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Comment by thefaux | Hacker News Reader

> Wealth creation is a positive-sum game.

Is it though? Even if it were true in aggregate, which I'm not ready to grant, there are clearly individual losers in the the "wealth creation" game.

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Not really, this is about creation. When you turn a tree into a house you create value. The losers in this game either fall to vandals, or create something that isn't valuable.

When you gamble money there are winners and losers. When you create something that creates wealth.

> When you turn a tree into a house you create value.

Of course, because the tree has no value, right? As long as you call things you don't care about "externalities" you can trivially prove anything is a positive-sum game.

What's even worse is the poster didn't realize this obvious rebuttal existed.

And I'm with you, I actually dislike the word "externalities", it smacks of calling employees "resources".

What is pathetic is you think that rebuts anything.

It has more value as a house than as a tree. You could grow the tree from a seed and create value.

If you assume all trees have no value in their context and/or no intrinsic value and/or the same value as any other...

This framing assumes that the tree has more value as a part of the house than it did as a tree. Every act of wealth creation is simultaneously an act of wealth destruction. Whether it is a positive or negative action is as much a statement of individual values as it is an objective, universal fact.

Not individual values, it is the value of society as a whole.

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