[mhuffman]

>Yes, this was obviously the entire point. You can assume that this is true in any case where people voluntarily agree to trade anything: For each party to the trade, what they receive is worth more to them than what they gave in exchange.

I do not necessarily agree with your comment, but it is irrelevant to my main point.

Even if it were always 100% true that both parties somehow gained value (that could be equated to money), if the differences between those two gained amounts unequal, then the agent-model works just the same ... at some point one (or a few) agents will still end up with all the money!

[nybble41]

> …both parties somehow gained value (that could be equated to money)…

Value cannot be equated to money. This is the point you keep missing. Money is a specific good while value is subjective and variable. While you can say that at any given point in time a certain "agent" valued one good more or less than another, based on observed behavior, it makes no sense to try to compare the magnitude of the values placed on a good by two different "agents". Moreover the same agent can value a good more than its price (in money) at one time, and yet value the same amount of money more than an equivalent good at another time; the fact that someone is willing to pay $5 for one hot dog does not imply that they would be willing to pay $10 for two. In general, barring the limited cases where items are more useful as a set than they are individually, the more one has of something (even money) the less one is willing to give to obtain more of the same.

If there were an "agent" that always valued money over every other good, never needed to buy anything to sustain itself, and had an unlimited supply of goods to sell (such as labor over an unlimited time period), perhaps they could end up with all the money. That's a totally unrealistic scenario, of course, but there is a bigger problem: If the total supply of money is held by a single entity then it is no longer a customary means of indirect exchange, and thus no longer money. People would settle on some other means of exchange and the (former) money would become worthless as currency.

[mhuffman]

I wildly disagree with nearly everything you have written here.

Some notes:

>Value cannot be equated to money. This is the point you keep missing.

Out of curiosity, how do you think trade of any sort works in a capitalist society? In almost any case you can imagine there has been some conversion of money for a trade to be able to take place.

> That's a totally unrealistic scenario, of course, but there is a bigger problem: If the total supply of money is held by a single entity then it is no longer a customary means of indirect exchange, and thus no longer money. People would settle on some other means of exchange and the (former) money would become worthless as currency.

Would the new means of exchange be the "money" then?

On computer simulations, yes, one person ends up with all the money. And of course in the real world that is not the case. It ends up an oligarchy ... up until the "poors" revolt! You will notice that this has happened many, many times throughout history.