[bglusman]

So, OK, yes some specific assets are zero sum when defined narrowly…. But take Picassos. Well, ok, he’s been dead for 52 years, so sure, he’s not painting any more, but… he did… his paintings weren’t zero sum while he was alive, he created them and increased supply steadily during his life.

Real estate is the classic example, true, but precious metals? They’re zero sum in one sense, but what do you think mining does? It increases the supply and effectively amount of precious metals in the world. Same for drilling for oil I guess, though I don’t really want to defend of encourage that, but, it’s still not exactly zero sum, even if I don’t like it, because you can’t just count wealth that’s inaccessible as equivalent to wealth that is accessible. So 3 of your 4 examples are perfect examples that wealth is NOT really zero sum at all. And you can’t eat those. So what about food? Food production has been increased… what, 500x maybe in the last 100 years via agricultural technology investment and science. That’s a lot fewer people starving or going hungry… admittedly we now have the opposite problem via obesity epidemic, but, now here comes GLP-1 innovation which… also increases wealth? Wealth is a pretty tricky thing to define but if people are paying money for it voluntarily it seems to qualify.

[TFYS]

Yes, not all things are zero-sum, but enough are that inequality really does matter. Take labor for example. There's only a limited number of skilled people. Who do those skilled people work for? The people that can give them the most money. So, instead of using their skills to build farms, housing, schools and other things that benefit a large number of people they use their skills to build yachts, mansions and manipulation algorithms. Demand from those with wealth increases the price of skilled labor to the point where people with no money can not afford it. Skilled people from poor communities move to the places where the rich throw their capital around, work on things that the wealthy think are important, and the communities they leave behind suffer as a result.

[bigbadfeline]

> but what do you think mining does? It increases the supply and effectively amount of precious metals in the world.

Population increases faster the mining operations, so this specific example is negative sum in per-capita terms.