Well, it is. Thermodynamics. Earth is pretty much a closed system, except for the sun.
So for example if you invest $100 in a farm and get a return of 10%, where does that come from? The nutrients in the soil, the effort expended by the workers, and the power of the sun to turn seeds into food. All value comes either from finite resources in the ground (nuclear, oil, ...), from solar power, or from human effort (work, innovations, etc.)
So can you trace back Nvidia's incredible 10000% return on investment to any of these sources? Which ones?
But it seems this "economic value" is often created by depleting actual physical resources (e.g. people's health, clean air and water), usually resources belonging someone other than the person capturing the "value".
Can you explain what economic value actually is, in your view? I think I gave a fairly good explanation of my viewpoint, your reply doesn't add anything as I never claimed anything remotely similar to that "economic value is a physical resource being depleted". What does that even mean?
Technology is human effort in the form of innovation. Technology does not grow from the earth, people create it (often using up our finite resources in order to do so). Bill Gates isn't rich because "technology" made him rich, he's rich because other people's efforts made him rich.
> or from human effort (work, innovations, etc.)
The only thing "suspicious" here is your lack of reading comprehension.
Your comment is pretty meaningless because you're just repeating the exact same "it's not a fixed pie", which I already replied to. Just read my above comment one more time, consider it a reply to your statement, and see if you understand it then.
> It's not a zero-sum game.
Well, it is. Thermodynamics. Earth is pretty much a closed system, except for the sun.
So for example if you invest $100 in a farm and get a return of 10%, where does that come from? The nutrients in the soil, the effort expended by the workers, and the power of the sun to turn seeds into food. All value comes either from finite resources in the ground (nuclear, oil, ...), from solar power, or from human effort (work, innovations, etc.)
Only when more money is created than production increases.
If money grows faster than goods for consumption, then buyers bid up price resulting in inflation.
It's not that simple. Of course there is inflation but in the long run in history, real money has increased massively. We have give opportunity of education to almost everyone, abolished slavery, given food and basic medicine to almost everyone. 100 years back having all of these sounded like a perfect world.
GP didn't claim it was fixed, only that the creation of more money brings inflation. Which is a pretty basic fact.
> Total prosperity of world has increased inflation adjusted over 100 years. Why?
Clearly, because people have worked to bring value to the world. But, most people actually doing the work see very little of the profits.
I often see this argument, "you have access to food, housing, healthcare etc., so that means that the system is working great". But you're missing the fact that me, my parents, and their parents, and their peers, have all worked to create all of that stuff. While simultaneously working to create the private jets and luxury yachts for the 1%.
In a more fair system we'd have twice as much prosperity, or work half as hard.
So for example if you invest $100 in a farm and get a return of 10%, where does that come from? The nutrients in the soil, the effort expended by the workers, and the power of the sun to turn seeds into food. All value comes either from finite resources in the ground (nuclear, oil, ...), from solar power, or from human effort (work, innovations, etc.)
So can you trace back Nvidia's incredible 10000% return on investment to any of these sources? Which ones?