XiphosAletheria t1_j205nkd wrote
Reply to comment by Garacious in Life is a game we play without ever knowing the rules: Camus, absurdist fiction, and the paradoxes of existence. by IAI_Admin
>What i dont understand is, in order for you to produce wealth, someone else needs to lose that same amount of wealth.
But that isn't true. If you sit down and write a good book, you have created something valuable that didn't exist before. The same is true if you program a videogame. Or write a hit song. And so on. There are plenty of ways to make society (and yourself) richer without someone else losing wealth. Likewise, the value of your phone lies less in the material resources that make it up and the labor put into to arranging those resources and more in the ingenuity of the idea behind how to arrange those resources. The same is true of most of the material goods we collectively would call "wealth".
Garacious t1_j207ik6 wrote
But when you write a song or a movie, its not like it has some inherent value to it. You assign some value to it and if enough people agree on the value you placed, you can sell that thing to generate wealth. Just because we assigned some abstract value to these things, does not mean it creates wealth out of nowhere. If people dont agree on the value you placed, they will not give you their wealth and you will not be producing wealth.
XiphosAletheria t1_j209a7h wrote
>But when you write a song or a movie, its not like it has some inherent value to it.
So? Nothing has inherent value to it. That doesn't mean you can't creste things people will find valuable.
>You assign some value to it and if enough people agree on the value you placed, you can sell that thing to generate wealth.
Yes, right.
>Just because we assigned some abstract value to these things, does not mean it creates wealth out of nowhere.
Of course it does. That is what all wealth is - stuff that people assigned an abstract value to. To create wealth you labor to create something or to do something that either a) at least a few people will put a high value on or b) that a lot of people will put a low value on.
>If people dont agree on the value you placed, they will not give you their wealth and you will not be producing wealth.
Sure, yes, of course. You might try to write a good book and produce crap. You might try to grow a crop of potatoes and overwater them so they all die. You might dig up a bunch of shiny rocks and discover no one wants them. You might compose a song and find no one wants to listen to it.
I said wealth can be produced and grown. I never said you personally had the skill and talent necessary to produce it, or that every effort to do so would succeed. Creating wealth is difficult. It has to be, because economic value is largely a function of scarcity.
Garacious t1_j20absv wrote
What im trying to say is, wealth and value are seperate things. Of course wealth can be produced and grown, im not arguing that. But to produce that wealth, first someone needs to agree on the value you placed on something, and they need to actually give you their wealth in order for you to produce it. Can you answer me how can one generate wealth, or money, without someone else giving up their own wealth?
XiphosAletheria t1_j20i9li wrote
>What im trying to say is, wealth and value are seperate things. Of course wealth can be produced and grown, im not arguing that. But to produce that wealth, first someone needs to agree on the value you placed on something, and they need to actually give you their wealth in order for you to produce it.
Why? You don't normally pay the author of a book you buy for the book before you buy it, do you?
>Can you answer me how can one generate wealth, or money, without someone else giving up their own wealth?
The same way one produces anything - through their own productive effort.
Garacious t1_j20j91a wrote
Okay let me ask something else, what do you think wealth is? Cause i feel like we are talking about completely different things. When i say wealth, i mean the money (or the capital) you own and i think a lot of people will agree with me on that. Also for the book example, you know preordering is a thing right?
XiphosAletheria t1_j20lufh wrote
Money isn't wealth - it's just a symbol for it, so you don't have to barter item for item. Wealth is what the money stands for - which is basically anything people are willing to trade you for.
Garacious t1_j20n53r wrote
So... capital. Money is a symbol for capital. Its amazing how much of a selective reader you are. Also if you read your own comment a few more times you can see that trade is an important element of wealth. People trade their wealth with each other, so no one actually creates wealth out of thin air.
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