[WalterBright]

> the wealthy holding the money means less money to go around to everyone else

Wealthy entrepreneuers created their wealth, it was not transferred to them. It does not reduce the amount of money elsewhere.

The wealthy do not "hoard" wealth, either. They invest it. All of it. Even checking accounts are not hoarded wealth, because the money you put in it is loaned out by the bank (less the reserve requirements).

[const_cast]

This is largely debatable and hard to measure. The thing about creation is that it's not black or white, it's gray.

Everything relies on thousands of other things. Products and services are huge graphs that nobody truly understands and that span hundreds of years. How much is created, and how much is reused? Hard to say.

At least some of the money is taken via exploitation. For example, if you opt to outsource product X to some third-world country and you drop labor cost 10%, and that in turn grows your company, you did not "create" that growth. You systematically stole it.

Another example we see a lot today is cutting quality. A lot of goods today are produced more efficiently, but not as much as you may think, because some of the productivity gains is simply pseudo-monopolies using their market dominance to cut quality without recourse. It's just human nature that we can't perceive a, say, 1% cut in quality. But if you cut 1% every year for half a century, then congratulations, you "created" a bunch of wealth. But you didn't actually create anything.

[WalterBright]

Offering jobs to people who don't have jobs is not theft, and a voluntary exchange is not theft, either.

Pointing a gun at someone to get them to work is theft. Putting your name on a contract or your brains is also theft.

[const_cast]

Choice isn't binary, it's a continuous distribution. There's not "free choice" and then "gun to head".

Work, especially for vulnerable, exploited populations, is not voluntary. Particularly when we talk about pseudo-slavery tactics used on migrant workers or other vulnerable populations.

There's a reason companies will often progressively move down to poorer, more vulnerable populations for their labor. Those people are much easier to exploit. We even see this in the US, to an extent. Tyson recently had a debacle where they threatened their (knowingly undocumented) workers with ICE if they attempted to unionize. To call this "voluntary" is willfully ignorant, at best.

[sien]

It's remarkable that even on HN so many people believe that economics is a zero sum game.

[20after4]

Some items absolutely are zero sum - anything that is in short supply with a high demand becomes unobtainable for anyone who isn't rich.

Some things that are effectively out of reach for at least half of everyone:

  Mansions and Luxury Condos in desirable locations
  Private Jet
  Private Island
  The best quality food
  2021 Ferrari 812 GTS
  The best legal advice
  A favor from a US Senator

These things are effectively zero-sum, only a limited number of people can have them and we can't expand the supply very much (or intentionally don't because that would hurt their exclusivity value).

[wqaatwt]

It obviously to a non-insignificant extent. Only the proportion is debatable.