolutely must have it done. like database administrator for a large company, or a doctor, lawyer, etc. you "have them over a barrel".
3. cheat. it's well known in the construction biz that you can't get ahead if you're on the level. you have to cheat customers ocasionally. otherwise you're just treading water.
you won't get rich working for someone else.0 -
quote:you won't get rich working for someone else.
THAT'S #1!
[:D]
... and hire about 40 illegals to do your work for you!
That's all you need to know/do.[:D]0 -
quote:Originally posted by buschmaster
there are 3 ways to create wealth.
1. you run a company, so others do the work for you, to provide your goods/servics that consumers pay you for. you are "standing on the backs of others".
I would say that the workers are trading their labor (a form of wealth for which you have a need) for your cash (a more versatile form of wealth for them to use).
quote:
2. you have knowledge or a skill that others need. not want, need, and a) are willing to pay a lot for, and b) absolutely must have it done. like database administrator for a large company, or a doctor, lawyer, etc. you "have them over a barrel".
Here I would argue that you're in possession of a knowledge or skill because you expended time and effort to develop it, and that it's an information structure. The people you 'have over the barrel' are simply paying you to impose that structure where they need it.
quote:
3. cheat. it's well known in the construction biz that you can't get ahead if you're on the level. you have to cheat customers ocasionally. otherwise you're just treading water.
That's simply the movement of wealth from point A to point B, legitimately or not.
quote:
you won't get rich working for someone else.
My post is not about getting rich. It's about the nature of wealth.0 -
quote:Originally posted by zipperzap
quote:spurgemastur:
I hear this time and again: "The creation of wealth...."
Well, I say: wealth cannot be created. I think wealth is like energy and matter; it is conserved. You can move it around, you can concentrate it in a locale and you can even change it's form, but you cannot create it.
May I preface this with, I care little about what others 'think.' My father taught me the definition/meaning of a 'performance contract' - talk's cheap to some - it's worthless to me. I've met many 'all talk' types and generally have increased the distance between them and me ASAP! Folks like that generally waste your valuable time.[8D]
I respect your philosophy/beliefs and any ole inane thing you want to say. I, and most of my friends, have created wealth - to various degrees - from a million or two, to over a billion, or two ... dollars, that is.
Your premise is flawed and your personal observations - if any - were probably faulty in that you observed the wrong folks.
... as always, a good solid education and the willingness to take risks are the two most important ingredients of 'creating wealth' ... also, another less discussed, asset is having friends who have achieved wealth helping you to multiply yours, too. Choice of friends is HUGE in the pursuit of your making of a fortune.
It's as simple as that ... it's really not that hard. [:D]
Thanks for the Flat Earth Society link, zip....I'm not sure if you're aware of it but you managed to hit one of my hot buttons with that one. I hate them damn flat-earthers....except that they're so stubborn I kind of love them, too.[:D]
I'd like you to explain how my premise is flawed because you have not done so.
Also, every conclusion must be based on observations, but I'm not basing this on the observation of my friends. I'm basing it on the observation that (for example) once you remove gold from the mine and place it on the market, it no longer exists in the mine to be extracted.
Wealth exists as a system of pools and fluxes. So I'm also basing this on other things that exist systems of pools and fluxes (energy and matter). By analogy, I claim that wealth must be a zero-sum game.0 -
quote:Originally posted by Old Fool
Take economics 101, then you would understand the creation of wealth.
I've never had an econ class. Is Econ 101 going to tell me that wealth is created when you bring something to market that previously was not available at market?
If so, I say that concept of wealth is incomplete and if you're buying it, you may as well buy the argument that because the 2nd law of thermodynamics predicts increasing entropy, then the existence of highly organized biological systems on earth proves the existence of God.
[Edit: lets not get into an argument about God; I just pulled that out as a fallacious argument. We can get into that in another thread if you want to.]
Earth experiences decreasing entropy because the engine that drives us (the sun) more than compensates in entropy gain for the entropy we lose.
Wealth in the human market-place appears to increase because it decreases sufficiently elsewhere (the earth, energy from the sun) to make up more than the difference.0 -
quote:Originally posted by Locust Fork
I will follow any and all strategies suggested....you can all be right and I wouldn't mind at all!come up with your product that's in high demand to the military or businesses, so you sell a huge volume.
like bill gates and micro$oft. everybody uses windows, so he's rich.
military:
#1. I know one guy who learned how to do plastic injection molding, he designed the casts for some little plastic widget the army uses, made and sold zillions of them and got piles of cash in return.
#2. I was going to work for this one dude (didn't turn out) here's his story: after he got out of the seals, him and his wife were sitting at their kitchen table in their mobile home in new mexico. what to do for money? well, so far for chest wounds the thing to do was put a triangular bandage on it and seal it with tape. they came up with a better idea, a peel-off stick-on bandage/seal with a 1-way valve on it, so air and debris and stuff can go out, but not in, and it just so happens to also aid in reinflating a collapsed lung, which is definitely an improvement over the old bandages. they sell them by the truckload to the navy, hospitals, the british army, blah blah blah it's called an "asherman chest seal" cuz that's his name. look it up. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=asherman+chest+seal the dude's rich and moved to where he wants to live, set up his business there. last I heard he was going to diversify and get richer.0 -
quote:Originally posted by spurgemastur
quote:Originally posted by allen griggs
I couldn't disagree with you more, and you do sound like a Democrat.
I had a full time job as a Paramedic. I made plenty of money to rent a nice little house in the country. But, I decided I wanted to build a house.
I bought a lot on the lake for 20K. In my spare time, over a fifteen month period, I built a 1,800 square foot log cabin, three bedrooms and two baths.
In 1995 I sold the house for 140K, and made about 80K in profit.
I created that wealth, and did it in my spare time. Had I not done all that work, there is a fair chance that in 1995 that lot still would have been vacant.
Wealth is absolutely not a zero sum game.
You traded labor for profit. Is your time worthless just because you're not at work? Obviously not: you transformed your time and skills into $80K profit. I don't see what's so dirty about that interpretation of the world.
I had a full time job. I supported myself with that job. In my spare time, I could have:
1 Sat around and done nothing. I would have created, and lost, nothing.
2 Gone jogging and worked out with weights. I would have done a lot of work, gotten in good shape, but not have created anything of financial value.
3 Worked on the house in all my spare time. In doing so, I created a house worth 140K.
Had I chosen numbers one or two, that wealth, in the form of that house, would not have been created.
You state that "It is a zero-sum game. Wealth accumulating here means that wealth is diminishing there."
Wealth accumulated on that lake lot, but tell me where wealth was dimished. There was no wealth diminshed.
Your statement that wealth is a zero sum game is absurd. I think you are pulling my leg.0 -
quote:Originally posted by allen griggs
quote:Originally posted by spurgemastur
quote:Originally posted by allen griggs
I couldn't disagree with you more, and you do sound like a Democrat.
I had a full time job as a Paramedic. I made plenty of money to rent a nice little house in the country. But, I decided I wanted to build a house.
I bought a lot on the lake for 20K. In my spare time, over a fifteen month period, I built a 1,800 square foot log cabin, three bedrooms and two baths.
In 1995 I sold the house for 140K, and made about 80K in profit.
I created that wealth, and did it in my spare time. Had I not done all that work, there is a fair chance that in 1995 that lot still would have been vacant.
Wealth is absolutely not a zero sum game.
You traded labor for profit. Is your time worthless just because you're not at work? Obviously not: you transformed your time and skills into $80K profit. I don't see what's so dirty about that interpretation of the world.
I had a full time job. I supported myself with that job. In my spare time, I could have:
1 Sat around and done nothing. I would have created, and lost, nothing.
2 Gone jogging and worked out with weights. I would have done a lot of work, gotten in good shape, but not have created anything of financial value.
3 Worked on the house in all my spare time. In doing so, I created a house worth 140K.
Had I chosen numbers one or two, that wealth, in the form of that house, would not have been created.
You state that "It is a zero-sum game. Wealth accumulating here means that wealth is diminishing there."
Wealth accumulated on that lake lot, but tell me where wealth was dimished. There was no wealth diminshed.
Your statement that wealth is a zero sum game is absurd. I think you are pulling my leg.
No, I'm not pulling your leg. Wealth is not the same thing as financial value. You may have found extraordinary value in sitting in front of the TV watching game-shows, sitting around and doing nothing, or undertaking a fitness regime. All of those would have represented an expenditure of wealth in terms of your time and energy, but none would have resulted in a marketable product (except maybe the getting fit thing).
Suppose I buy $200 worth of lumber and fashion it into a nice oak table that I later can sell for $500. My $200 investment was transformed by my time, energy and skills (which also are wealth that I invested) into a $500 product.
Now suppose that I buy that same $200 worth of lumber and, using my pocket-knife, whittle it into a pile of shavings. My $200 investment has now been transformed into about $50 worth of filler for the bottom of a gerbil cage.
In either case, the lumber I started with was worth $200. I argue that whether you sit and do nothing, sit and watch soap operas, go on a fitness rampage, or build a house, your time and energy have a fixed value. You simply chose to use it in a way that produced a product on which you profited nicely.
Edit: Wealth diminished elsewhere in two ways. 1) you expended time and energy that never will be available to you for other activities (even if you found the work satisfying, this is true), and 2) there are raw materials locked up in your house that had to come from somewhere.0 -
quote:Originally posted by spurgemastur
I hear this time and again: "The creation of wealth...."
Well, I say: wealth cannot be created. I think wealth is like energy and matter; it is conserved. You can move it around, you can concentrate it in a locale and you can even change it's form, but you cannot create it.
A factory owner accrues wealth largely by paying people to transform his raw materials into product. The difference between the cost of materials plus labor and the price he charges for his product is his profit. There's nothing wrong with this; the laborer expends his labor to obtain cash, which can buy him things that he cannot make for himself; he expends more energy than his labor is worth, but in return he gets money which can be used universally. The point of the thing is that wealth has not been created. It merely has been transformed from the form of raw materials and labor into a product, like a tennis shoe.
A mine owner experiences the same labor situation as the factory worker, but he has something else going on: he has figured out how to own a mining claim and so can extract materials from the earth. Unlike the factory owner, he does not pay per piece for his raw materials: he simply owns them. And then he sells them. This, also, is not the creation of wealth. This is the extraction and resale of wealth from the earth, which is a finite object.
The professional whose labor is negligible also does not create wealth. A physician, for example, spends several years mastering an information construct and then is paid to administer that construct to his patients. The consultant is paid to impose a construct on a person or an organization. This, still, is not the creation of wealth. It is merely the transformation of energy into an intellectual construct in the professional, and then the sale of the imposition of that construct on the client.
Again, wealth is NOT created. It is only transformed or transported.
How about the farmer who puts a seed worth fractions of a penny into the ground and then some months later pulls a plant worth a few dimes out? This, too, is not the creation of wealth. Forget, for a moment the enormous inputs of labor, fertilizers and pesticides that made that plant possible. The farmer takes those factors as business costs. So where does his profit really come from? Well, that field was not always a field. It once was a community of plants that had a lot of interactions, and that represented a high degree of energy, because it was a highly organized system. The farmer has traded this low-productivity, information-rich native system (by 'information-rich' I mean only that there's a high degree of organization and interactions in the system...this is not a value judgement) for his high-productivity, information-poor system (=simple system) in which his crop grows. In that sense, he's a miner. The farmer has tapped a resource (soil) on the planet.
The farmer's ability to move wealth around does not end there. Consider the Mississippi River. We've removed all of the complex plant communities from the banks of that river and farmed it all along its length. The result is that our agricultural runoff goes straight into the river and from there, straight into the gulf of Mexico, where it produces a 'dead zone' of about 100 square KM, as a direct result of the agricultural runoff. If this is not an example of to the transport of profits upstream, then I don't know what is, because that dead zone should have been fishing grounds for somebody.
ok I'm done.
Profit is not a bad thing. Wealth is not a bad thing. We all need agriculture so that we can eat.
My rant is about the idea that wealth can be created. It cannot. It is a zero-sum game. Wealth accumulating here means that wealth is diminishing there. Anybody who uses the phrase "the creation of wealth" is telling you lies. That is all.
The Farmers wealth is created from farm subsidies and other Govt handouts!![:D][:D][:D][:D]0
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