[aniviacat]

The economy is not a zero sum game. We (non-politicians/non-billionares) have significantly more resources than we had 100 years ago, and we will have significantly more resources in 100 years than we do now. And open source developers are a small part of why.

[immibis]

The economy is not a zero sum game because we produce more stuff. Money, however, is a zero sum game unless you are Jerome Powell. We produce more stuff because we work hard to produce it, not because venture capitalists have larger bank accounts.

Especially in relation to open-source software, this should be obvious. Software exists because someone wrote it, not because a company owner was paid for access to it. Programmers may be paid to write software. However when comparing two worlds, one in which a programmer wrote some software for free, and another in which a programmer was paid $1 by a venture capitalist who received $5 from a customer who is now out $5, it's not at all clear that the second world is better. Especially since in the second world, the customer has to keep paying and has to contend with software full of ads that make it slow.

[samatman]

This is straightforwardly, nakedly, embarrassingly illiterate and wrong.

Money has velocity. The faster it moves around, the more there is. If you're a waiter and you get tipped the same serial-numbered twenty dollar bill five times, you've earned a hundred bucks, not twenty.

When economic productivity increases, there's more to buy, and more people doing and making valuable things which others want to pay them for. This increases the velocity of money, it moves around faster, so it isn't zero sum.

This is taught early in any course of study in economics. Since you don't know the most basic and fundamental facts about the subject, it's not surprising that your conclusions make negative sense.

You could spend two weeks of evenings on YouTube and never again reveal your ignorance in such a naked way. I highly recommend this. You're making perpetual-motion class arguments in a place where people know the second law of thermodynamics. Step your game up.