Hacker News Reader

Comment by drpixie | Hacker News Reader

In a very fundamental way, there is no such thing as "wealth creation", there is only wealth acquisition. Wealth is a zero-sum game. No business actually makes money (well apart from a government mint:), but they do move it from elsewhere. No VC creates wealth - they get money from other people, perhaps in exchange for goods or services, but at the end of the day the total amount of money hasn't changed.

View on HN

You have absolutely zero understanding of wealth.

An example to prove my point:

You have an apple seed. You plant the apple seed. You tend to the growing plant (soon a tree). A few years of work tending to the plant, and you get hundreds of apples every year.

No money is necessary. Wealth is about abundance. Money is just one type of scorecard.

Apologies for the strong tone, but the type of thinking that you just displayed has destroyed civilizations in the past.

> You have an apple seed

So where'd you get the seed? Or the land? Or the time to plant and tend to the tree?

You either already own or pay for the seed, the land and the man-hours to tend the tree. This both employs people and brings more abundance into the world.

While this is true, those with the highest scores get a claim on abundance whether or not they created wealth.

If I have chickens and get more eggs than I would ever want to eat, each additional egg provides me less and less marginal utility. If you have cows and get more dairy than you would ever want, then each cup of milk provided you less and less marginal utility.

If I trade you a dozen eggs that have near zero marginal utility to me but lots to you, and in return you give me a gallon of milk that has near zero marginal utility to you but lots to me, then we are both enriched by this trade. That enrichment is wealth creation.

Wealth is not money. If I spend 10 minutes scrubbing, polishing and fixing a rusty piece of whatever I found in the ground, assuming it's useful, I've created wealth, despite no bureaucrat, corporation or money ever being involved.

A tribe of cavemen with some animal skins and spears is more wealthy than a tribe with nothing.

This would be true in a purely deflationary economy with a medieval currency like physical gold (no paper notes on gold either). Saving would be rewarded and investment could typically only be profitable at someone else's expense. For most of history this was the case. But now that money is printed, wealth is positive sum. Everybody can win. The money that a VC makes from a business originally comes from credit, and the VC reinvests that new money to turn it into new credit eventually via central banks, and money is created recursively. It is not intuitive. People seem to assume the simpler gold-based model is how our economy works when it hasn't been the case for a while.

I disagree. Wealth is not zero sum.

A vaccine is worth much more than all of the sum of its parts.

The value of a bridge is not just the concrete, steel and manhours it took to build it.

Wealth is created when something is built, arranged, or designed in a way that is better than its inputs, in a way that benefits people.

This sounds like an echo of liberal ideology.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com