Reply #65: Thankfully that's not actually correct, or even close to it. [View All]

[Donald Ian Rankin]

Economics is a long way from being a zero-sum gain, especially in a system with non-zero unemployment.

Basically, what counts is not money but desirable things - goods, services etc. If all that existed were a fixed number of objects of fixed value then you would be right, but that's actually nonsense. Value can very easily be created - if I spend the day mining or making chairs or teaching people or similar, for example.

The main limiting factor on the amount of desirable stuff we each have is *not* production - if we were all controlled by a single hive-mind then we could produce immeasurably more desirable stuff - there would be a) no employment and b) no-one involved in activities like advertising or banking.

The main limit is *organisation* - in a society of individuals it's very worth while having people doing things like advertising and banking, because they result in people spending more time producing things that other people desire, and less time unemployed.

It's very possible for an economic change to make nearly everyone better off, or nearly everyone worse off. Your zero-sum concept is just wrong, thankfully.