George Reisman has developed a brilliant, modern presentation that dismantles the problems with the labor theory of value, and the related exploitation theories. [1]
[1] https://mises.org/library/classical-economics-vs-exploitatio...
Picking winners and loser successfully is as valuable as appraising houses. Without people investing, growth will only follow established wealth (you have to save up to start a business or buy a house). We would be moving from a crowd-sourced pricing model to an "expert" (assuming people with disposable wealth are experts) pricing model.
But if I go a step further I would also argue that investments as we know them are not sustainable. There is a risk that an investment fails and therefore interests are chosen such that they yield a profit at least in the long run and this also doubles as incentive to invest in the first place.
I now argue that this setup will run away. Having money to invest now allows to gain more money and then even more money by reinvesting again and again. But because investing is a non-productive activity not creating value the returns must be paid by taking an ever increasing share of the value produced by the workers.
The problem is that the value produced by work at best increases linearly with time (assuming a constant workforce) while the returns from investments increases exponentially. And no matter how close to zero the gains of an investment are, sooner or later it will blow up.
Well, that's true in a sense, but discovering new information is valuable. I'm just saying that figuring out which work to support or enable is itself valuable.
I agree, though, that the U.S. undervalues making actual stuff with long term benefits. Ask kids what they want to be when they grow up. How many list jobs in manufacturing, inventing, research, mining, engineering, energy, etc.? Mostly they pick fine careers, but mainly service-heavy careers with low multipliers: teachers, fire fighters, police officers, athletes, entertainers, doctors, etc.
The difference between a human and a ~80kg pile of basic elements is their arrangement. So unless the two are equivalent to you, you can't claim the arrangement has no value.
So no, nobody is losing. On the contrary, individual profit is only a fraction of the added value to the economy, because the counterparty is doing the exact same thing. Every voluntary trade is done in expectation of profit by both sides. When on average that expectation is more right than wrong, economy grows.
Or I can buy solar panels for the elementary school down the street and have them pay me 90% of their prior electric bill. The elementary school has a lower electric bill every month and I have a steady income stream and no one does any work.
And by the way, when you buy your bar of gold you pay some guys to dig some gold out of the earth and melt it into a nice bar. However I am not sure how the value and the price of a bar of gold compare.