Resources however increases each year with more people enjoying the benefits.
> RESOURCES ... INCREASES EACH YEAR
I wouldn't call this a zero nor negative sum game if the game is to gather resources (resources with certain value. Which I think you'd agree that more recent resources have higher value. Like an AC vs a fan).
yes, that would not be a zero sum game.
If the game however is about wealth there are things like status symbols which drain resources but increases perceived relative wealth.
Would you agree that status symbols with no intrinsic value are a zero sum game? Could a status symbol for wealth work if everyone had it and could afford it?
Resources would be food, clean water, shelter, land, gasoline, things which purpose fulfill a specific need.
I would say that the first thing, wealth, represent a zero-sum game. The value of such items goes down as more people has them, and thus the status of owning them goes down as more people has the same item. Resources however is not a zero-sum game. The value of clean water will always be high regardless of how many other people have clean water.
Money in itself sits between wealth and status. It can be used for both, through at some amount it turn from resource and become just accumulated wealth.
But to quote the first sentence of the second paragraph
> At the most general level, economists may define wealth as "anything of value"
Which is why Saudi Arabia is "wealthy", because they are rich in oil resources.
> Resources however is not a zero-sum game.
Great, we're done here, right? We agree?
To a person with access to clean water, having access to clean water does not make one wealthy. To someone that doesn't it does. But this is the difference between the economic term of wealth and the colloquial term of "to be wealthy". (Though we can say that all westerners are wealthy if we take the right perspective, but I won't get into that).
I actually will get into that. You're taking this from a western-centric point of view. Not only that, a temporally local point of view. I'll ask you to reread my original comment now that there is added context given. Specifically that laid out in this paragraph. I'm not talking about money. The value of money is a result of the economy, not the other way around. You're conflating things that don't interact that way.
Honestly I don't even understand your point. Because I'm saying things like "We have AC and good medicine. Our ancestors a thousand years ago had neither. Ipso facto, we're more wealthy". I have absolutely no idea why people with expensive things discredits this argument. I'd even argue that while off topic, if anything it helps mine. Because previously only monarchs had that kind of wealth, now we have almost 15 million millionaires in America alone. That's like the global population of 5000 years ago. You can also find my link to the world bank that shows the number of people living in extreme poverty (globally!) has been plummeting. These are the kinds of things I'm talking about. Not that some rich person has a nicer house than you. But that there has been a trend where everyone everywhere is doing better than they were before (given the time scale).
All resources can represent wealth, status and power, but only if others are excluded from it. For example clean water is not consider wealth in a west-centric point of view where water is free, but in the desert clean water can very much represent wealth. A person who can waste clean water in the desert to plant a garden is wealthy and gains status, while the same person growing the same garden with the same amount of water gain no such status if it next to a fresh water lake in say Sweden.
In the absent of a zero sum game wealth does not exist. This does not mean that resources do not provide benefits. They do. Our ancestors a thousand years had less resources and thus suffered more from the effect of that. If we had a time machine and we traveled back in time we would be more wealthy because we would have resources that they do not.
A easy way to deal with the terminology is to outsource our definition. Wealth is that which a wealth tax taxes. Good medicine provided by the state, for all its extremely high value to society and individual people, is not something that can be taxed through a wealth tax. The very concept would not make any sense. The only thing a wealth tax can tax is wealth. Ipso facto, good medicine provided by a well fare state is not wealth. It great, it is good, it is useful, it is valuable, but wealth it is not.
Like 1% or 10%?
[0] https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/05/World-Poverty-Sin...
Not to mention, they indicate either 1/2 or 1/4 (depending on who's counting) lived with less than $2 per day. Not exactly something to celebrate.
This is a frustrating hand-wave that I've been subjected to for far too long. It's absolutely possible that there is a finite amount of wealth.
Moreover, even in an economy with positive growth, if a small fraction of individuals capture a large enough amount of the growth, wealth has effectively been capped for everyone else.
Second off, inequality can still exist in positive sum games. You can even have players which have gained negative utility. Positive sum just means that the total utility from all the players is positive. Doesn't say anything about exploitation, fairness, etc.
Third, I'd argue that part of the presumption of a zero sum game is a problem in capitalism. Since many people see "games" as "if I don't get x then that is equivalent to losing x". Or "if person has x then I can't have x". This is the "we both can't be wealthy" mentality or "you having more wealth than me means you're better than me" mentality. Given your comment I think you'd agree that these are destructive mentalities, but they stem from (among many other things) thinking of things as zero sum games. Not that we all can be winners.
That said, I do think systems can be exploited and there can be bad actors. But that's not really what we're talking about here is it?
I also want to be clear. When I say there is not a finite amount of wealth I am assuming time exists. At any given instance there is only a finite amount of wealth. As time progresses it either increases or decreases. I am saying that given a large enough time frame (which don't have to be that large) the trend is of increasing wealth/resources.